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OverviewIn this generous collection of book reviews and literary essays, legendary Village Voice rock critic Robert Christgau showcases the passion that made him a critic-his love for the written word. Many selections address music, from blackface minstrelsy to punk and hip-hop, artists from Lead Belly to Patti Smith, and fellow critics from Ellen Willis and Lester Bangs to Nelson George and Jessica Hopper. But Book Reports also teases out the popular in the Bible and 1984 as well as pornography and science fiction, and analyzes at length the cultural theory of Raymond Williams, the detective novels of Walter Mosley, the history of bohemia, and the 2008 financial crisis. It establishes Christgau as not just the Dean of American Rock Critics, but one of America's most insightful cultural critics as well. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Robert ChristgauPublisher: Duke University Press Imprint: Duke University Press Weight: 0.544kg ISBN: 9781478000303ISBN 10: 1478000309 Pages: 416 Publication Date: 03 May 2019 Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , General , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 I. Collectibles The Informer: John Leonard's When the Kissing Had to Stop 11 Advertisements for Everybody Else: Jonathan Lethem's The Ecstasy of Influence 14 Democratic Vistas: Dave Hickey's Air Guitar 17 II. From Blackface Minstrelsy to Track-and-Hook In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter 23 The Old Ethiopians at Home: Ken Emerson's Doo-Dah! 40 Before the Blues: David Wondrich's Stomp and Swerve 43 Rhythms of the Universe: Ned Sublette's Cuba and Its Music 46 Black Melting Pot: David B. Coplan's In Township Tonight! 49 Bwana-Acolyte in the Favor Bank: Banning Eyre's In Griot Time 56 In the Crucible of the Party: Charles and Angelilki Keil's Bright Balkan Morning 59 Defining the Folk: Benjamin Filene's Romancing the Folk 64 Folking Around: David Hajdu's Positively 4th Street 67 Punk Lives: Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me 70 Biography of a Corporation: Nelson George's Where Did Our Love Go? 72 Hip-Hop Faces the World: Steven Hager's Hip Hop; David Toop's The Rap Attack; and Nelson George, Sally Banes, Susan Flinker, and Patty Romanowski's Fresh 75 Making Out Like Gangsters: Preston Lauterbach's The Chitlin' Circuit, Dan Charnas's The Big Payback, Ice-T's Ice, and Tommy James's Me, the Mob, and Music 80 Money Isn't Everything: Fred Goodman's The Mansion on the Hill 86 Mapping the Earworm's Genome: John Seabrook's The Song Machine 89 III. Critical Practice Beyond the Symphonic Quest: Susan McClary's Feminine Endings 97 All the Tune Family: Peter van der Merwe's Origins of the Popular Style 100 Bel Cantos: Henry Pleasant's The Great American Popular Singers 102 The Country and the City: Charlie Gillett's The Sound of the City 109 Reflections of an Aging Rock Critic: Jon Landau's It's Too Late to Stop Now 115 Pioneer Days: Kevin Avery's Everything Is an Afterthought and Nona Willis Aronowitz's (ed.) Out of the Vinyl Deeps 117 Impolite Discourse: Jim Derogatis's Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer's A Whore Jus Like the Rest, and Nick Tosches's The Nick Torches Reader 123 Journalism and/or Criticism and/or Musicology and/or Sociology (and/or Writing): Simon Firth 129 Serious Music: Robert Walser's Running With the Devil 137 Fifteen Minutes of . . . : William York's Who's Who in Rock Music 139 The Fanzine Worldview, Alphabetized: Ira A. Robbins's (ed.) Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records 140 Awesome: Simon Reynolds's Blissed Out 143 Ingenuousness Lost: James Miller's Flowers in the Dustbin 147 Rock Criticism Lives: Jessica Hopper's The Fist Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic 151 Emo Meets Trayvon Martin: Hanif Abdurraquib's They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us 156 IV. Lives in Music Inside and Out Great Book of Fire: Nick Tosches's Hellfire and Robert Palmer's Jerry Lee Lewis Rocks! 163 That Bad Man, Tough Old Huddie Ledbetter: Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell's The Life and Legend of Leadbelly 169 The Impenetrable Heroism of Sam Cooke: Peter Guralnick's Dream Boogie 171 Bobby and Dave: Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One and Dave Van Ronk's The Mayor of MacDougal Street 178 Tell All: Ed Sanders's Fug You and Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water 180 King of the Thrillseekers: Richard Hell's I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp 185 Lives Saved, Lives Lost: Carrie Brownstein's Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl and Patti Smith's M Train 189 The Cynic and the Bloke: Rod Stewart's Rod: The Autobiography and Donald Fagen's Eminent Hipsters 194 His Own Shaman: RJ Smith's The One 199 Spotlight on the Queen: David Ritz's Respect 201 The Realist Thing You've Ever Seen: Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run 205 V. Fictions Writing for the People: George Orwell's 1984 213 A Classic Illustrated: R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis 217 The Hippie Grows Older: Richard Brautigan's Sombrero Fallout 222 Comic Gurdjieffianism You Can Masturbate To: Marco Vassis' Mind Blower 224 Porn Yesterday: Walter Kendrick's The Secret Museum 225 What Pretentious White Men Are Good For: Robert Coover's Gerald's Party 230 Impoverished How, Exactly? Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors 236 Sustainable Romance: Norman Rush's Mortals 237 Derrnig-Do Scrapping By: Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue 240 Futures by the Dozen: Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire 245 YA Poet of the Massa Woods: Sandra Newman's The Country of Ice Cream Star 248 A Darker Shade of Noir: The Indefatigable Walter Mosley 252 VI. Bohemia Meets Hegemony Épatant le Bourgeoisie: Jerrold Seigel's Bohemian Paris and T. J. Clark's The Painting of Modern Life 263 The Village People: Christine Stansell's American Moderns 278 A Slender Hope for Salvation: Charles Reich's The Greening of America 280 The Lumpenhippie Guru: Ed Sanders's The Family 285 Strait Are the Gates: Morris Dickstein's Gates of Eden 289 The Little Counterculture That Could: Carol Brightman's Sweet Chaos 293 The Pop-Boho Connection, Narrativized: Bernard F. Gendron's Between Montmarte and the Mudd Club 297 Cursed and Sainted Seekers of the Sexual Century: John Heidenry's What Wild Ecstasy 301 Bohemias Lost and Found: Ross Wetzsteon's Republic of Dreams, Richard Kostelanetz's SoHo, and Richard Lloyd's Neo-Bohemia 304 Autobiography of a Pain in the Neck: Meredith Maran's What It's Like to Live Now 309 VII. Culture Meets Capital Twentieth Century Limited: Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts into Air 315 Dialectical Cricket: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary 320 Radical Pluralist: Andrew Ross's No Respect 323 Inside the Prosex Wars: Nadine Strossen's Defending Pornography, Joanna Frueh's Eroctic Faculties, and Lara Kipnis's Bound and Gagged 327 Growing Up Kept Down: William Finnegan's Cold New World 331 Jesus Plus the Capitalist Order: Jeff Sharlet's The Family 334 Dark Night of the Quants: Ten Books About the Financial Crisis 338 They Bet Your Life: Four Books About Hedge Funds 345 Living in a Material World: Raymond Williams's Long Revolution 350 With a God on His Side: Terry Eagleton's Culture and the Death of God, Culture, and Materialism 369 My Friend Marshall: Marshall Berman's Modernism in the Streets 374 Index 381Reviews[A] substantial collection of nearly 100 eclectic, thought-provoking, and idea-laden book reviews. . . . [Christgau's] range of topics is impressive, and his references are prolific. These sprightly, highly opinionated 'adventures of an autodidact' reveal Christgau to be a highly literate, astute, and discerning book critic. * Kirkus Reviews * There are few critics working today with the life-long commitment, focus, and curiosity of Robert Christgau. Book Reports doesn't scan the over half-century of the man's work, and that's what makes it all the more impressive. He's still searching, still pulling volumes from the shelves, looking at new or old ideas, cracking open the spines of preconceived notions all in the service of taking just one more look before walking away with the promise of yet another return. -- Christopher John Stephens * Popmatters * Christgau mostly writes on books by or about notable musicians, though he hits other cultural touchstones too, such as George Orwell's 1984. It's in these nonmusic pieces that Christgau is most successful, shifting focus from his encyclopedic music-industry knowledge to the nuances of language. His essay on books about the 2008 financial crisis is a highlight. * Publishers Weekly * [A] substantial collection of nearly 100 eclectic, thought-provoking, and idea-laden book reviews. . . . [Christgau's] range of topics is impressive, and his references are prolific. These sprightly, highly opinionated 'adventures of an autodidact' reveal Christgau to be a highly literate, astute, and discerning book critic. * Kirkus Reviews * Author InformationRobert Christgau wrote for and edited at The Village Voice from 1969 to 2006 and currently contributes a weekly record column at Noisey. His books include Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967–2017, also published by Duke University Press, and Going into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |