Harold Bloom
This afternoon at the bookstore I purchased Nick Hornby's Songbook, a collection of writings about Hornby's favorite pop songs (and a CD, although unsurprisingly it lacks most of the better-known songs about which he writes). I just love the following passage, which offers as fine a justification for pop music as I have ever read:
That's the thing that puzzles me about those who feel that contemporary pop (and I use the word to encompass soul, reggae, country, rock--anything and everything that might be regarded as trashy) is beneath them, or behind them, or beyond them--some preposition denoting distance, anyway: does this mean you never hear, or at least never enjoy, new songs, that everything you whistle or hum was written years, decades, centuries ago? Do you really deny yourselves the pleasure of mastering a tune (a pleasure, incidentally, that your generation is perhaps the first in the history of mankind to forego) because you are afraid it might make you look as if you don't know who Harold Bloom is? Wow. I'll bet you're fun at parties.Posted by ned at February 16, 2003 03:58 PM