This book is a riveting investigation of what it means to love music and what it means to hate music, both of good taste and bad taste.
Carl Wilson is the music critic at Slate and also writes for The Globe and Mail, Hazlitt, The New York Times Magazine and many other online and print publications. He lives in Toronto, where he is the doorman at the Trampoline Hall Lecture Series.
"Let's Talk" about one of the most interesting music books you'll
read this year... The always critical and erudite Mr. Wilson
actually approached Let's Talk About Love as a non-fan grappling
with questions of "good" and "bad" taste... It's almost certainly
the only installment in the series to discuss French-Canadian race
relations, rockism, and Milan Kundera's thoughts on kitsch.
*Idolator.com*
This could be the best book of the series...razor-sharp and
unerringly intelligent.
*The Denver Post*
This book seriously explores the wide divide between mainstream pop
that is mass-marketed and purchased, and the critics who usually
sneer at it for those very reasons. It's a heady work that examines
everything from 'reductive Marxist theories of culture' to why
critics value restrained singing while 'American Idol' fans embrace
'show-offy' technical power.
*Las Vegas Review Journal*
A book pondering the aesthetics of Céline risks going wrong in
about 3,000 different ways...Instead, this book goes very deeply
right.
*New York Magazine*
Let's Talk About Love is a rigorous, perceptive and very funny
meditation on what happens when you realize that there's more to
life than being hip, and begin to grapple with just what that
"more" might be.
*Montreal Gazette*
A bit of a departure for Continuum's 33 1/3 series exploring
classic records...readers of the dizzingly dweeby intellectualizing
that often makes Wilson's blog an exhausting pleasure to read will
not be surprised that, for him, a discussion of the love theme from
Titanic must encompass an examination of Quebecois culture, the
history of parlour entertainment as it relates to the immigrant
experience, the philosophies of Hume and Kant and the sociological
experiments of Pierre Bordieu.
*Eye Weekly*
Blending pop culture, cultural history, music criticism with
Wilson's eclectic sensibility, the book is a fascinating look at
how highbrow, middlebrow and nobrow rub meaningful observations
along the way, moving on to the next without ever belabouring a
point. The book is clever without the writer himself ever coming
across as trying to be clever...It's like having an interesting
conversation with a friend whose opinions you respect.
*Toronto Star Online, November 2009*
This erudite and eye-opening book attempts to explore not only
Dion's polarizing appeal but also the very concept of "taste."
Along the way, Wilson traces his loathing for Dion back to her
Oscars performance alongside Elliott Smith, examines the meaning of
"schmaltz" and Dion's French-Canadian roots, meets her adoring
fans, sees her Vegas show, reviews the album (it's the one with
that Titanic song), and analyzes theories on taste from David Hume,
Immanuel Kant, and Pierre Bourdieu (turns out social distinction
plays a big part). By the end, Wilson has set the blueprint for a
kind of music criticism that "might put less stock in defending its
choices and more in depicting its enjoyment, with all its messiness
and private soul tremors-- to show what it is like for me to like
it, and invite you to compare." In other words, let's talk about
love.
*Pitchfork feature "Our 60 Favorite Music Books"*
Erudite and eye-opening.
*Pitchfork's "Our 60 Favorite Music Books" feature*
I teach in a university drama programme and I plan to integrate the
book into our first-year Critical Theories course as a way to
introduce students to principles of aesthetics, and to the
discourse around pop/high culture. It's difficult to make Kantian
aesthetics accessible to 18 year olds. Let's Talk About Love is a
rare instance of the transmission of complex and sophisticated
ideas in language that is accessible without being dumbed-down.
*Karen Fricker, Lecturer in Contemporary Theatre, Royal Holloway,
University of London*
Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste offers a rare
combination of compelling research and enormously entertaining
writing, a real find for students of popular culture. It's a
compact little volume packed with keen insights into the ideologies
that have shaped music criticism and scholarship, thought-provoking
commentary on problems of aesthetics, and sensitive reflexive
analysis. That reflexivity, along with a careful balance of
critical theory and field research, makes this work particularly
appropriate for courses with an ethnomusicological angle. And as
ethnomusicologists continue to cultivate a growing sub-field in
popular music studies, Let's Talk About Love is a timely and
valuable resource.
*Katherine Meizel, Lecturer in Ethnomusicology,University of
California, Santa Barbara*
Written keenly and with great generosity.
*Idolator, 24 December 2008*
The book [is] an engaging and intelligent study of taste and
critiism framed by Celine Dion's tragic music.
*EyeWeekly, 24 February 2009*
...a brilliant read and a total eye-opener. Unlike other
contributors, Wilson doesn't shore up another crumbling wall of the
canon but dives into a world of kitsch to ask what makes us hate
music. How can we know that 'bad' music really is bad, and what is
taste anyway? It'll shake all your critical certainties, which is
not a very good idea when you're in my line of work.
*The Word Magazine*
Mention in Today's Books
*BookweekThe A-List*
Wilson covers a lot of ground in his 161-page quest; the second
half of the book reads like a Cultural Studies power ballad,
invoking Roland Barthes, Theodor Adorno, Immanuel Kant, Clement
Greenberg, Arthur C. Danto, and scores of other contemporary
critics in rapid succession. Perhaps most impressively, Wilson
condenses French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's mammoth (and
seminal) tome Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of
Taste into one spry little chapter.
*Rain Taxi*
It's said there's no accounting for taste, but Canadian music
critic Carl Wilson certainly makes a Herculean effort in this
latest entry in Continuum's 33 1/3 series...En route, Wilson finds
plenty of fellow detractors, generously hashes out a lengthy
definition of "schmaltz," and drags Elliott Smith, David Hume,
Immanuel Kant, Clement Greenberg, Pierre Bourdieu, and a gaggle of
shameless starry-eyed Dion fanatics into his intellectual and
aesthetic morass.
*Baltimore City Paper*
'Morally you could fairly ask', Wilson writes, 'what is more
laudable about excess in the name of rage and resentment than
immoderation in thrall to love and connection?' That is, indeed, a
fair and moral question, and it leads Wilson to wonder 'if anyone's
tastes stand on solid ground, starting with mine.' He doesn't reach
any definite conclusions, but the conversation he carries on
through the centuries with everyone from philosophers David Hume
and Immanuel Kant to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, is by turns
enlightening, provocative and unexpectedly moving. Wilson aptly
calls Let's Talk About Love 'an experiment in taste,' and maybe as
much as anything else, the book argues that such an experiment is
one we'd all do well to conduct.
*No Depression*
The 33 1/3 of pocket books ... are superb little volumes devoted to
classic albums. What unites them is not so much their subject as
the standard of the writing and imagination that the authors have
brought to their task... every one I've read has been well worth
the attention. Wilson's approach to Celine Dione, however, stands
out ... Clever and witty.
*The Herald (Glasgow), Saturday 8th March 2008.*
Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste is Canadian
journalist Carl Wilson's Celine Dion contribution to Continuum's
inspired 33 1/3 series of short books ... Music criticism is often
just guy-world. Wilson is the real thing. I can't praise this small
book enough. Smart, but humane.
*CBC, Monday 25th February 2008.*
It's fascinating stuff...By turns hilarious and heartwarming.
*Guardian Unlimited Arts blog*
Mention on Offbeat.com
*Alex Rawls*
Carl Wilson was interviewed by The Onion's A.V. Club
*Steven Hyden*
Framed by an irresistible concept...Wilson turns the [33 1/3]
series on its head by seriously considering a blockbuster hit by
Celine Dion.
*Portland Phoenix*
Wilson's approach to Celine Dion...stands out. Wilson examines why
he loathes it, its creator and everything about her-- and what
inspires devotion in her bast army of followers around the
world...Clever and witty, it almost make me seek out the album. But
not quite.
*The Herald, Glasgow*
Constantly interesting and thought-provoking...and I think he can
teach us a few valuable things about criticism, for what it's
worth.
*Uncut, UK*
I still don't like what I know of Dion's music and probably never
will. But Wilson's efforts to examine the rote critical assumption
that Celine Dion's music blows digs up all kinds of fascinating
issues about the nature of taste and the hierarchy of pop
culture.
*Bohemian.com*
An insightful, engaging and unexpectedly moving book.
*Globe and Mail*
Brilliant.
*Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise*
Consistently thought provoking.
*Express: A Publication of The Washington Post*
This book is especially interesting on Dion's background... His
book is intelligent and often moving.
*The Daily Telegraph*
In perhaps the most erudite and humane book of criticism ever
written, Let’s Talk About Love, the music journalist Carl Wilson
brilliantly used Celine Dion’s album of the same name to discuss
the subjective nature of good taste and to try to understand what
makes Dion so world-dominatingly popular.
*The Daily Beast*
Music criticism is often just guy-world. Wilson's the real thing. I
can't praise this small book enough. Smart, but humane.
*CBC News: Analysis and Viewpoint*
By exploring taste, kitsch, culture, fans, the state of
contemporary criticism, Quebec nationalism, and economics in Celine
Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, Carl
Wilson manages to produce one of the most interesting and erudite
books on why people love and hate certain kinds of art...Readers
will find themselves evaluating their views on arts with added
scrutiny after reading this surprising and provocative book.
*Hipster Book Club*
A wide-ranging book, one predicated on the possibility that what
repels us may say more about us than what attracts us...[an]
insightful, engaging, and unexpectedly moving book.
*The Globe and Mail*
An important study- not just of Dion and pop music but also of the
changing nature of criticism in the popular realm.
*Bookforum*
As refreshing a music book I have read in a long time.
*Largehearted Boy, Book Notes*
An illustration of the best side of music criticism.
*Erasing Clouds*
Wilson uses Dion's record as a crowbar, and pries open the
assumptions and prejudices which shape our tastes in the first
place. Despite our preconceptions surrounding Wilson's ostensible
subject (or perhaps, because of them), the results are subtle, and
startling enough to give the most jaded of readers pause.
*Flavorpill NYC*
The ironic subtitle attached to Wilson’s tome signaled the
departure it marked from the series’ usual fare. His subject,
Celine Dion, was in the eyes music criticism’s orthodoxy, the
antithesis of the celebrated artist, and, accordingly, Wilson
presented his work as a challenge, to himself and others, to
approach her with fresh ears.
*PQ Monthly*
The most unlikely album made the best 33 1/3: Celine Dion isn’t
usually afforded the same respect as a Bob Dylan or a Joni
Mitchell, but Carl Wilson uses her populist art and personal
history to ask questions about class, taste, and race in an effort
to figure out how one of the most popular singers in the world
could be loved and hated in equal measure. The answers he finds
aren’t always comfortable, but that only makes them more important
and crucial to criticism in the 21st century.
*Pitchfork*
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