Our future lover, A. Ro., gets called up to the Top 10 books of ‘07 list in The New York Times. (Way to go, hon!)
Despite what might appear to be a tendentious effort on our part to discredit the poor guy, we’re actually totally stoked that so many people are making such a fuss about twentieth century classical music. Our scrutiny comes from a place of love. We really just don’t want to see any more bullshitty fictionalizations about what 20th century music is, was, sounds like, looks like…tastes like. The last thing we need is some book to come along that’s like, Composers of atonal music are all fringe lunatics. Cuz they’re not.

So when you get a line that says the classical music world resides “on the outskirts of culture,” as Ross writes in his Introduction, and someone like Geoff Dyer quotes that line in his review of the book in The New York Times, we kind of get a little freaked out, because, doesn’t that like, totally reinforce a generally held bias against classical music, that it is on the “outskirts” of culture? You could just as easily say it is at the finite center of culture, or the highest height of culture, or the subtlest subculture, you know, depending on what you think about it. Ross blatantly believes classical music to be a fringe sport. Does that give his interest in the genre more cache? Maybe in a popular sense.

Dyer proclaimins himself to be one of those unversed in the details of classical music, a group to whom Ross dedicates half of his efforts. (You can consider us the other half.) Dyer’s impressed but not entirely convinced. It sounds like things pull at the seems the closer the book gets to the present. No surprise. What’s scary is that we’re only on page 100 (out of 600), and we’re familiar with all of the references that appear in the first two thirds of the review.

Uh, Mr. Dyer? Did you read the rest of The Rest Is Noise? You did? Oh. Okay. Just checkin…

For X-criticism (that is, extreme criticism) of Da Noise, click here.

UPDATE:

We know we totally mistyped the word “proclaimins”, but we’re leaving it alone, cuz it’s just too damn cute! If you can find a way to use “proclaimins” in a sentence, feel free to drop it off in the comments field.