Emily Esfahani Smith, a gal with a middle name to remember, has a nice review of the high points of Allan Bloom’s take-down of rock/pop music in his Closing of the American Mind, which has a 25th anniversary this year. Worth pondering if you haven’t read Bloom’s masterpiece, or worth recalling if you have.
Bloom is perhaps even more brilliant on music in the relevant part of his commentary on the Republic. Those familiar with my Rock Songbook, or even my old No Left Turns comments on rock music know that I do part ways with Bloom on the music issue a bit, but his musical writing were a major, major influence on my own thought about rock.
Ms. Smith of the said fabulous Isfahan-esque middle name also links to an excellent piece by Andrew Ferguson on the book’s anniversary, but of course what she really needs to read is the SONGBOOK!
My latest one (scroll down) is a good one for starters, but the one that is Most Allan Bloom Influenced should also be of interest, as would be the Songbook’s sexual revolution opener.
April 3rd, 2012 | 4:04 pm
[...] Bloom on Pop MusicFirst Things (blog)Emily Esfahini Smith, a gal with a middle name to remember, has a nice review of the high points of Allan Bloom's take-down of rock/pop music in his Closing of the American Mind, which has a 25th anniversary this year. Worth pondering if you haven't … [...]
April 3rd, 2012 | 6:43 pm
[...] Bloom on Pop MusicFirst Things (blog)Emily Esfahini Smith, a gal with a middle name to remember, has a nice review of the high points of Allan Bloom's take-down of rock/pop music in his Closing of the American Mind, which has a 25th anniversary this year. Worth pondering if you haven't …and more » [...]
April 3rd, 2012 | 6:43 pm
[...] Bloom on Pop MusicFirst Things (blog)Emily Esfahini Smith, a gal with a middle name to remember, has a nice review of the high points of Allan Bloom's take-down of rock/pop music in his Closing of the American Mind, which has a 25th anniversary this year. Worth pondering if you haven't …and more » [...]
April 4th, 2012 | 8:09 am
I remember well the 80s (aargh) when Bloom was all the rage, though I never got round to reading his book. Plenty of us, however, have had very different musical experiences than Bloom or Ms Smith. When I was 11 I greatly enjoyed the Four Seasons and surf rock. When I was 14 I graduated to Revolver, Aftermath and Blonde on Blonde. On my 14th birthday, I chose two presents: Bernstein’s version of Le Sacre and the Byrds’ 5th Dimension. At 15, inspired by improvisational San Francisco rock, I subscribed to Down Beat and began a life-long interest in serious jazz. During college I listened almost exclusively to classical music, of all periods. Later in life I gained a new appreciation for classic soul, which I hadn’t been so fond of when I was young. And imagine, Bloom, all this time I never stopped reading.
The world (and artistic goodness) is much bigger and more complex (thank God) than the odd blinkered blueprints for eudaimonia coughed up by the Straussian Pagan Jewish Midwestern Homophilic Neoplatonist.
April 4th, 2012 | 8:23 am
I forgot to say above: one of my favorite sayings from C. S. Lewis (not all of whose views I would endorse) is “the highest does not stand without the lowest”. I can enjoy both Stravinsky’s Lamentations of Jeremiah and Howlin’ Wolf, perhaps in different ways, but without contradiction.
April 4th, 2012 | 11:31 am
HT, I actually underplay my parting ways with Bloom on music–I won the essay contest at St. John’s College with a 25-page attack on his idea that “sex is the heart of rock/pop.”
But I underplay it in part because Bloom’s provocations in Closing, and his commentary on the Republic’s sections on music, were provocative in the good way for me–he forced me to think, and think hard, about the case he was making.
And if you follow my second-to-last link above, you’ll see that I was decisively influenced by his insight that rock drained away the passion from liberal education, that it was/is parasitic upon our ideals for higher education.
Finally, despite your generally excellent taste in music and in C.S. Lewis quotes, I think your dismissal of Bloom with that final series of adjectives is unseemly. The man’s greatness deserves better.
Although it’s funny to find “Midwestern” in that list!
April 4th, 2012 | 2:02 pm
Well, Carl, I always was passionate about liberal education; I didn’t find that my early love (which never left me) of 60s rock had any negative effect there. Of, course I’m hardly typical, alas, so maybe there is a true sociological generalization along the lines you and Bloom suggest. But I found in my case that the flowering of 60s rock led me into all sorts of other musical discoveries, including high-art ones, and didn’t at all curtail my intellectual or aesthetic curiosity in the way Bloom seems to imply it should. I suppose I should finally read his book, what the hell.
Like my philosophical hero(ine) Elizabeth Anscombe, I’m an Aristotelian and a Wittgensteinian, rather than any kind of head-in-the-clouds Platonist, and I don’t buy any of Strauss’s odd esotericism; Aristotle and the rest meant what they said.
It sounds like you and I play pretty much the same mix of stuff on our stereos, by the way. Good listening!
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