Re: Savage Beasts and All That / I don my fez

["Anne M. Marble" <amarble@sff.net>]

From: Elmer Elevator <bobmer@JAVANET.COM>

> Here, let me put on my Snob Hat (a fez).
>
> I didn't mention Hannibal Lecter because I'm trying to compare the
> highest achievements of music with the highest achievements of
> literature ... and I think the Hannibal Lecter books and movies are sort
> of mass-midcult mall-movie crappy. I don't think there's anything in
> them (exept perhaps recipes) that can really inform thoughtful, educated
> people.

If I hadn't read "The Silence of the Lambs," I might not have heard of
Glenn Gould. It sounds as if that novel did a darn good job of informing
me.

Besides, I don't read read novels to be informed. I read novels for
entertainment. Why has that become a bad thing these days? I have found
many great moments -- some subtle, some not -- in "crass" commercial
fiction. Despite his reputation for gore, Thomas Harris has many subtle
moments.

BTW Thomas Harris fans on this list might want to visit this page:
http://complit.rutgers.edu/mwatts/silence.html

It was put together by our own Mary Jo Watts. And it includes wonderful
annotations to "The Silence of the Lambs." There are also some "Hannibal"
annotations.

> > Another question might be... Why are lovers of classical music so
> often portrayed in a bad light in movies, plays, literature, etc.?
>
> > Is it reverse snobbery of a sort?
>
> That's an awfully good insight. I think it's Musical Xenophobia, a
> resentment by people who, through their misfortunes of education, reach
> adulthood believing that the doors to opera, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
> Chopin etc., have been forever closed to them. And they resent it and so
> enjoy these kinds of insults slung at lovers of classical music in the
> movies.

Too many people are like my neighbor and classmate, Valerie Something. No
matter what classical music piece I tried to play, everything was "boring."
On the other hand, she enjoyed that "Electric Light Orchestra" album I
played! She probably even liked Walter Murphy. Anyone remember him? He used
to borrow (OK, steal) from Beethoven and others and turn them into disco
hits. :->  (To be fair, she loved Shakespeare and read his plays for fun,
so she wasn't totally lost to the fine arts.)

How come people couldn't make the leap from Murphy's "A Fifth of Beethoven"
to the real thing? Maybe they were simply so afraid of being branded as
nerds that they refused to let themselves enjoy it. I already bore my Nerd
Brand (TM) by then, so I didn't see anything wrong with listening to
classical music. Someone once asked me, "Do you really understand those
records?" I never realized I was supposed to "understand" them. I just
listened to them. Maybe people are afraid of them because they think
they're supposed to "understand" the music.

> There's plenty of room in the human brain to love both Bach and Janis
> Joplin. It's our educational traditions (fez-wearing music teachers)
> which suggest the two kinds of music are hostile to one another and
> can't survive together in a cultured mind and heart. How many music
> teachers have given the hairy eyeball to a student who got caught
> bringing his/her beloved CD of Pop du Jour to class?

Just as there's room in the brain for Bach and Janis Joplin (and Petula
Clark!), there's also room in the brain for Shakespeare and Thomas Harris.
Not to mention M.J. Engh, Sean Russell, Theresa Weir, Lois McMaster Bujold,
and other authors of (gasp) genre fiction I have read. I see no shame in
reading science fiction, fantasy, suspense, mystery, or even (gasp) romance
novels. In fact, I'm proud of the fact that I write reviews for a site
dedicated romance readers. I may be the only person to sneak a Glenn Gould
reference into an article about Gothic novels. ;->

------
Anne M. Marble
Reviewer for All About Romance -- http://www.likesbooks.com
And proud of it