"... when there is a James Lee Burke to hand. Not every 'classic' is worthy of veneration: Tristram Shandy honks like John Coltrane, and is not nearly so funny. As for Midnight’s Children, it’s more fun to walk round town with a nail in your boot."
Are Americans still reading what is supposed to be good for us? Or is that a concept of the past? What's the last thing you read — or tried to read — because it was supposed to be good for you? If you wanted to force yourself to read something because you believe it's considered to be good for you, what would you pick?
"Eventually Mr. Fieger won Ms. Alperin after writing the catchy bass-driven track about her. She spent her late teens touring the world with him.... 'It played everywhere I went... It was in the elevator, it was in the dentist, it was on the airplane, in the market, played by every Top 40 band. It was everywhere. It was exciting, and it was everything.... When we broke up it was time to be my Sharona.... The word ‘my’ in that song says a lot. There’s not more of a possessive or obsessive word in the English vocabulary. He thought I was his soul mate, his other half, but it was a lot.'... Now a real-estate agent in Los Angeles, Ms. Alperin said that people will sing the song to her when she introduces herself without even realizing that she is the inspiration, and plead for pictures while she does open house viewings. 'There are good days and bad days... I’ve never gone a week without people singing "My Sharona" to me. It’s been with me all these years, and it would never do me any good to feel anything other than gratitude and humility about it. It’s nice to bring people excitement, and it’s a special thing in my life. I appreciate the wonderful experience it’s been.'"
I'm trying to figure out how old Alperin was when this relationship began. The NYT does not give her age, and Wikipedia says: "When Doug Fieger was 25 years old, he met 17-year-old Sharona Alperin..."
That's an 8 year difference, but Alperin says 11 years. Does that mean Alperin was 14 when Fieger took her to lunch and professed his love?
Wikipedia links to a 2005 WaPo article that is based on an interview with Fieger. He says: "Sharona was 17. I was 25 when I wrote the song. But the song was written from the perspective of a 14-year-old boy. It's just an honest song about a 14-year-old boy." Hmm. There's that number: 14.
WaPo didn't go looking for the real Sharona. Its interest at the time was George W. Bush. The contents of his iPod — remember those? — had been revealed and one of his songs was "My Sharona." WaPo says:
The New York Times revealed the presidential penchant for "My Sharona" -- about an underage vixen -- in a story about Bush's iPod mix last week.
Yikes. 2005 was so long ago. Imagine seeing "underage vixen" blithely tossed out like that today!
But back then, WaPo saw it as an exciting way to get at George Bush. Think of him, listening to the lyrics "Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind/Always get it up for the touch of the younger kind." WaPo prints out those lines.
But what about the NYT today going back to "My Sharona"? It's no longer about kicking around George Bush. It's just a way to crank out some kind of pop culture article. It's interesting that Sharona is a real estate agent and people hearing her name are forever singing the song to her and not thinking that she is the girl in the song. But why didn't "but he was 11 years older" trigger some curiosity over there at the NYT? Whatever happened to feminism? It comes and goes! It's discovered and forgotten, over and over again.
Speaking of Presidents, why are we, right now, slipping into a time of forgetting? #MeToo arose in 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency.
ADDED: In 2010, NPR quoted Sharona Alperin, speaking of first meeting Fieger: "I was about 16 or 17 at the time. He was nine years older than me." 9 years older back then, but 11 years older now? How did that happen?
... you can talk all night. Talk about whatever you like, especially stuff that doesn't fit in the various posts of the day, whatever they were. What could be talked about? I'm thinking... maybe you can offer some topics. See if you can get people to answer your questions.
I've always hesitated to use the phrase "object lesson." I do use it, and I want to be able to use it, but it nags at me that I might not use it correctly. This morning in a post that was to some extent about misreading, somebody misunderstood me, and I wanted to thank him for the "object lesson."
Because I took the trouble to research the phrase, I ended up writing "Thanks for providing such a striking example of the problem." Not that I figured out it would be wrong to say "Thanks for the object lesson," but just that I wanted out of that comments thread and into a separate post about the meaning of "object lesson," which explains to me why I'd always felt uneasy about using it. That is, I'd learned it from hearing others use it, but I wasn't convinced they were using it properly.
Here's an example of the way other people use the term. This is Paul Krugman in a NYT column from January 4th: "The past two months have... been an object lesson in the extent to which 'grass roots' anger is actually being orchestrated from the top." And here's the NYT Editorial Board, from early December: "[T]he painfully slow pace of recovery following the last recession provided an object lesson in the limits of relying on low interest rates."
See how flabby that is?! It's an object lesson in... flabbiness!
Now, check out the Wikipedia article "Object Lesson." Historically, "object lesson" is something crisply specific:
An object lesson is a teaching method that consists of using a physical object or visual aid as a discussion piece for a lesson...
The object lesson approach is promoted in the educational philosophy of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who held that teaching should begin with observation of objects which help students recognize concepts. In his teaching and writing he emphasized the concept of Anschauung, which may be understood as “sense training.”
Pestalozzi taught that children were first to develop sensation, then perception, notion, and finally volition, learning how to act morally based on an individual view of the world. Object lessons were important elements in teaching during the Victorian era of the mid- to late-nineteenth century....
Check out this lithograph from the late 19th century, with the title "Object Lesson":
The guy with the furled umbrella is, presumably, giving the object lesson. I've looked at this picture and attempted to understand what the lesson is. I have no idea. Pigs are mammals?
Maybe it doesn't matter. It's just that this guy is seeing something and taking it as an occasion to teach some lesson. The ladies seem to be tolerating the mansplaining. Or — oh! — if we look at the whole picture — and not just the pigs he's pointing out — the entire image is an object for a lesson in mansplaining!
This is a very restrictive meaning for "object lesson," and it's obviously not what people have been using. If we click over to Wiktionary, we see that restrictive meaning, plus the broader usage: "Anything used as an example or lesson which serves to warn others as to the outcomes that result from a particular action or behavior, as exemplified by the fates of those who followed that course."
Now, here's something that came up in my research. A clip — viral recently — showing a snowball fight filmed in 1987:
From a NYT article (last November) about that clip, here's a description of the bicyclist who enters the fray and gets knocked over:
His legs fly up in the air; his hat lands upside down in the snow. Before he can even get up, the cyclist is pelted again, and someone tries to steal his bike — but the cyclist stands and rips it away, then hops back on, abandoning his hat, retreating, pedaling off the way he came, taking powdery sniper fire as he goes. It is an object lesson in futility, in noble intentions thwarted — one man’s vision destroyed by the sudden madness of a crowd.
No one is purporting to teach a lesson using an object, but the author of those words is nudging us to view what happened as the basis for a lesson. We're told what the lesson is in, and we're supposed to teach ourselves the lesson or simply to see, instantly, what the lesson is.
I think, in the present day usage, "object lesson" works as an assertion that the lesson is obvious. You only need to identify the topic of the lesson. There's no teacher taking time, in the presence of the object, leading you — with your mind enhanced by the tangibility of the object — to a new level of understanding. It's just look and aha!
I'm not yet half way through, but I'm so impressed with the analysis. There's so much of it! With the music played, so you can judge for yourself.
I was interested, for example, in the discussion of the emotional effect of any slightly out-of-tune singing. Is it "soulful"? And has our experience of it changed over the years as present-day music is electronically tuned to perfection?
And is it the case that there is a song that only Paul McCartney can sing and that song is "Helter Skelter"? The Wikipedia article on the song cites a number of cover versions, but the only one mentioned in the podcast is Bono's. It is mentioned with a scoffing laugh (just before saying that if Kurt Cobain had tried, he might have succeeded). I just annoyed myself by listening to the Mötley Crüe version. I also sampled a little of the Marilyn Manson "Helter Skelter." Here's the awful Oasis version.
I'm no expert, but I'd say if you're just going to do it like Paul and just approach what he did, why do it at all? As an homage? But it's an homage with a song that got its reputation twisted up into the Manson murders. Bono said Charles Manson "stole" the song from The Beatles and he was "stealing it back."
Having just written about the connection between Trump's January 6th speech that — intentionally or unintentionally — seems to have inspired the storming of the U.S. Capitol, I'm interested to stumble so soon into this story of a vocal presentation that may have inspired murder. According to one Manson follower:
When the Beatles' White Album came out, Charlie listened to it over and over and over and over again. He was quite certain that the Beatles had tapped in to his spirit, the truth—that everything was gonna come down and the black man was going to rise. It wasn't that Charlie listened to the White Album and started following what he thought the Beatles were saying. It was the other way around. He thought that the Beatles were talking about what he had been expounding for years. Every single song on the White Album, he felt that they were singing about us. The song 'Helter Skelter'—he was interpreting that to mean the blacks were gonna go up and the whites were gonna go down.
Of course, there's no way to hold The Beatles complicit in a murder scheme. At most, they could have thought that too many people are too attached to them and looking for messages and crazy connections and maybe they ought to stick to the peace-and-love songs so they don't accidentally inspire murder. It would be a different matter if The Beatles knew before they put out the White Album that there was a violent group set to rise up when The Beatles gave the signal "helter skelter."
A criminal complaint charged Rodney A. Clendening, 34, of Beloit, with felony theft after police said they identified him as the driver of a car into which the head of the abolitionist statue was placed on June 23, after a group of people, using another vehicle to assist them, pulled down the statue of Heg during a destructive night Downtown.
According to the complaint against Clendening.... He walked toward the Heg plinth, just out of the camera’s view, and came back into view alongside two other men who were carrying Heg’s head. One of the men put the head into the trunk of the Ford. After the trunk was closed, Clendening went back to the driver’s seat and drove off. The car was seen a short time later on video footage at John Nolen Drive and East Wilson Street. A man who appeared to be Clendening got out and ran toward South Blair and East Wilson streets. A short time later, he was seen standing near a man police say was the driver of the Nissan used to pull down the Heg statue....
Getting the head back is important, but they are already spending $51,600 to recast it, and the plan is to have the statue reinstalled by "the middle of the year."
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