From: "Zachary Steiner" <zsteiner@butler.edu> To: "'Zornlist'" <zorn-list@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Closing of the American Mind
A friend of mine (a guitarist who has forsaken rock for classical in the past year) has been telling me quite a bit about a book by Allan Bloom called The Closing of the American Mind, specifically the section pertaining to music. In this section he is very critical of rock music and pretty much any music that doesn't fit under the broad classical nomenclature, at least this is the impression that I get from my friend and some of the quotes he's used. I wanted some z-listers' opinions on this book and its views. I have not had the time to pick the book up, so I'm going on what my friend has told me. Is this book as hard lined as my friend is making it out to be, that Bloom has no tolerance for (or worse believes in the inherit evilness of) any non-classical music, especially rock? If so that's a very frustrating view to me as I know of a great many non-classical works that have enriched my life in a way many classical pieces have failed. Mozart is nice, but I can only listen for so long (the Requiem is another story, though).
I'll endorse most of what Herb said. This book came out in the late 80's and was one of the first volleys in what become the "culture wars" in American universities. Bloom was influenced heavily by classical political theorist Leo Strauss in Chicago. I don't find much of what Bloom says very interesting. It's a tendentious book prone to dumb caricatures like "the leftistization of Nietszche and vice versa" to describe the impact of French poststructuralism on humanities departments. Grad students found it an easy target for elementary deconstructive readings, like the title for instance. Bloom wasn't wrong in his criticism of the deteriorating, collective academic American "mind," but his assessment of causes was often rather convenient as well as elitist and self-serving. As a whole, the book hasn't had much longlasting value. He indeed has an argument about music, but it's nostalgic and I don't take it seriously. Unlike Marcin, I find Adorno far more interesting, especially his stuff on mass culture, though his comments on jazz are best ignored (we've been here before). NP: Ginger Baker, "East Timor", Going Back Home (just came back home myself from East Timor, a lovely country that I hope can survive). -- His face is turned towards the past. Where we preceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. --Walter Benjamin on the Angel of History You can always rely on America to do the right thing, once it has exhausted the alternatives. --Winston Churchill __________________________________________________________________ The NEW Netscape 7.0 browser is now available. Upgrade now! http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/