In her weekly dissection of the Times Book Review, Intern Alexis discovers midwestern commoners on the Letters page! And they're talking about pachyderm poo! No doubt crippled by the overwhelming sense of shame and guilt that comes from reading about elephant dung, Alexis cleans her conscience the only way she can: With a dab of Henry James and a dash of Bach. After the beloved jump, her highbrow review.

Letters

We re the biggest proponents of plebeians on the letters page, but sometimes when you let the little man play with the big boys, things like this happen. John Minkoff of Evanson, Illinois has a problem with Barry Gewen s review of Arthur C. Danto s Unnatural Wonders. He writes: When Gewen describes artists who throw elephant dung on his paintings, he presumably alludes to Chris Offili, who includes large orbs of elephant dung in his paintings. Minkoff argues that, There is no throwing of dung here. The carefully placed dung contrasts powerfully with the paintings glossy, jeweled surfaces. And goes on to say that Anybody who has ever seen one of these paintings knows that the dung is not carelessly thrown by any means.

OMG, dung is so totally the new bullshit!


The Rebel Establishment: The Official Outlaw Bible of American Literature
 Edited by Alan Kaufman, Neil Ortenberg and Barney Rosset
 Reviewed by David Gates

In this week s Up Front column, the haus that Tanen built warns us that Gates s review is a doozy. Describing the outlaws and whether or not they are really outlaws, Gates said in a telephone interview, The whole thing makes my head hurt, and I guess my piece is an attempt to make readers heads hurt too.

And our heads certainly did hurt trying to plow through Gates blatherings. We agree with Gates main point that attempting to classify authors as rebels is ultimately problematic and that such qualification is often completely subjective (as is most literary-ish theory semiotics and post structuralism, my bum). But with multiple choice tests left and right, parentheses and m-dashes everywhere, and meta meta statements all over the place (he opens a paragraph writing I m also tempted to make a really snarky transition here ), it was unclear to us whether Gates was making fun of these so-called rebels and their editors or whether Gates, himself, was somehow trying to push the envelope and perhaps secure himself a spot in The Official Outlaw Bible of American Literature Volume II. Doesn t he know that a second volume of the Outlaw Bible would establish it as a cultural institution and as any respectable outlaw knows, once you re an institution, you re done for. So many outlaws have been institutionalized: Pound, Plath, MK Olsen — it only serves to reason that among the great outlaws, Gates is next to go. Cirque Lodge, anyone?


Henry James?

Who is this Henry James fellow that the kids just can t stop talking about? He s mentioned not once, not twice, but three times in these here pages. First by David Gates: I can t sit still for James either who the hell can? but the editors ought to visit some creative writing classes: these days both Jamesian maundering and Vesuvian spewing get the red pencil.

Then by Sarah Kerr in her review of Kazuo Ishiguro s new novel: It s a mischievous scene, charged with both horror-flick suspense and a more complex menace that calls to mind late Henry James.

Finally, he s dropped like he s hot by Francine Prose when she writes that Elizabeth Peabody served as the model for the spirited, if unattractive, Miss Birdseye in Henry James s novel The Bostonians. Hm after being the subject of two new historical novels, that guy s got it boy written all over him.

OMG, Henry James is the new dung!


Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of the Enlightenment
 By James R. Gaines
 Reviewed by Edmund Morris

Morris spends a good deal of his review of James R. Gaines s new tome about the relationship between Joann Sebastian Bach and Frederick the Great discussing the fact that Freddie was actually a gay. It appears as if Morris fashions himself something of a bad standup comic, writing: In a later, more liberated age, Frederick might have been sympathetically known as Frederick the Gay. Snippity SNAP! But Morris saves the best for last, writing let us hope that, in some heavenly auditorium [Bach and Frederick] are twiddling away together at harpsichord and flute Okay, slow it down E-Mo. Twiddling? Flute imagery? Homos? We guess Morris is in fey heaven after writing about the cowboyest of boys, Teddy Roosevelt, and um some other sort of cowboy, that Gipper fellow, for so long. He s been saving up all those gaiballz jokes for a while now.