How about a little sex appeal when marketing classical musicians? “It’s useless to be shocked by such tactics, and the shock, by today’s standards, is pretty mild. You’d page right past these photographs in a fashion magazine ad without even pausing. Sex appeal has been propelling stars for a century — and, for that matter, classical stars for longer than that.”
Tag: 08.15.04
Are Today’s Novelists Undermining Fiction?
New Republic critic James Wood is famously harsh on contemporary post-modernist fiction: “Part of my anxiety and unease about novels by Foster Wallace, Franzen, and others is that they have swallowed a great deal of journalism, sociology, and cultural studies, which means they are no longer doing something that’s not replaceable that another medium can’t do as well or better. . . . I am accused of being too harsh, but the critic’s job is to look at the threats, the menaces to literature.”