Here is a rather lengthy, but interesting, analysis of the loss of newspaper book reviews by the former editor of the LA Times Book Review, Steve Wasserman. His documented decline of not only the numbers of book reviews as well as the quality of those reviews is important because, as he says at the end of the piece, "[Readers] know in their bones something newspapers forget at their peril: that without books, indeed, without the news of such books—without literacy—the good society vanishes and barbarism triumphs."
Critics would call this a fairly socially conservative, somewhat reactionary thesis, one that lends itself to the worst forms of high art elitism. But Wasserman addresses this criticism by drawing a remarkable analogy, which, for me, was the biggest take-away of the piece. When he took the job at the LATimes, Wasserman had a clear goal in mind:
My greatest conceit was my intent to use my new post to answer a single question: Is serious criticism possible in a mass society? If it were possible in L.A., then it would be possible anywhere. I wanted the Book Review to cover books the way the paper’s excellent sports section covered the Dodgers and the Lakers: with a consummate respect for ordinary readers’ deep knowledge and obvious passion for the games and characters who played them. Analysis and coverage in the paper’s sports pages were usually sophisticated, full of nuance, replete with often near-Talmudic disputation, vivid description, and sharp, often intemperate, opinion. Its editors neither condescended nor pandered to those of the paper’s readers who didn’t happen to love sports. No, this was a section aimed directly at fans, and it presumed a thoroughgoing familiarity with the world of sports.
This passage struck me when I first read it, and, as I was watching SportsCenter this morning, I realized that he is absolutely right. In fact, I bet one could argue that sports analysis (not sports broadcasts in general) may be the most erudite mass discourse in America, complete with a technical vocabulary, complex analysis, and a general sophistication that demands attention. For someone like myself, whose understanding of most sports is fairly limited, really understanding sports analysis takes time and effort, eventually getting more comprehensible. In other words, digesting the relatively elitist sports commentaries becomes an education.
One could say the same thing for pop music fans. To be sure, I get irritated when I hear (again!) "You mean you've never heard of band X?" But I know from experience that it is only by hanging out with people who have heard of band X that I will become not only more knowledgeable about pop music, I will also learn to appreciate it more. If I only hung out with and talked to people as sports and music illiterate as myself, I'd miss out.
So perhaps "elitism" can be a more democratic thing than we think. Sophisticated analysis from people who have committed a large chunk of their waking lives to a particular practice, activity, or artform bleeds out into the rest of society. To be sure, there is always the risk of it becoming a ghetto, or a bizarre form of one-upmanship ("I'm more punk than you are!") But doesn't it mystify things like poetry and art to treat it any different from the commitment, and the care, that we give sports?
Speaking of sports, my fantasy football league starts today.
Posted by pjaussen at September 6, 2007 9:07 AMHow many indie rockers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
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You don't know? [turns, walks away, begrudged]
I like the post.
Posted by: andy at September 7, 2007 9:03 AMi believe the proper term is "indier-than-thou."
if sports is the new literature, then i'm off to read a book ...
Posted by: jeremy at September 11, 2007 6:37 PMOn the contrary, my friend: Literature is the new sports. Or can be. Authors need to start driving more pimped-out Escalades, perhaps.
Posted by: paul at September 12, 2007 8:43 AMPaul,
Just got caught up on your blog. Really enjoy the intellectual stimulation. So well written!!
Posted by: dad at September 13, 2007 8:09 AMPredictably, I'm going to quibble with the sports-music comparison, primarily because of the speculative culture crucial to sports as an economy. From my vantage, people in musicology and literary studies re-listen and re-read quite more often than sport enthusiasts, who tend to look forward (and often bet accordingly). It would be unproductive scholarship to place bets on an author's or artist's next move. All the while, the stats-loving sports fan invests invariably in prediction.
Plus, my bet is that you would be hard-pressed to compare the politics of a movement (such as punk or Dada) with the politics of sports. True, "You're not punk, and I'm telling everyone" (for example) doesn't get anyone anywhere; however, punk as a set of political practices certainly does. Consequently, I still maintain dissatisfaction with punk as merely a consumer category or even an identity.
Now, if you were to transfer such a move to the sports fan (who is a dedicated fan and who is not), then you might have something to consider. Still, I think that move would be limited by sports as a set of consumer practices (e.g., number of games attended, stats memorized, and the like), which tend to override (and subsume) any sort of sports politics (let alone a sports aesthetic). Appeals to expertise always have to be consider how expertise is acquired, sustained, and circulated.
Or am I off chart?
Thanks, Paul.
-j
J-
Brief replies, tho I can't quibble too much because you are taking up issues that move the topic in other (no less productive) territories.
First, in terms of rereading: ESPN classic? Crunchtime videos? The Stanford game used in ads constantly? The Immaculate Reception? Granted, these are not what immediately come to mind when we talk about "sports" as a practice, but I think they reflect the fact that sports is a historical practice, that is, that like poetry and music, it has a TRADITION. Which is what enables both analysis and the ability to assign value. And while it is unproductive scholarship to place bets on an artist's next move, sometimes the most productive scholarship can be the retrospective tracing of an arc in a given artistic career, period, development, etc. (I can't help but quote _High Fidelity_ here: "I can tell you how I got from Deep Purple to Howling Wolf in just 25 moves.")
I have no beef with your politics point--I largely agree. Tho one could make some very interesting observations about the political function of, say, international football. But politics wasn't exactly my concern.
As for the aesthetics of the thing: this is where I disagree the strongest. Games attended, like books read, can be a marker of two things: either they can be a symbol of status or they can be the path to recognizing a beautiful game (or novel or album) when you see one. To be sure, marketing and much of the rhetoric surround the game may privilege the first, but they do not eliminate the reality of the second. [I've not read it, but wanted to check out the recent book _In Praise of Athletic Beauty_]
In sum, I'm not trying to indiscriminately lump sports and art. Instead, I'm trying to use sports to de-mystify some of our prejudices about art.