... When We Talk About Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. News, events and links to reviews and interviews. Discussion welcome! Buy the book!
In the spring of 2014, a new expanded edition of the book,Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste, was issued by Bloomsbury, with a new afterword by Carl Wilson and 13 essays by other writers. Here is some of the press coverage for the new edition.
Older things I hadn't gotten around to putting up
Nick Hornby reviews LTAL in his column for The Believer, reprinted in his book More Baths Less Talking and excerpted here on the McSweenys website. (Feb, 2011)
"Let's Talk About Taste": Philip Nel discusses LTAL on his blog, "Nine Kinds of Pie." (June 22/12)
A review from the Literary Omnivore website. (Oct, 2013)
All the reviews, interviews and other media I know of about Let's Talk About Love, to be updated regular-like. I'm quoting some of the "blurb"-ish things that can be pulled from them, but there are more substantial discussions amid them. (New additions starred.)
2008 Year End Number 4 in Top 10 Books of the year in New York Magazine, in between Richard Price and Roberto Bolano(!). (Dec 7/08: "a slim masterpiece of stunt criticism") Among the "Globe 100" books of the year. (Nov 29/08: "a wide-ranging book predicated on the possibility that what repels us may say more about us than what attracts us") The UK Telegraph calls LTAL "the year's most essential book on music." (Dec 2/08) * Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times, "on pop music in 2008" (Dec 18, 2008: "Lavinia Greenlaw, The Importance of Music to Girls, and Carl Wilson, Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste: The year's two outstanding music books.") * No. 25 in Idolator's 80 of '08 (Dec 23/08: "He doesn't simply hold Dion up to the light — among many things, he also holds up the mass audience, the idea of schmaltz (that chapter alone ought to be required reading for anyone who purports to write criticism, of pop music or anything else), and the effect of set and setting on an artist's works.") * KEXP best music books of the year (Dec 30/08: "Wilson’s ... may be my favorite book of the year, period, in its cold-stare reckoning of how we judge others by what they (and we) enjoy.") * Onion AV Club, "Our favorite books of 2008" ("Carl Wilson’s startlingly good entry in the 33 1/3 music-book series surveys the work of Celine Dion and functions as an uncommonly honest, unerringly rigorous inquisition into the vagaries of 'taste,' and how they manifest in ways we seldom acknowledge.") * Papermag, "Who's Reading What? The Best of 2008" (Jan 5/09: "When I was three pages in, I decided I had a crush on this book. Now, I just want to marry it.") * Eye Weekly's top authors of 2008 pick their faves (Dec 17/08)
Reviews New York magazine, Dec 17/07 ("this book goes very deeply right") The New Yorker's Alex Ross recommends LTAL to the National Book Critics' Circle, Feb 14/08 ("I finished the book with the feeling that the mystery of music had deepened just a little more") Bookforum (Feb/Mar 2008 issue; "an important study — not just of Dion and pop music but also of the changing nature of criticism in the popular realm") The Telegraph (UK) ("intelligent and often moving") Montreal Gazette ("rigorous, perceptive and very funny") * Miami New Times, Randall Roberts, Jan. 14 2009 ("In terms of staring into the belly of the beast and finding peace and joy within - or at least tolerant understanding -- this book stands alongside such classic aesthetic/cultural examinations as Dave Hickey's treatise Liberace: A Rhinestone as Big as the Ritz, and David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. A perfect little book about a 'perfect' singer.") Flavorpill NYC (Alex Abramovich, Jan 22/08: "Despite the abundant preconceptions surrounding Wilson’s ostensible subject (or, perhaps, because of them), the results are subtle, and startling enough to give the most jaded of readers pause.") Heather Mallick for CBC.ca (Feb 25/08; scroll to end of column) ("Wilson has written an elegant, informed, witty essay ostensibly about the awfulness of Dion but in fact about snobbery, inconspicuous consumption, subversion, schmaltz, the power ballad, coolness, the globalization of pop music and the skinny woman herself. ... Music criticism is often just guy-world. Wilson's the real thing. I can't praise this small book enough. Smart, but humane") The Glasgow Herald, "The Titanic Struggle Between Love and Hate" (Keith Bruce, Sat March 8/08, review not online) ("Wilson packs an enormous amount into what is one of the longer books in the series... Clever and witty, it almost made me seek out the album. But not quite.") * Expressen (one of Sweden's largest newspapers) (Magnus Haglund, April 30/08: "Det är detta som gör Carl Wilsons studie epokgörande, förmågan att avläsa en samhällelig komplexitet genom att sätta den egna ambivalensen på spel.") Portland Phoenix (Christopher Gray, March 19/08) (as well as the Phoenix blog) ("it makes a convincing (and, to my mind, pretty harrowing) argument") Douglas Wolk/Savage Critic.com ("excellent book") The Globe and Mail ("insightful, engaging and unexpectedly moving" - spoiler alert here: the review quotes a few crucial passages that you might prefer to read in context) * St. Petersburg Times (Dec. 7, 2008: "a great idea for an extended riff on pop culture") Exclaim! (Cross-Canada music monthly) ("Balancing theoretical analysis with deeply personal asides and entertaining colloquial anecdotes") Eye Weekly (Toronto) ("the work of a cultural warrior gone soft") Denver Post (reprinted in the Providence Journal and the Hudson Valley Times Herald Record) ("razor-sharp and unerringly intelligent") Amanda Stern ("a truly thoughtful, engaging and surprisingly funny book") Conscientious (Jorg Colberg) ("very well written and full of surprises") (later ran a giveaway of the book as a contest) The Uncut blog (UK) (John Mulvey, March 7/08) ("constantly interesting and thought-provoking... a sophisticated polemic") Hipster Book Club ("one of the most interesting and erudite books on why people love and hate certain kinds of art") Zigzigger ("Wilson is a critic in the best sense") Bohemian.com ("digs up all kinds of fascinating issues about the nature of taste and the hierarchy of pop culture") Erasing Clouds ("an illustration of the best side of music criticism") Moot Point (Feb 6/08: "I’m really thrilled to report that the book ... lived up to the hype") The Moviegoer ("I'll never look at Céline the same way again") Bricolage ("This may be my favorite book ever written about music, at least one of my favorites. Carl Wilson manages to drop Fanon and Kant all over the place and not be remotely pretentious") Christopher Pratt ("You owe it to yourself to pick up a copy if you're at all interested in aesthetics, culture, taste, or music. This is the best book I've read in months.") * Jacob Wren on Lemonhound (Feb 13/09: "[What] struck me most upon re-reading the book (in order to write this text) was how deeply moving I often found it.")
Interviews (text) The Montreal Gazette (T'Cha Dunleavy, Aug. 8/08) The Onion AV Club (Steven Hyden, March 6/08) Fab Magazine, Canada, #354, Sept, 2008 (Scott Dagostino, in a piece called "Drama Queen?" speaks to Carl Wilson and others about Celine Dion, and calls Wilson's book "a brilliant, often hilarious takedown of Dion and her music") Las Vegas Review Journal (Mike Weatherford, Dec. 16/07) Crawdaddy (Feb 6-12 issue, "Tastes Are Composed of a Thousand Misunderstandings" by Jake Swearingen) (extensively commented on by The Music of Unemployment, Feb 16) Washington Post "Express" (Feb 12/08) ("... its principal points are consistently thought provoking while they simultaneously make some of contemporary pop music's gatekeepers seem like sourpusses") * Birmingham News ("Syrupy music hard to swallow but critic learned to like Celine Dion," Jan 9, 2009) Exclaim! The Tyee * The Brantford Expositor (Wilson's hometown paper; March 27/09) Elle Magazine (While the book was still in progress, July/07, "Celine Dion... Rocks!"; not online)
Welcome to This Is What We Talk About, a new page to keep track of reviews, media and readings for "Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste," by Carl Wilson (aka Zoilus, aka me) part of the 33 1/3 series of books on albums. This is just the traditional "testing, testing" inaugural post. Substance to follow.
... When We Talk About Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. News, events and links to reviews and interviews. Discussion welcome! Buy the book!
is a freelance writer based in Toronto, Canada, the music critic for Slate.com and author of Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste (Bloomsbury, new & expanded edition 2014).
