Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care by John H. McWhorter ISBN: 1-59240-016-7 Publisher: Gotham Books Pub. Date: 09 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2 (6 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Who is the real Martian?
Comment: When I first read about this book, in an article in the International Herald Tribune, I was very pleased that someone was finally addressing the issue of degradation of language. From the title, there was even a hint at humour, which made it that much more appealing.
Having started to read the book, however, (I confess that I have not yet finished it) I find myself very puzzled by both style and contents. Professor McWhorter clearly doesn't, like, care... I am, as appears to be the case with other readers, taken aback by the author's obvious disregard for the language he is writing about.
There are frequent references to what "Martians" might think in this book, but on reading a sentence such as "Among the expectations that modern American undergraduates have of what their college education will yield, greater facility in speaking English is not one of them."(page 34), I began to wonder whether the book was not in fact written by a Martian who learned English using a computer translation system and then "invaded" Professor McWhorter's body to try his hand at the game.
My advice to anyone wanting a good read on the subject of the degradation of English would be to pick up instead a copy of Lynne Truss' current UK bestseller "East, Shoots & Leaves." It's short, witty, to the point and, above all, well written!
Rating: 1
Summary: Rambling indignation masquerading as thoughtful analysis.
Comment: (Since I have limited review space, I'll talk only about the part of this book that deals with music. As the title suggests, it's a very important part, and I personally think that the problems with it say a lot about the book as a whole.)
McWhorter's main theme, in this part of the book, is that music, as an art form, was greatly trivialized and degraded by the big, bad, evil sixties counterculture. Yet, for some reason, he brings up musical theatre, talks about how some musicals were still somewhat true to the old ideal of music, then suddenly asserts that even the best of them were only "minor" accomplishments. This has no bearing on the evil counterculture or the music that it spawned; if anything, it contradicts McWhorter's point by implying that the decline of music began long before the sixties. McWhorter goes on these digressions all the time, and the more aimless they are, the more he seems to think that they strengthen his main point.
Another such digression is McWhorter's idea that post-sixties music is above all driven by the desire of white people to emulate black people. I don't think this says anything about the quality of that music, even if it's true, but McWhorter thinks it's really important. In support of this idea, he gives the following evidence: a) rock stars such as Mick Jagger affect a Southern accent, despite not being from the South, and b) the song "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" implies that a "white boy" is unsuccessful at emulating the "black" concept of being "funky," and thus fails to attain the ideal of rock music. One might ask why this ideal would be so important in England, the homeland of many classic rock bands, or in Russia, Japan, Finland, or any other country where rock bands exist. McWhorter doesn't, though. Instead, he rambles about songs sung by black slaves in the nineteenth century. The conclusion? The evil sixties counterculture destroyed music!
In reality, the evil counterculture's musical ideas had numerous precedents. For instance, the musical aspect of the notion of "doing one's own thing," which McWhorter ridicules so much in this screed, might be seen as having risen out of the emphasis placed by jazz music on improvisation and "free-form" playing. As for imitating black people, the tiny grain of truth in that claim can be traced back to nineteenth-century European artists' fascination with African art and the self-styled "primitivist" movements that resulted from it. But McWhorter doesn't raise his mighty fist against Coltrane or Picasso; instead, he chooses to present the evil sixties counterculture as some kind of sudden, extreme turning point that single-handedly destroyed music (including jazz). What's funny is that, when jazz was on the rise, it was subjected to these exact same arguments from music critics of the time. Now, it has become an important musical genre, and nowadays one can listen to it in big concert halls as if it were classical music.
As for how the evil counterculture destroyed music: according to McWhorter, rock and roll shifted the focus of music from skilled songwriting to "the way one sings." That is, McWhorter claims that in today's music, an aura of "genuineness" surrounding a singer is more important than the quality of a singer's voice or songwriting. Naturally, he completely ignores the fact that a rock singer's role is by no means just that of singer and musician, but that of actor, storyteller, and commentator as well. This is not a new phenomenon, either: opera singers, for instance, are not only singers but also actors, and since they spend their time onstage singing, they have to "act" with their voices. Why it is so egregious that modern singers place a heavy emphasis on this exact same thing, I'll never know. Additionally, many renowned singers in history, prior to the evil sixties counterculture, wrote none of the songs they sang, and weren't expected to write them. If anything, the rock era brought a new emphasis on singers also being songwriters instead of downplaying it. But that's not all: in support of his dubious thesis, McWhorter claims that Bob Dylan and Tom Waits are well known solely because of this aura of "genuineness" that they have, and not for their songwriting or singing. While it's true that neither Dylan nor Waits has a very good voice, anyone can go to allmusic.com and see that both of them are in fact praised for their songwriting (e.g. "...The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan...firmly established Dylan as an unparalleled songwriter..."), and that Waits's post-1983 albums are all noted for their original musical ideas. Their aura of "genuineness," in contrast, is discussed very little, meaning that McWhorter has no idea what he's talking about, and fails to honestly talk about the songwriting of either Dylan or Waits.
In fact, for a book that's supposed to prove the "decline" of music, this one shows very little familiarity with the music in question. McWhorter has a lot of contempt for rap, for example, but he appears to know of practically no rappers aside from Eminem. I don't know much about rap, either, but that's precisely why I'm not qualified to issue blanket condemnations of it. Also, McWhorter appears to be completely ignorant of electronica, and even his rock knowledge doesn't go beyond a few of rock's most well-known figures. He tends to get things wrong when talking about them, too, like with Dylan and Waits. Nowhere does he approach the level of familiarity with his subject that would be necessary to even begin to analyze it. Of course, one can't really expect an honest, in-depth discussion from a 280-page, sparsely printed pamphlet that claims to demolish modern music, and rhetoric, and literature, and everything else, and neatly pin the blame on the evil sixties counterculture in the process. As far as its discussion of music goes, at least, this book delivers only hot air.
Rating: 2
Summary: Yes, but. . .
Comment: I was disappointed in this book. Several times while reading it I was tempted to toss it aside and pick up something more worthwile, but I plodded through it to the end.
The author, a linguist, has an admitted distaste for "traditional" rules of grammer. (Which explains why he butchers grammer throughout the book.) He decrys the degradation of literature (and music), but at the same time his own writing style is casually-styled (he even admits this at the end) and even vulgar throughout. On top of this, there are numerous places in which he misuses words (e.g., "anymore" instead of "any more" on p. 115).
From another author on another topic, errors like that would be overlooked. But, for a LINGUIST writing a book lamenting over the degradation of language???
In the end, I had to give him two stars, simply because I agree with the premise of his book. I just wish it had been better written. It's not one I can recommend to other readers.
 |
Title: The Power of Babel : A Natural History of Language by John McWhorter ISBN: 006052085X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn by Diane Ravitch ISBN: 0375414827 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 15 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
 |
Title: Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority by John H. McWhorter ISBN: 1592400019 Publisher: Gotham Books Pub. Date: 27 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
 |
Title: Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America by John McWhorter ISBN: 0060935936 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0198607024 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
