There have been many more books written about music, its effects, its performers, its history, than the culture at large might be readily aware. Musicians may be the most culturally significant artists in our society. Actors provide powerful but ultimately fleeting performances, and it’s often the character portrayed or the script or the direction that makes an actor’s career worthwhile. Regardless of their effectiveness, even the best actors are of their moment. No one, save perhaps a film critic, is going to be your friend just because you love or hate Marlon Brando or Dustin Hoffman.
Visual artists not in a film medium, meanwhile, have struggled over the last century to maintain relevance. One can still be moved by a great painting, and the knowledgeable can still study it to within an inch of its life, but the masses, those lowest of the low common denominators, will be largely unfazed.
That leaves musicians and writers. Musicians are an insipid bunch, often rude or self-centered, and yet we the people adore musicians, throw ourselves at their feet, scream at the very thought of meeting them. We hang their pictures on our walls, we can define our lives by their works. There may be no more moving force in the world of art than a song. Writers are a similarly unseemly type, and their works can be equally moving; consider the number of young folks who’ve torn off into the wilderness after reading Walden or who’ve found their voice after Catcher in the Rye.
But, particularly in today’s society, where literacy means the ability to bounce from blog to blog and type your friends’ names in Facebook and read People magazine, writers don’t have the power they once did. For those willing to give them the time, books and poems are every bit as insightful now as they were a hundred years ago.
For this reason, and just because we thought it would be fun, we’ve decided to launch The AudioSuede Book Club. Now, it’s not a real book club, per se. We won’t be reading the books and discussing them as a group (unless you want to; feel free to leave comments with your thoughts on the books we select!). It’s really more like a series of reviews/essays on books which we think exemplify the written word while focusing on that golden art form, music. Consider it an education, a glimpse into the deep, beautiful see of music-related books.
If you have any suggestions of books you’d like us to feature, send Christian an email: christianhagen@live.com , or leave a comment.
The first entry is on Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live.
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