Blogs I'd Like To See #3

[thomascolthurst]

 Highbrow/lowbrow.  As the name suggests, the posts on this blog would strictly alternate between high and low culture.  Example sequence:

• John Adams is a modern day Bernstein, an ultimately minor composer wildly overrated simply by virtue of being the best among Americans. Besides On the Transmigration of Souls, what works of his will be listened to fifty years hence?  And don't say Nixon in China -- Donal Henahan got it right when he reviewed that work, saying "Mr. Adams does for the arpeggio what McDonald's did for the hamburger."
• Sometimes after a good #2, I like to sing, "Poop!  There it is!  Poop!  There it is!"
• When one thinks of Susan Sontag, "philistine" is perhaps the last word that comes to mind, but consider this:  when she and Black Swan author Nassim Taleb met at a BBC studio, Sontag initially was interested in talking to Taleb up to the moment she discovered that he worked as a market trader, at which point Taleb reports that "She turned her back to me as I was in mid-sentence."  It is hard to reconcile that sort of close-mindedness with the roving intellect behind Against Interpretation, but I suppose we all contain multitudes.
• [embedded youtube video showing a toddler pushing over two cats]

Comments

[megmuck.livejournal.com]

But does the toddler sing "Poop, there it is?"

And is the post about Susan Sontag really highbrow, or does it merely refer to highbrow celebrities? Highbrow, lowbrow, celebrity gossip might be a nice combo.

[(Anonymous)]

1) No.

2) It is a fair point. I guess I take the view that "highbrow" refers both to things that are intrinsically highbrow, and to things that are associatively highbrow, such as gossip about highbrow celebrities. For example, I think of Plutarch's Lives as decently highbrow, and an awful lot of that is "charming anecdote and incidental triviality", as Wikipedia so nicely puts it.