Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture by David Hajdu

Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture Reviews

• 
  Alan

  An eclectic and interesting collection of essays and book reviews primarily focusing on music (from rap to classical to pop to jazz). At times the essays seemed a little dated (MySpace!) but the writing steered clear of a lot of pomposity that many music critics seem to love. Instead it was insightful and engaging and most importantly, entertaining.
• 
  Travis Todd

  NOTES FOR A REVIEW OF DAVID HAJDU'S "HEROES AND VILLAINS" :
  
  Hajdu notices that in the King Features animated Beatles TV show John Lennon is voiced with an upper class English accent. And proceeds to make interesting observations about class in the U.K., and how U.S. residents tended to see all U.K. residents as culturally superior to themselves. What other critic has noticed this? All good criticism is a heightened paying of attention.
  
  Excellent cultural criticism illuminates its subjects in ways not just unsurprising but unavailable to other minds until so illuminated; then the new way to think about something is afterward a permanent feature of what makes these subjects fascinating; we owe a debt.
  
  It's very irritating at first and sometimes remains so when another mind makes us aware of the mediocrity of something we love, or think we love; we naturally resent the challenge to grow up and to adjust our self-conception; all human impulses at bottom are infantile ones.
  
  "Indifference to the art is a profound act of hostility to the artist." - David Hajdu
  
  Intelligently noting the subtle imperviousness to criticism of Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs."
  
  I have to force myself to push through my resistance to ever again read anything about any of The Beatles in order to get to surprising ways of thinking about the world, via another person's careful thinking. I love much of their music, but thinking about The Beatles produces an unpleasant sensation of fullness. Enough, already.
  
  At one point Hajdu observes that a song is catchy rather than memorable and I wonder what the difference is. Is catchy a necessary but insufficient condition for memorability? But music can be memorable without being catchy, so fuck it, they're different. But they can overlap. WHO GIVES A SHIT.
  
  I still don't quite get the phenomenon of completely losing your shit over a performer, like some teenage girls of the era at Beatles concerts. It makes me feel contemptuous, and then I feel guilty about feeling this way. Were there girls at the back, arms folded, snapping gum, unimpressed?
  
  That smug feeling of, "I don't like Sting, either." Don't trust it.
  
  The only consistently irritating stylistic tic of Hajdu's I can find is his over-reliance on "veracity" as a descriptor.I know that almost all the pieces in the book were published separately in magazines but still.
  
  Is is somewhat cruel for Hajdu to use one of Joni Mitchell's most famous lyrics as a means to describe her diminished artistic power? Can criticism be free of aggression toward its subject? Do critics have moral responsibility toward their subjects?
  
  ESSAY TOPIC: ON ASSIGNING STARS TO COMPLETED ARTISTIC WORKS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Dave-O

  This book falls apart after the jazz chapters. I enjoy Hadju's passion for jazz and folk music, but I'm not interested in his snide, obvious commentary on the Starbucks record label or American Idol. Even essays that I thought would interest me like ones on the White Stripes and Phillip Glass are too snarky and peppered with already outdated references. Anyway, if American culture and music fell apart after Dylan and folk, isn't it aging yuppies like him that allowed that to happen?
• 
  Allison

  Hajdu's writing is easily smart and readable, but introduces figures across the contemporary culture scene that might have gone unnoticed by major pop culture outlets. It's a collection that goes all over and I'm excited to check out more of the people and works that Hajdu writes about. Some of the works are a little stale as biographical profiles morph into reviews, but on the whole its a great read.
• 
  David

  A real disappointment when considering the author's ample talents as a writer. Not much here to grab my attention, some of which can probably be explained by a difference in generation. No, that's not even it. Even the section making fun of Sting fell a little flat.
• 
  Jonathan

  Music critic for the New Republic, David Hajdu writes knowledgeably, incisively and wittily across a range of topics, from the history of the blues to the state of contemporary jazz, from Mos Def's interpretation of the American Songbook to Sting "the lutenist".
• 
  Tuck

  great essays on music. im not that interested in the movies and such, but still nice. mostly from new republic mag? i think.
• 
  Colin

  I enjoyed some of these essays, but for the most part David Hajdu's writing feels like a form letter, mostly repetitive from essay to essay and predictable.
• 
  Monica

  The essays on jazz performers make the book especially worth reading.
• 
  ACRL

  Read by ACRL Member of the Week Timothy Hackman. Learn more about Timothy on the
  ACRL Insider blog.
• 
  Rachel

  LONG. DENSE. Still glad i did it.
• 
  Will

  formulaic as heck, but it's a solid formula. the essays on Starbucks, Billy Eckstine and Woody Guthrie were particularly good.