Even when his subjects are of little to no interest to me, it is clear that David Hajdu is an excellent critic of popular culture. The guy gets a lifetime pass from me for providing the definitive history of the witch hunt against comics in THE TEN-CENT PLAGUE, but his latest is nothing to scoff at, either, even if it’s a collection of previously published pieces.
But what pieces! HEROES AND VILLAINS: ESSAYS ON MUSIC, MOVIES, COMICS, AND CULTURE comes complete with nearly 40 articles, most of them culled from the pages of NEW REPUBLIC. Among its four subtitular subjects, the two holding most appeal to me — movies and comics — actually get an awfully short shrift, but hey, you win some, you lose some.
In the war of words, Hajdu wins. His essays are always — not often, but always — insightful, and penned with a verve that makes critical review transcend mere opinion and lifts it to a realm that approaches some sort of poetry. He may be the only guy who can open a piece on GHOST WORLD‘s Daniel Clowes by talking about Norah Jones, and have it actually make perfect sense.
Among these pages, MySpace is “a sexual mindfield,” while comics are cast as “the rock ‘n’ roll of literature.” Kanye West is “good, though not as good as he thinks. (No one is as good at anything as West believes he is at everything.)” The must-read is a savage skewering of Starbucks for the CDs they sell, calling them “conceived, produced, and marketed with such authoritarian rigor and with such a narrow conception of their listeners’ good that they represent nothing less than the return of state-sponsored music.”
Other highlights include a look at the musical maturation of Elvis Costello, a tribute to the genius of Will Eisner, and the consideration of Elmer Fudd’s sexuality. Any of these alone are nearly worth the purchase. —Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE TEN-CENT PLAGUE: THE GREAT COMIC-BOOK SCARE AND HOW IT CHANGED AMERICA by David Hajdu
Related posts:
- Syncopated: An Anthology of Nonfiction Picto-Essays
- Re-make/Re-model: Becoming Roxy Music
- Science Fiction America: Essays on SF Cinema
- The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
- Scary Movies
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Thanks for the kind words. I love this site, and I’m just saying that because you’ve said nice things about my books. DH