Sunday, July 26, 2009
Around Town / Media / Phillips Local Man Writes Book about Local Art Form
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 2:55 PM
After all, unlike anyone else in town, I read Barry Mazor's new book about Jimmie Rodgers and I interviewed him about it over at Tiny Cat Pants (which you can read here and here).
So, obviously, I really dug Meeting Jimmie Rodgers: How America's Original Roots Music Hero Changed the Pop Sounds of a Century. And let me be up-front. Mazor is a friend of mine, so I'm biased. But this is a really interesting book.
And I think it should change how folks write about music, because, after this, I don't think it will be enough just to write about an artist; you'll have to deeply consider how that artist's work spread and the ways it influenced others
So, if you write about music, you should read this book. If you are a fan of American music, you should read this book.
But here's what causes me angst, folks.
How is it that you're supposed to hear about a book like this?
I looked at The Tennessean's website, the Scene's website, CMT.com, and I don't see anything about the book from someone who read it. And this isn't unusual. If you know anyone who works in the book publishing industry, they can tell you all about all the places that don't do a proper book review any more.
And I'm a blogger, so you know, I'm speaking as the "new journalist" of the impending idiocracy. But we're losing something here--the ability to tell ourselves as a community what cool stuff the members of our community are up to that bear directly on an art form our community is synonymous with.
Maybe after it all shakes out and someone figures out how to make money online, we'll start telling ourselves about ourselves, community-wide again. I mean, obviously, as a blogger, that's my hope--that the move online will not be the death of the newspaper, but just a change in form. I certainly don't want the follow-up to "Murder on Music Row" to be about how the likes of me killed the newspaper.
But I worry.
Comments (2)
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Thoughtful and apt words as usual, B. I share your concerns. But it's worth remembering that the decline of local book coverage had already been going on for a generation when our industry plunged into its current crisis.
In the 1920s bound volumes of the Tennessean that I peruse in my garage when I have time to go into extreme-history-nerd mode, the level of talent and sophistication devoted to the book page is astonishing. The paper got Donald Davidson to run the page -- the young Davidson, not the sad old racist of the 1950s/60s. He seems to have been able to draw on an entire cadre of public intellectuals with diverse reading interests who turned out up to a dozen reviews a week.
As late as 1987, Tennessean book editor Bob Wyatt still had his own desk in the old newsroom. He still had high standards, too: I stopped by to pitch myself as a reviewer while trying to build a portfolio of freelance clips soon after college, but as I recall he had enough solid reviewing talent to be able to turn away an enthusiastic newbie.
The Sunday book section had already shrunken much in size and quality by the time I joined the paper's staff in 1993. I remember pitching the idea of a business book column to Frank Sutherland and getting a blank stare for my troubles. Whatever the book page had done for the paper in the past, it didn't do anymore.
I might note, too, that the Scene had a robust book section through much of its early history after 1989. I'm not sure when that went away.
The decline of literary coverage locally coincided roughly with the end of the era of independent bookselling. Nashville's great bookstores of the 20th century, Mills and Zibart, died out in the '80s and '90s. Davis-Kidd became part of a chain in the '90s. I suspect that local book advertising sank along with local bookselling.
Turning out a proper book review takes time and serious effort. I wish there were a news entity in town willing to pay people to put in that time and energy -- or enough psychic wages available to draw out today's generation of public intellectuals for a common effort at local literary discourse.
I hold out little hope about the commercial prospects of any such venture, and I personally have little time to take on free writing projects, but I would certainly support that effort as much as I could.
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Tom, I want to respond thoughtfully to your comment, but I am almost paralyzed with nerd-girl delight at the thought of a garage full of bound editions of the Tennessean. I can't think coherently about anything else except how awesome the crinkle of that old paper as you flip it over must sound.
I will say this, though. It seems to me, the more I have the great fortune of talking to people who know more than me (and let's be clear that that is an enormous pool of people, just now more of them give me the time of day), the more it seems obvious that it's not like the internet sprang up and ruined all media, but that it has just exacerbated and brought out in the open a lot of problems that were already present.
