Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City
Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City PAUL MORLEY University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA, 2005 368 pp.
“Ambitious” is a word that reviewers often employ to soften their criticism of a particular work, a euphemism, if you will, expressing appreciation for the scope of a project while conveying, at the same time, a sense of “buyer beware.” With this in mind, the first thing you should know about Paul Morley’s Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City is that this is a grandly ambitious book. And the second thing you should know is that the book’s parts–far-reaching, far-ranging, and just “far out”–are bigger than its sum.
Although Morley describes his work as a journey through the history of pop, this journey is more of a ride. A ride that is a trip. A ride that is a trip while tripping on LSD. A ride that is trip while tripping on LSD and listening to the longest CD ever recorded containing every pop song ever made or, at least, almost every pop song ever made. A ride that is a trip into the mind of a music critic’s who, seemingly tripping on LSD, insists on telling us what he thinks about almost every pop song ever made, no matter how obscure, as well as what he thinks about almost every pop artist who has ever made a pop song, no matter how obscure, while leading us through a house of mirrors with no way out.
If the above paragraph interests or intrigues you, then you will probably enjoy this ride. After all, Morley’s grandly ambitious book is packed full of similarly constructed passages with “anything goes” sentences that, meandering for dozens of lines, are filled with wonderfully opaque metaphors and internal word plays. On the other hand, if this style of writing bewilders or bores you, well, buyer beware. You are not likely to enjoy this ride. Then again, if you are anything like me, a person who loves pop and prose, you are likely to be torn between these two extremes–hating the conceits and excesses in Morley’s writing while, at the same time, recognizing that, when his writing “hits,” as it often does, it is thrilling to read.
As you digest this, there is one more thing you need to know about Morley’s book. Although it is filled with thousands of points about pop, some grand and many minuscule, the cumulative effect of all of these points is pretty pointless, which for Morley is precisely the point. Confused? Well, you should be. For Morley has purposefully designed his book (while pretending not to) as a postmodernist production, and if you are looking for coherence in postmodernism, then you are likely looking in the wrong place. Instead, think about Marcel Duchamp. Just as Duchamp spat in the face of modern convention by presenting a toilet bowl as anti-art art, Morley has produced an anti-narrative narrative. In it, anything and everything goes and nearly all of it, purporting to matter, doesn’t matter.
Of course, even an anti-narrative narrative needs to have some semblance of a narrative to string a reader along, no matter how deceitfully, and so here’s what masks as a plot in Words and Music. Kylie Minogue or, at least some android-replica of Kylie Minogue who does not realize that she isn’t real (this is, after all, a postmodernist pop universe in which the first law of “popdom” is that all celebrities are unreal) is driving toward a city, or at least some digital, Matrix-like, simulation of a city, with Paul Morley who, in the course of the ride, will engage in the following narrative activities: a) tell us in excruciatingly painful detail why he considers Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room and Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” to be his favorite two pieces of music; and b) why he, even more than Lester Bangs, is the greatest rock and roll writer who ever lived and, as such, deserves to write a book about Kylie Minogue even if that book turns out to be more about himself than Kylie Minogue.
Complicating this semblance of a narrative are hundreds of detours and digressions–pages and pages of endless chronologies and lists detailing historical milestones in pop, including every single cultural, scientific, and technological innovator and innovation that contributed, no matter how tangentially, to these milestones. These detours and digressions, in turn, not only buttress Morley’s anti-narrative narrative, but also ensure that his book defies all generic classifications. What exactly is it? A piece of fiction? A piece of science fiction? A biography? An autobiography? A reference book? A personal journal? A collection of Morley’s critical essays and reviews? Or a combination of all of the above?
The answer, of course, is “all of the above,” which is presented in a stream-of-consciousness style that reveals everything going on in Morley’s mind as he shifts back and forth between generic classifications, conveying all the ideological ambivalences he can muster up about every pop topic he presents–often presented in single sentences that run on, as well as occasionally “run off,” for hundreds of words. The amazing part is that Morley makes much, although not all, of this “work.” About two-thirds of Words and Music is absolutely mesmerizing: sort of like a profound, pop version of Waiting for Godot meets Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance meets Matrix. Unfortunately, however, about one-third of Words and Music is somewhat tedious and, even more unfortunately, the most tedious sections of the book come at the end.
After a terrific build-up in the middle sections Morley’s “third act,” that is, the last 100 pages of his 300-plus page book, fizzles out. Once Morley and Minogue finally arrive at the city that is not quite a city, there’s just nowhere left to go. Perhaps recognizing that he’s run out of ideas, Morley injects three long reviews of relatively obscure pop acts that he published decades ago, which, running for more than 50 pages, seem out-of-place, even for a postmodernist production. And then he presents a final chapter that is nearly all footnotes which one can, and probably will, skim or skip–squeezing in his remaining thoughts about all of the pop artists and groups that, till then, he left out of his history of pop.
So do I recommend this book? Overall, yes, but “buyer beware.” If you choose to purchase Words and Music, don’t try to make any linear or logical sense of it. Rather, you need to absorb it more like a collage, admiring the parts that you like, ignoring the parts you don’t, and, after taking everything in, figuring out for yourself what it all means or, at least, what you think it all means. While you are reading the book, recognize that Morley is a wordsmith and, playing with words, he’s playing with you. So if you are game, jump in the never-ending stream-of-consciousness and be prepared to be both tickled and ticked off by one of the most fascinating and frustrating books that you are likely to ever come across, written by someone who may or may not be the greatest rock and roll writer who ever lived.
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