Book Review of Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson
Carl Wilson is an assured intellect, he displays a rich history of music to give context to his critique of Celine Dion, and I agree with his thesis, that taste, or a lack thereof, in both the artist and the consumer of art, reveals one’s moral essence, and that we can make a judgment about the superior or inferior moral character of someone based on artistic taste. I further agree with Carl Wilson that Celine Dion is a paper diva, a chafing personality, and a priestess of schmaltz.
But I cannot recommend Carl Wilson’s book because his meditation on taste is heavy-handed, weighed down by academic jargon, meandering, unfocused. Worse, the whole enterprise strikes me as masochistic.
Why would a supreme intellect like Carl Wilson want to
fixate on the obvious, that Celion Dion and the art she represents is soulless
fakery and that he has the right to assert standards that separate Celine
Dion’s charlatanism with artistic authenticity? A focused essay, say 15 pages,
would have done justice to this topic, but this padded, wandering, long-winded
book becomes tedious, and rather quickly.
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