The Literary Value of Taylor Swift's Teenage Love Trilogy

 This is another look at songwriting from a literary point of view, in the wake of Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize for literature a few years back, and this time around, a recent Taylor Swift trilogy, or song cycle, is under consideration.

One of the first things any writer of fiction has to decide upon is point of view, or POV as it is called. From whose perspective will the story be told and why?  Early novelists (and many since) tended to use an all-seeing narrator -- a sort of god-like figure, often unidentified -- who knows everything and tells readers what they need to know about every character and everything that happens and why.  This makes for a clear and often convincing tale and if one is reading simply for pleasure, one that is also very satisfying.

But it is far from what life is like -- what we don't know often overwhelms what we do, with any degree of certainty at least -- which brings me to Taylor Swifts songs "Cardigan," "August" and "Betty" from her recent "Folklore" album.  Nate Jones, of Vuture.com, has a good take on the trio, which you can read by clicking that link.

In this case, Swift employs three different POVs to take a look at what apparently happened with respect to a rather sappy teenage love triangle one summer, but a problem with what filmmakers would call "continuity" muddies the result -- a distinct minus from a literary point of view.

Taking the songs in the order in which they appear in the album, "Cardigan" is sung from the POV of Betty, a woman apparently now well out of her teens who seems to think of herself as left behind in the fashion of an old sweater, still comfortable but otherwise probably pretty drab after having been forgotten and left for some time under a bed. She's obsessing over her failed teenage romance with a boy called Jimmy who she believes was stupid to lose her as a result of a fling with another girl.  But did he?  We'll come back to that -- and this is where the problem of continuity may arise.

Moving backwards in time, "August," is the next song and the POV is that of an unnamed younger woman griping about the fact that Jimmy didn't really care for her when they had a summer romance, or more likely from Jimmy's POV, an extended hook up. Interestingly, she initiated what one might call the "situationship," picking Jimmy up off a street with a command to get in her car. She doesn't sound like much of a prize on that basis so perhaps Jimmy wasn't as dumb as he appears in the last song of the trio. When Jimmy calls it quits, she complains  "you were never mine" and mopes around waiting for a call that never comes. 

"Betty" is told from Jimmy's POV back when the incidents in question took place -- a breakup with Betty at a school dance when they were 17, his subsequent summer fling which Betty hears about from a friend or acquaintance named Inez and Jimmy's apparently unsuccessful attempt to get back together with Betty,

Jimmy first pleads innocence on the notion that people at 17 know nothing, but then goes on to blame everyone he can think of, including himself. He's clearly the sort of person for whom whatever happens, there is always some excuse (if he were to blame it was because he couldn't be expected at that age to know better).

Jimmy comes across as such a lightweight that Swift could be accused of misandry.

Now comes the continuity problem. In "Cardigan," Betty references events that took place in "downtown bars" and on the "High Line," a park in New York City. These seem distinctly unrelated to that high school dance at age 17 and Jimmy's summer romance that was clearly immediately thereafter in what appears to be a suburban setting.

In the Vulture review referenced above, Nate Jones (commendably in my view) mulls that one over and comes down in favor of artistic license -- as opposed to the possibility that Betty and Jimmy did get back together again after than problematic summer, only to discover as the years went by, the relationship still didn't work. Listeners can decide for themselves or, more likely, simply bathe in the musical moods of the three different songs. 

But the issue here is literature and that brings me back to POV.  Ms Swift gets good marks for deciding to zero in on an event from three different points of view -- a form of triangulation -- but at the end of the day, I don't think she made good use of the device. All three of the characters seem to be thinking almost entirely of themselves (what else is new?) and as a result, readers fail to gain much additional insight into what happened and why.

Thus, this falls short of Nobel Prize fodder.

I took a look at these songs because New York Times music critic Jon Caramanica listed "Betty" as one of the best pop songs of 2020. 

"Lost Yesterday" Has a Problem When it Comes to Literature

 Here's the second in a little series on looking at popular song lyrics as a form of literature.

"Lost Yesterday" by the Australian music project called "Tame Impala," listed as one of the 20 best pop tunes of 2020 by New York Times music critic Jon Pareles, is about the pluses and minus of nostalgia, a good literary topic on the face of it.

But the lyrics have something of a clanger in them, taking this song out of contention when it comes to any prizes along the lines of the one Bob Dylan famously received.

To wit:

And you're gonna have to let it go someday
You've been diggin' it up like Groundhog Day

Those lines rhyme, but that's about all one can say for them.  While literature is replete with similies -- figures of speech that compare one thing with another, generally so as to shed additional light on the first of the two, using the words "like" or "as" to point out the connection, Kevin Parker of "Tame Impala" hasn't got it anywhere near right with this one.

"diggin' it up like Groundhog Day" is presumably a shortened form of something akin to "diggin' it up like one does on Ground Day" or "diggin' it up like what happens on Groundhog Day" or something along those lines. No problem with the short form: I'll grant Mr. Parker some artistic license on that.

But, and this is a big but, Groundhog Day (capitalized) is a day recognized as such on Feb. 2 in the U.S. and Canada and it is not known for digging of any description.  Rather on that day, a groundhog emerges from a burrow where he or she has been sleeping through the winter -- a hole dug months earlier -- and looks around to see if he or she has cast a shadow.  If so, the animal traditionally concludes winter will last for another six weeks and retreats. If, on the other hand, the day is cloudy and there is no shadow, Spring will arrive soon.

As such, the lyrics don't work -- as literature at any rate.  But who knows, perhaps Mr. Pareles of the NYT  believes 2020 -- the first year of the pandemic -- was strange in so many ways that Mr. Parker somehow got it right. Count me out on that one. I vote for sending Mr. Parker  back to the drafting board.

"Johnny" More a Socio-Political Statement Than Literature

 Since Bob Dylan was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature, I suppose it behooves us to look more closely at the lyrics of songs.

At the end of last year, the New York Times identified "Johnny," by Sarah Jarosz as one of the best pop songs of 2020.  Ms Jarosz, to the accompaniment of "a luminous web of guitars and a mandolin sings with compassion about thwarted expectations."

Thwarted by whom or what?

Listeners are presented with a presumably elderly man sitting on a porch drinking what he thinks could be his last glass of red wine, reflecting upon what appears to be a disappointing life.

How could a boy from a little bay town
Grow up to be a man, fly the whole world round
Then end back up on the same damn ground he started

And later:

But you might not get what you pay for
You know that nothing’s for sure
And an open heart looks a lot like the wilderness

While this is perhaps all too emblematic of the lives of many Americans in recent decades as "the dream" has apparently faded, and particularly for those with less education, the lyrics are a little disappointing from a literary perspective. 

Johnny feels his life has come to nothing because, after touring the world, he is back where he started with little to show for it.  Who knows? For all too many people,  Ms Jarosz may have hit the nail on the head with that sentiment, and NYT music critic Jon Pareles seems to agree. Perhaps that helps to explain, among other things, the "Make America Great" phenomena and the Capitol Riot. 

From a literary perspective, this is too facile, however.  As a character, Johnny is uninteresting. He has failed to understand that the voyage is as important as the destination and even more importantly, that the idea of circularity can be critical to one's understanding of the world. While one might arrive back where one started, it is with different viewpoints as a result of experience.  This notion is critical to Dante's "Commedia," for instance.

Johnny is also characterized by the notion that life is something one purchases and "you might not get what you pay for." It doesn't require self-reflection, and lacking any sense of commitment, it's no wonder that for Johnny, "an open heart looks a lot like a wilderness." 

At the end of the day, this song works better as a socio-political statement than as literature. Ms Jarosz has simply taken the easy way out.

"Separation:" Where Readers Need to Fill In The Blanks

The latest New Yorker short story was written by a member of the magazine's staff and it's a piece where readers who find it of interest need to fill in a lot of blanks.

There is a genre of fiction known as the fragmented novel and "Separation," by Claire Sestanovich, might be viewed as a fragmented short story. It has that aspect, according to the writer in the usual New Yorker author interview, is because it's all about coherence, or the lack of it, in life. Things that are separated or don't connect well can be incoherent.

In "Separation," readers are told a few things about the chief protagonist -- a woman named Kate -- such as at the very beginning, that she had "unkempt" pubic hair after skinny dipping in a reservoir. Later, another not particularly interesting or surprising detail of her nether regions is revealed.  Other than that, one has no idea what she looks like, where she comes from, her family background, the state of her education, her religion or lack of same and so forth and so on. Well, one must keep one's character-development priorities straight.

The other main characters are also sketches at best. 

In addition, motivation is for the most part absent except, perhaps, when Kate has a month-long affair with a man whose large face is almost ugly. "But he was tall and tanned and his voice was so softly beautiful that Kate let herself assume it was full of the same grief as hers."

That's presumably the grief of losing a spouse (which he hasn't), but Kate apparently felt it unnecessary to make any inquires. Her concerns are about herself except perhaps with respect to her first marriage, which appears to have been as much about compassion as it was about love, given the sketchy depiction of her spouse. He has long-term eczema and is basically blind when not wearing huge glasses. The only other thing one finds about about him is that soon after marriage he comes down with a terminal condition of one sort or another and dies.

Kate experiences separation as a result: from just about everything because she responds to this development by leaving town -- as she does again later after separation from her ill-advised married lover -- an affair that appears, among other things, to have been a conflict of interest for a teacher whatever the man's marital status. Readers with children of their own might think that, but if so, they will have to fill in those blanks as well because that aspect of the affair is apparently of no concern to Ms Sestanovich,

While separation is an essential part of life -- Kate helps young children learn to cope with this when they first experience day care or school -- it can also be a source of incoherence, leading to a life that doesn't really make sense.

In due course, Kate meets a man in a bar, about whom readers are told almost nothing, and has what appears to be a conventional marriage -- outwardly. Inwardly, Kate can't get over the separation from her first husband and she tucks the remnants of that life into labeled boxes in the attic, hoping her daughter -- an only child from the second marriage -- will find them and presumably learn that her mother isn't who she thinks she is. Separation and incoherence, one might say.

That aspect of Kate seems again to suggest she is a modern woman -- probably a type Ms Sestanovich knows well and my even identify with: "It's all about me."

Even though Leah, Kate's daughter, doesn't find the box, she's clearly experienced a sense of separation from her mother through other means. There is an (unexplained, of course) incident involving blood and a cut and a bathtub and when it comes time for Leah to leave home, she moves all the way across the country for no identifiable reason. But when readers discover she's only interested in talking to her father on the phone, one can surmise why and fill in yet another blank.

As for style, once again, as has been the case with a number of recent New Yorker short stores, this piece is not particularly "writerly." That seems to have gone out of fashion. If Ms Sestanovich attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop or some other literary MFA-type program, it doesn't show. Here again, readers can fill in the blanks.

 

-----

 

A few years ago, I wrote a brief post on a related topic, since deleted.  It was the following:

 

"And anyhow, whether reading one or trying to compose one, novels are terrain for discontinuities, sometimes violent ones."

Rachel Kushner, author of "The Flamethrowers," explaining the nature of her home office in Los Angeles, a large, but cozy room that she says has lately become "porous to certain brutalities."

 

A Thought for Easter in the Age of Better Social Justice

 Handel's "Messiah" is usually performed during the Christmas season here in the U.S., but it is arguably more appropriate for Easter, and given increasing calls for better social justice in the era of soaring income inequality, BIPOC awareness and Black Lives Matter, I think it is worth pointing out one air, aria or song very near the beginning of the piece.

"Every Valley," generally sung by a tenor, goes as follows:

Ev'ry valley shall be exhalted,
 and every mountain and hill made low, 
the crooked straight, 
and the rough places plain.

That's it as far as the lyrics are concerned, but the piece actually lasts about three and a half minutes, with theme-and-variation musical repetition giving the singer ample opportunity to display his full range of vocal capabilities.

This, as one commentator put it, is "the change message."  The poor will be elevated and the rich brought down. Those who have not received justice will get it (the crooked made straight) and adequate medical care will be extended to all (the rough places made plain).

In other words, those lyrics, selected for Handel by Charles Jennens from the Biblical book of Isaiah, should be viewed as allegorical. Such is not unusual in Handel's English-language oratorios since it was at the time difficult to deal with prevailing political and social issues directly.

In my humble option, just as "We Shall Overcome" was the anthem of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, "Every Valley" should be the anthem of the present. Not only are the lyrics "spot on," the music is fabulous.

Here's one excellent rendition on YouTube. Listen in.

"Featherweight:" Good Title for the Latest New Yorker Story

"One Night Standards"

        By Ashley McBryde 

I ain't gonna stay for the weekend
I ain't gonna jump off the deep end
I ain't gonna ask where your ring is

Thing is, we all got secrets

You don't wanna hear about my last breakup
I don't wanna worry 'bout the space you take up
I don't even care if you're here when I wake up

It's just a room key
You ain't gotta lie to me
Can't you just use me like I'm using you?

And so forth and so on in the same vein.  The lyrics of this song, identified by The New York Times as one of the best songs of 2020 came to mind as I was reading a short story called "Featherweight" in the March 29, 2021 New Yorker.  It's by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, and concerns a young Native American man who has gone away to college.

Basically, it's an ode to hookup culture even when it arguably morphs into something that resembles a relationship, but not one that gets much further than sex, and even that turns out to be not what the young man in question thought it was. If you're interested, you can read the story for the details.

As we know, sex sells. It's sort of like the law of gravity: it never changes. Mr. HolyWhiteMountain clearly knows it and the New Yorker clearly sees no reason to resist. 

The story is written in the first person and the unnamed hero, having left his reservation, wants to "know what larger America is all about."  In his case, that means having sex with as many white girls as possible. Readers are told a couple of their names but little else about them other than that they are into power, hatred (not against him) and that "racist cowgirls give the best head."

Now let's turn to the usual New Yorker interview and see what Mr. HolyWhiteMountain has to say about this portion of his story:

"The white girls come to the table with their notions of what indians are, and what it means to be an indian, which don’t really speak to his experience at all, whereas he’s noticing things about them that they don’t know about themselves, things that indicate an unbridgeable gap. There’s a difference between assumptions that come from stereotypes and the kind of understanding that results from closely observed experience. The early situation in the story was a way for me to talk about how whiteness—which, and this is something we never talk about, is different from being white—functions. The most striking thing about people who really embody whiteness is that they see everything but themselves. Whereas people who aren’t coming from that space, usually people of color but not always, see themselves (because they’ve been objects of the white gaze for decades and centuries) and the peculiarities of whiteness at the same time. This blind spot is one of the reasons this country is such a mess right now; whiteness doesn’t get to function in an unimpeded manner anymore, and this process of coming to self-awareness is extremely painful, both for these people waking up to the values that underpin whiteness and for the rest of us, who have to experience their resistance to that awakening. I felt from the start that much of the support for Trump was about this: the promise of a return to a time when white people didn’t have to look at themselves, which means they could continue participating in the great American project of forgetting—the past, how the country was made, etc."

This strikes me a little like conceptual art:  you see a small heap of objects on the floor of an otherwise bare room that appears, well, like a small heap of objects. Staring at it for some time doesn't change much.  Then you notice that on one wall, usually in small print, the piece of art is identified and underneath, is a lengthy explanation of the work by the artist. There you learn it is all about, say, colonialism, slavery, racism, exploitation, police brutality, etc. etc. 

This is called conceptual art and one can, I suppose, view Mr. HolyWhiteMountain's story in that context. There is the text and then there is what he says it is supposed to be all about. 

Mr. HolyWhiteMountain's notion that people who embody "whiteness" (see Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me" for the best explanation of this) don't see themselves while others do is an interesting notion worth exploring beyond just a concept. Why doesn't Mr. HolyWhiteMountain, who in the interview says he is working on a couple of novels, actually do so? As opposed to maintaining that a bunch of undescribed tawdry hookups comporting with "One Night Standards" somehow illuminates it.

Well, if it weren't for all the sex, would readers bail out on this piece?

Finally tiring of white girl hookups,  the story goes on to what the narrator describes as his first love, a native American girl, but of a different tribe than his. What readers learn about that is, surprise, surprise, their sex life -- and how a French woman studying abroad is forced to listen in. Our hero views the French girl in much the same fashion he imagines people of "whiteness" view others. "She was an endless entertainment to me."

While the narrator of "Featherweight" has little in his mind throughout the story beyond his next sex act, his girlfriend appears at least somewhat more substantial if in only as a trope. She's interested in social justice issues when not locked in the bathroom by herself smoking dope. 

In the end things don't work out leaving the protagonist wishing that, if only for a moment, he could be a classic (white American) "dreamer" living in suburbia (see again the aforementioned "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi-Coates).

Mr. HolyWhiteMountain is, by the way, currently a lecturer at Stanford University.  Sounds like something a "dreamer" might like to be.

One Way In Which to Justify a Happy Ending in Fiction

 Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd" is a comedic novel, which means it has a happy ending.  That's as opposed to a tragic novel, which doesn't.

When it comes to Hollywood movies, just about any excuse will do, since the public by and large doesn't like films that end as "downers."  That was traditionally true of Broadway musicals as well, which is one reason "West Side Story" was a breakthrough: it doesn't end happily.

But back to Hardy (1840 -1928): his heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, by the time she was only about 24 years old, had already rejected one suitor, married the wrong man and then when he appeared to have died, promised to marry an older man she didn't love as a result of a thoughtless Valentine's Day gesture sometime earlier. Fortunately (for her), the former was shot and killed by the latter who then turned himself in to serve essentially a life term in prison.  That left her free to marry the right man, the man who had first proposed to her only to be rejected.

But why should readers believe this man, Garbriel Oak,  really is the right man and that their future together will be a happy one?  In Hardy's view it has to do with the nature of real, or true, love.

Briefly by way of background, Oak, an exceptionally competent and reliable fellow had, following a stroke of ill-fortune, come to work for Bathsheba when she inherited a prosperous farm and gained considerable social stature in the process. Whenever problems arose, Oak was there to take care of them, never again pressing his suit as he worked closely with Bathsheba and eventually became her second in command.

Then, just as Bathsheba is finally free of those other entanglements, Oak announces a plan to go to America (the novel being set in rural England), leaving Bathsheba unjustifiably distraught. "She was aggrieved and wounded that the possession of hopeless love from Gabriel, which she had come to regard as her inalienable right for life, should have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this way." She is, after all, far from a worldly woman in age and experience despite her pluck and independence. 

Thinking about it, Bathsheba comes to realize she is about to lose the only true friendship she had and, taking matters into her own hands, convinces Oak that if he will only propose again, she will marry him. Somewhat bemused, he does: he has always wanted her.

The reason, in Hardy's mind, that their love for each other will now last is because if "a substantial affection" survives an initial knowledge of  the rougher sides of each other's character, and only develops into romance "in the interstices of hard prosaic reality," it will make for a solid bond.

"This good fellowship -- comaraderie --  usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the two sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is as strong as death -- that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name (love) is evanescent as steam."

And there the novel ends, on page 428 in the Penguin Random House 2015 Vintage Classics Edition.