Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Pulitzer Prizes, 2008 (I)
Various and sundry bloggers have mentioned that The Rest is Noise was a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction, but I have not yet seen discussion of the fact that Gene Weingarten's Joshua-Bell-the-Busker story actually won a prize. I'm now in the position of saying to people who loved the story when it ran "well, it was badly flawed and was roundly criticized by classical music writers and bloggers." I would like to provide links to blog postings or articles about the story; if you have some handy, or remembering having your head your hands over it, please email me or post 'em here.
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6 comments:
The main takedown online, with plenty of links to other blogs, was Sequenza21. Also, Richard Taruskin's lengthy New Republic article, "The Musical Mystique: Defending classical music against its devotees" begins by discussing the online response to the stunt. That one sticks in my mind, for some reason.
I wrote two posts on it. This one has many links to other bloggers. This one has my thoughts, showing I approved of the article. That means I win, right? Ah, if only there was a betting pool for Pulitzers, and I actually gambled, and had money to gamble, and made that bet. If only.
I posted on it, in my vaguely associative way:
http://reverberatehills.blogspot.com/2007/04/readymades.html
Thank you, all. And here's a clickable version of pjwv's link.
Thanks, and sorry about that! I tried, but I was in a semi-hurry.
Here's the bare-bones summary, for those who wonder why I'm going on about tomato plants: Aesthetic experience is private and unexpected. It can occur through the mundane world (hence the Duchamp reference as an entry title) or through planned, official "Aesthetic Experiences" (like sitting in a concert hall and listening to Bach). So I'm not sure the experiment, fun though it was, proves much of anything, except that Joshua Bell is a good sport.
Sorry to be a latecomer here, but this was my response.
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