2-News
12 — Wednesday, October 7, 2020
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
THE B-SIDE: ICONS
Taylor Swift runs music
I was seven years old when
“You Belong With Me” came
out, and it still gives me an
indescribable rush of sheer
happiness. It’s the song I play
in the car with the windows
down, letting everyone else
on the road share my joy. It’s
the song that I dance around
to in my pajamas, feeling like
I’m at a concert. Every time I
hear it, I have to stop what I’m
doing to give it the devotion it
deserves.
That’s how I feel with every
Taylor Swift song. That’s how
so many people feel with every
Taylor Swift song.
Barbara Walters once said
“Taylor Swift is the music
industry.” She said this in
2014, after Taylor’s record-
breaking
album
1989
was
released.
Six
years
later,
Taylor Swift is still the music
industry. She’s released eight
albums since the beginning of
her career, and they’ve nearly
all broken records. From her
self-titled debut album to her
most recent, surprise release
folklore, she has never let the
world down.
It’s a shame, though, because
the world has let her down on
more than one occasion. From
accusing her of writing only
about her ex-boyfriends to
the #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty
to losing her master license
over her recordings to having
beauty standards forced on her
that led to an eating disorder,
the world has let her down
because the world wants to
hate Taylor Swift.
What makes her amazing,
though, what makes her a true
icon, is that she rises above
it all. She forgives, but never
forgets. She proves the world
wrong. When the world said
that she relies on the talent of
others to write her own songs,
she released self-written Speak
Now (my absolute favorite
album of all time). When the
world said she was “just” a
country artist, she released
1989, for which she became the
first female artist to win the
Grammy’s Album of the Year
award twice. When the world
turned on her and called her
a snake, she embraced it and
released reputation. When the
world said that she could only
ever be a cookie-cutter pop
star, she released the indie
folk album folklore, which has
led her to surpass Whitney
Houston’s record for most
weeks at number one on the
Billboard 200 charts. Taylor
Swift sits among the most
revered stars.
She refuses to let herself
be torn down by haters or the
media. As she herself said
during the 1989 World Tour
before her performance of
her song “Clean,” “you are
not the opinion of somebody
who doesn’t know you or care
about you.” And she’s not. The
number of haters Taylor Swift
has is the same number of
people who refuse to give her
a chance. They see a talented,
young female star and refuse
to give her any of the credit
she is due.
The people that do love her
— her fans, her Swifties — have
never just sat by and let the
world tear her down. And in
return, she loves them. Taylor
Swift invites her fans to her
house and plays them songs
before an album’s release. She
bakes them cookies, sends
them Christmas gifts, shares
inside jokes on Tumblr. How
many artists do that? How
many artists let their fans into
their homes, into their hearts,
the way she does?
At the core of her being,
Taylor Swift is an artist. Her
songs, her words are, for lack
of a better word, iconic. So
many people have proposed to
their significant others while
“Love Story” was playing. So
many people’s 2014 and 2015
Instagram bios read “darling
I’m a nightmare dressed like
a daydream.” Everyone knows
that when you turn 22, it’s
your “Taylor Swift Birthday.”
So many people declared 2020
saved when folklore came out.
She has proven time and
time again that she doesn’t
need
the
flashy
concerts,
gorgeous
music
videos
or
vast number of awards to
be
successful.
She
needs
her voice, her songs and her
fans. Taylor Swift appeared
at the (socially distant) 2020
Academy of Country Music
Awards to perform the song
“betty.” That award show had
more viewers than the 2020
VMAs despite the fact that
country music isn’t a widely-
listened-to genre. The other
performers played a part for
sure, but it hardly seems a
coincidence that the first time
she showed up at the ACMs in
seven years was the time that
millions of people tuned in. She
sat on a stage with her guitar,
accompanied by a harmonica
player
in
the
background,
and just sang. There was no
audience, no light-up bracelets,
no showmanship. It was just
her, happily returning to her
country roots. And she still
managed to capture everyone’s
attention.
That’s the power of Taylor
Swift.
Daily Arts Writer Sabriya
Imami
can
be
reached
at
simami@umich.edu.
SABRIYA IMAMI
Daily Arts Writer
REPUBLIC
THE B-SIDE: ICONS
Icons: David Foster Wallace, beyond the windbreak
It was a year ago when I walked
into the Dawn Treader Book Shop
and squeezed past a few other
patrons to reach the fiction section.
On a low shelf in the Ws was a faded
copy of Wallace’s debut novel “The
Broom of the System.”
I took the book to the counter
and a man rang me up. I asked him
if they had any of Wallace’s other
books.
“No, his stuff always sells fast.”
I said that was too bad, as I had
just read “Infinite Jest” and I was
looking to read more of his work.
It was an admittedly pretentious
brag, and he was not impressed. He
smiled at me and dismissed me with
a thin cheerfulness.
“Mm-hmm, well have a nice day.”
And that was that. To those that
do not like his style, Wallace was
an overblown mess of a writer —
arrogant and too frequently labeled
a genius, despite his books being
bloated and forcefully intelligent. I
suspect that the man at the counter
at Dawn Treader was in this camp.
But
I
think
Wallace
was
something else: a deeply troubled
pop-hero who left his mark on the
world through his art, his terror and
his public presence.
Before I say anything else, I want
to present the first of Wallace’s
words that I ever read, from the
short story “Good Old Neon.” Keep
them in mind:
“My whole life I’ve been a fraud.
I’m not exaggerating. Pretty much
all I’ve ever done all the time is try
to create a certain impression of me
in other people.”
***
As far as icons go, Wallace is
one of the most quintessential.
He wrote across multiple genres
of literature, publishing fiction,
nonfiction, speeches. His work is
often unapproachable, his books
so dense and overwritten that they
almost feel actively averse to being
read, and that’s what makes them
attractive.
Like many of Wallace’s readers,
I made the mistake of jumping into
his magnum opus “Infinite Jest”
too quickly. I went from that first
40-page short story to a 1079-page
brick of a book with little regard for
the health of my corneas.
“Infinite
Jest”
is
more
a
monstrosity than a book. The
pages are large and imposing, their
combined weight dragging your
hands to the floor. Following the 981
pages of the main story is another
90 pages of “Notes and Errata.” The
endnotes are vital to the reader’s
experience, though they sometimes
left my head spinning as I flipped
back and forth, back and forth.
The book is simply too chaotic
and byzantine to summarize, but I
will say this: the story mainly takes
place in a tennis academy and a
halfway house, and it deals with
topics such as addiction, daddy
issues, pervasive consumerism, a
secret service of wheelchair-bound
Quebecois assassins and a film so
entertaining that its viewers watch
it over and over again until they
starve to death.
It is as strange as it sounds, but
Wallace
embraces
strangeness
gracefully. In the mess of gaudy
and sometimes grotesque language
there is an undeniable humanity —
Wallace touches on just about every
emotion imaginable, every corner
of human life from athletic stardom
to copping cocaine to the loss of a
loved one. And it isn’t his best work.
Don’t get me wrong, a thousand
pages of wonderfully complex
fiction is a fantastic achievement,
one that would put any other writer
at the top of 20th Century Classics
lists before they retired to a villa
somewhere. But Wallace wrote
better stories. “Good Old Neon”
is a masterclass in experimental
structure and pacing, and you can
read it in about an hour instead of
a month. His most refined work,
“The Pale King,” was published
posthumously.
Before we get into that book, I
want to take a look at Wallace as
a person. Don’t worry, we’ll come
back to his writing, but I first want
to look at an interview that Wallace
did with Charlie Rose.
At about three and a half minutes
into the interview, Rose cuts
the small-talk and asks Wallace,
“Respect means a lot to you? Sort of
the sense that ‘I’m taken seriously
and respected for my work?’”
Wallace straightens in his chair
and bites his lip before responding,
“You can read this in my face? …
Show me somebody who doesn’t
like to be respected.”
Wallace then speaks to the
public response to “Infinite Jest”,
saying that he didn’t believe every
reviewer finished the book before
giving their verdict on it. At one
point he interrupts his response to
say, “... I’m sorry that I’m essentially
stuttering, umm…” Rose reassures
him, in a voice like that of a seasoned
therapist, “No you’re not, you’re
doing just fine.”
Wallace is taking the lead
reluctantly in this dance. He
doesn’t make much eye contact.
He occasionally grimaces at his
own comments. His voice sounds
almost dreamy as he speaks low
and quickly, like his thoughts are
already loaded and he’s just letting
them out. But they are just thoughts;
he doesn’t try to imbue them with
any special authority. Perhaps
unknowingly, Wallace is acting out
his
every-man-but-not-just-any-
man persona.
This is the person we can see in
interviews, the man who flexes his
talent yet at the same time seems to
almost repress it. But this is not the
person who woke up every day and
made coffee and walked the dogs.
For a glimpse of that man, I’d like to
share a story from my high school
English teacher, Hunter Dunn.
Pasadena, 2005. Dunn sees a
flyer for a workshop on teaching
writing. There are three names on
the list of speakers, including David
Foster Wallace. Why did such a
famous author appear at a workshop
in a high school classroom for 40
people? Dunn doesn’t know, but
he suspects that it was a favor for a
friend.
The workshop is held in a
classroom in a high school across the
street from Pomona College, where
Wallace taught creative writing.
The two other speakers go first,
presenting their prepared materials
and
giving
readings
of
their
own work. Wallace has nothing
prepared. He says something like, “I
would never read my own work to
students like that.”
At the end of the presentation,
Dunn asks Wallace a question that
he has since forgotten. But he still
remembers
Wallace’s
response:
“Okay, I’m going to answer your
question, and then I want to know
what you think.”
The workshop ends; everyone
files out of the building. As he walks
out, Dunn spots Wallace walking
across a courtyard, probably back
to his office at Pomona. He calls out,
“Hey! Dave!”
Wallace turns around and sighs
heavily, “Yes?”
Dunn asks him about an essay he
wrote on the tennis player Michael
Joyce. Wallace looks at him intently
and says “Interesting player, isn’t
he?”
The rest of the conversation has
been lost in 15 years of memories,
but Dunn recalls some key things
about Wallace. He was an excellent
listener, working out his thoughts
before responding. But he was also
curt, approaching every question
as an argument, a game he wanted
to win. He did not appear at all
uncomfortable or self-conscious —
he was a confident presence.
Unlike in his interview with
Charlie Rose, Wallace did not sound
conflicted in-person. Perhaps when
confronted with affirmation of the
public belief in his brilliance, such
as during a high-profile interview,
his normal identity clashed with
that expected of a genius.
That struggle is also present in
his writing, but in a different way.
Let’s return to “The Pale King.”
The story takes place at the IRS
Regional Examination Center in
Peoria, Illinois, a setting as boring
as one can imagine. In a cool 550
pages, Wallace breathes life into the
banal and maddening world of tax
return examination as if he were
Tolkien constructing Middle Earth.
It was in “The Pale King” that I
first started to find some clues of
the real Wallace. The ninth chapter
is labeled as “Author’s Foreword.”
Wallace
writes,
“Author
here.
Meaning the real author, the living
human holding the pencil, not some
abstract narrative persona.”
He explains, “what follows is,
in reality, not fiction at all, but
substantially true and accurate.
That The Pale King is, in point
of fact, more like a memoir than
any kind of made-up story.” Of
course, Wallace never worked for
the IRS and the events in the book
are completely fictional. But that
doesn’t mean he is lying when he
says the story is true, in a manner of
speaking.
Wallace
places
himself
in
the story as a young IRS recruit
who is mistaken for a high-level
executive also named Dave Wallace.
Scared to face the consequences
of
impersonating
someone
so
well-respected,
Dave
Wallace
(the character) goes along with
the mistake and is swept into
accordingly high-level meetings.
Dave Wallace (the character) has
no idea what is going on in these
meetings. He sweats profusely
and fumbles the few words he
speaks. There is intense discussion
of the tax code that the man he is
impersonating should be intimately
familiar with, but of course Dave
Wallace (the character) knows
nothing about the tax code. He
stays silent so as not to reveal that
he is not who people think he is. He
writes down notes constantly, filling
pages so that he will be perceived
as a quiet but diligent observer, a
focused participant in this world in
which he knows he does not belong.
If ever an author had spoken so
clearly to their reader.
***
Wallace committed suicide in
2008. He left behind many books
and essays, and in the continued
publishing of his work he has
become an icon. The dark sides of
his life, drug addiction, his struggle
with depression, have only added to
his impression as a tortured genius.
In his 2013 biography “Every
Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life
of David Foster Wallace,” D.T.
Max briefly mentions our subject’s
relationship with the poet Mary
Karr. Karr volunteered in a halfway
house in Boston, where Wallace was
living due to addiction and a suicide
attempt. There is one particularly
alarming sentence: “One night
Wallace tried to push Karr from a
moving car.”
Wallace’s relationship with Karr
was mostly left in the dark, and it
has fallen to Karr herself to speak
out about it. He stalked her for
years, even though she was married
and had a child. He once showed up
to a party with bandages on his arm,
and revealed to Karr that he had
tattooed her name on his skin.
It is very easy to dismiss
this kind of darkness as part of
the
complications
that
come
with genius. After all, is it not
uncomfortable to think about the
heinous acts committed by someone
we like? To extend my consideration
of a person past the safety of the
products of their brilliance requires
more emotional work than does
reveling in the refined, beautiful
things they gave to the world.
That is what it is to be an icon.
JULIAN WRAY
For The Daily
THE B-SIDE: ICONS
Bob Dylan: Queer icon?
ANDREW WARRICK
Daily Arts Writer
“Wearing high heel boots, a
tailored pea-jacket without lapels,
pegged dungarees of a kind of
buffed azure, large sunglasses
with squared edges, his dark,
curly
hair
standing
straight
up on top and spilling over the
upturned collar of his soiled white
shirt,” an icon stepped off an
airplane. It was November 1964,
just outside Columbus. On the
tarmac, “Businessmen nodded and
smirked, the ground crew looked
a little incredulous, and a mother
put a hand on her child’s head and
made him turn away.”
Bob Dylan had arrived.
***
If you asked the average person in
2020 about Bob Dylan, they would
probably note his unconventional
voice, his 2016 Nobel Prize for
Literature or ’60s hits such as “Like
a Rolling Stone” and “The Times
They Are A-Changin.’” What they
probably wouldn’t acknowledge is
his relation to queerness.
While
not
queer
himself,
two of Dylan’s most profound
literary infleunces, poets Allen
Ginsberg and Arthur Rimbaud,
were
uncompromisingly
so.
Their poetry reflected that. Since
these two writers were vital to
Dylan’s creative process, his most
powerful albums are intimately
related to the idea of queerness.
While rarely, if ever, considered,
a queer framework is vital to
understanding Bob Dylan’s music
and place as an American icon.
Wild Electric Visions
“Old lady judges watch people in
pairs, limited in sex, they dare, to
push fake morals, insult and stare . .
. And if my thought dreams could be
seen, they’d probably put my head in
a guillotine”
—“It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only
Bleeding),” 1965
After stepping off the airplane,
Bob Dylan was chauffeured to
Kenyon College for a concert.
When he learned that students
were required to wear uniforms
during the show, Dylan exclaimed
“Ties? Well, I’m gonna tell them
they can take them off. That’s what
I’m gonna do. Rules — man, that’s
why I never lasted long in college.
Too many rules.” Dylan himself
was about to break a whole lotta
rules.
He would soon pivot from his
acoustic folk style, pick up an
electric guitar and embark on a run
of iconic albums now known as his
Electric Trilogy: Bringing it All
Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited
and Blonde on Blonde. On top of this
sonic reinvention, Dylan’s lyrical
voice sharpened to a surrealistic,
satirical switchblade, and slashed
artistic and social conventions to
tatters with every song. Key to this
shift were two queer poets.
“Allen Ginsberg is the only
writer I know,” Dylan said in ’66.
“He’s just holy.”
Ginsberg
was
a
Beatnik
notorious
for
his
surrealistic
poetry and blatant homosexuality,
both of which challenged the
norms of post-World War II
American life. In the ’56 poem
“America,” he asserts, “I won’t say
the Lord’s prayer / I have mystical
visions and cosmic vibrations” and
asks the nation “When will you
take off your clothes?” Ginsberg
stood alone, championed being
different
and
challenged
the
United States of America to do the
same. Predictably, he was dragged
into court.
After the ’56 publication of his
masterpiece
“Howl,”
Ginsberg
was “canceled” nationwide: Many
bookstores banned his poetry
and he was even put through
an obscenity trial. Though the
judge ruled in his favor, Ginserg
was no national hero, and still
relatively risqué, at the time of
Bob Dylan’s Electric Trilogy in
the mid-’60s. Yet Dylan called him
holy. He also brought Ginsberg
on tour and put him in one of
the first music videos of all time,
“Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
More
importantly,
though,
Dylan emulated Ginsberg in his
songwriting.
Allen Ginsberg’s wild, satirical
style is all over the Electric Trilogy.
One of the most potent examples
is “Ballad of a Thin Man,” which,
like “Howl,” blasts holes into mid-
century
America’s
traditional
facade. In the song’s chorus,
Dylan mockingly tells a character
named Mister Jones, and by
proxy
masculine,
upper-class
white America, including those
businessmen who laughed at him
on that tarmac in ’64, “Something
is happening here, but ya’ don’t
know what it is, do you, Mister
Jones?”
While scholarship has dissected
the rebellion of “Thin Man,” the
song’s relation to queerness is
almost never mentioned or, if it
is, isn’t taken very seriously. Yet a
queer reading adds radical, perhaps
even vital, shades to the song. “You
walk into the room,” it begins.
“With your pencil in your hand,
you see somebody naked, And you,
you say, ‘Who is that man?’ You try
so hard, but you don’t understand.”
By the time Dylan tells Jones “the
sword swallower, he comes up to
you, and then he kneels, he crosses
himself, and then he clicks his high
heels,” it’s almost too obvious.
When viewed with Ginsberg’s
context, it’s easy to see how the song
challenged ’60s heteronormativity
years before the Summer of Love,
Stonewall and glam rock. Dylan
shoved queerness into mainstream
America’s face and mocked its
privileged, prejudiced ignorance.
Another Electric Trilogy piece,
“Maggie’s Farm,” similarly resisted
American
boundaries
through
a symbolic character, this time
named Maggie. Her overbearing
conservatism is similar to that of
the mother who turned her boy
away at the airport in ’64:
“I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s
farm no more … I try my best to be
just like I am, but everybody wants
you to be just like them … I just get
bored.”
Most critics view “Maggie’s
Farm” as a general rebellion against
American conventions, capitalism
and authority. Yet a queer reading
is relevatory; one oppressor at
Maggie’s farm is Maggie’s mother,
who “talks to all the servants about
man and God and law.” Clearly
paralleling Ginsberg’s refusal to
say the Lord’s Prayer, this line will
be familar to anyone who grew
up queer in puritanical America.
Subsequently,
Dylan’s
speaker
escaping Maggie’s Farm becomes
not just rebellion, but a necessary,
touching escape.
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