Posted 12:17 PM by Gene

Lately there's been a big showy debate in the typing world whether it needs reviewers. Judging from this musical "essay" we say no -- and Tim Page is a decent writer, which makes it hurt a little. He says Mr. 9/11 Was a Work of Art scribbled -- "composed" "masterpieces." Okay, Timmy, hum one. Now of course you'd say this is unfair because Mr. 9/11 Was a Work of Art wrote works of extraordinarily dizzying complexity and blahblahblah. But a work without what the pop-"music" types call a hook is unlikely to survive. It needn't be as obvious as Beethoven's Fifth and those first four notes -- it just has to work as an organic whole. We think of Haydn's set of twenty-four minuets, which languished in complete obscurity before Antal Dorati played them -- and the first alone is the equal of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, to say the least. Mr. 9/11, however, wrote noise, evanescent noise, self-indulgent noise, in-with-the-in-crowd noise; and that the eulogy contains phrases like "Munchkin babble" mutely admits to it -- and issues a further reason why we do NOT need reviewers, who too often write the truth unintentionally.