Category Archives: Pop-Culture

Harry Crews’ ‘Wildly Precise And Violent’ Excellence

Culture, English, Literature, Pop-Culture, Relatives, The South

What any good reader and writer will notice first about Harry Crews is his style, his English. Not a bit of the Yankee taint to it—that hackneyed idiom that predominates in our country ~ilana

Having stumbled on Harry Crews’ books recently, I think of him as perhaps our greatest novelist, story-teller, and stylist, who writes exquisite English; a disturbing genius, but that is what good literature does. It disturbs, rivets,  inspires, wows, and above all, it avoids the cardinal sin of boring.

Good writing is, moreover, wicked hard. Yes, the gifted few are born with The Gift. But the truths that jump out at me from this interview are these:

Gift or not, you have nothing unless you hone it, practice, know how bad you are and watch the best like a hawk. A really good writer knows exactly what is remarkable.

The other thing Crews, an ungainly man, says which is immutable truth is that the champion is in competition with the self. I can’t count the times a pompous older (always white) male wrote to put the Little Woman down for her English (“$5 dollar words”) something that, I venture, would never have been suggested to a male writer. My reply, of course, was:

“First, fuck off. Next, just to be safe, stay away from the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, too.”

I can recommend “A Childhood: A Biography of a Place” (1978) and “The Gospel Singer.”

Just the title of the first!!!! Obviously: There is no home without a place, without kin. That’s Harry Crews. Straight to the truth.

What any good reader and writer will notice first about Crews is his style, his English. It’s what struck me. Not a bit of the Yankee taint to it—that hackneyed vernacular and idiom that predominate in the country. Nothing but exquisite English, idiosyncratically used.

Tennessee writer Kevin Wilson, professor at Sewanee, wrote the introduction for “The Gospel Singer.” He has similarly observed the following about Harry Crews’ style:

The novel is “horrific,” … — and yet “the sentences at times are just unbelievably beautiful.” Building on this contrast, Wilson debunks any rumor of sentimentality in the work: “Crews doesn’t have nuance regarding race or gender or religion or really anything, but the one place he is nuanced is his language.” By being “wildly precise and violent…”

The best of fiction is similarly unencumbered and thus endowed. “Wildly precise and violent” with one’s language is the way to be. If you can.

UPDATED: NEW COLUMN: Beethoven & Bach ARE THE WEST, Not Cardi B, Kanye, Rihanna

Aesthetics, Art, Conservatism, COVID-19, Critique, Culture, Music, Pop-Culture, Sex, The Zeitgeist

NEW COLUMN IS “Beethoven & Bach ARE THE WEST, Not Cardi B, Kanye, Rihanna.” It was a feature on WND, The New American, Unz Review and Townhall.com.

Now easily accessed and read on IlanaMercer.com: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/02/beethoven-bach-west-not-cardi-b-kanye-rihanna/

Excerpt:

…  THE ONLY SUBSTANTIVE CONSERVATIVE CASE to make over the Grammys is that it signifies the complete loss of immutable artistic standards. For while artistic taste is subjective and personal; artistic standards are everywhere and always objective.

Nobody looking at, and listening to, the 2023 Grammys should dare talk about beauty—of melody or movement—harmony (as in consonance and counterpoint), chord progression, and a facility with musical instruments, for these were nowhere apparent. Better melodic progression is to be found in “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” and “Three Blind Mice.”

Nobody watching these erogenous-zone centered extravaganzas, for which the celebrity Idiocracy clapped like clapped-out whores, should dare conclude anything but this:

The Grammys were about the end of art—about the loss of all meritocratic, objective standards in art.

THE TRUE MEANING OF THE WEST is not to be found in the staged acts of ugly exhibitionists and filthy pornographers who bedeck our cultural and sporting events, the likes of loud, lousy Lizzo, a mountain of meritless flesh, and the Sam Smith Sicko—demented degenerates who are all engaged in publicly tolerated indecent exposure and tuneless yelping, that not even the Auto-tune magic software, the “holy grail of recording” technology, can correct.

THE MEANING OF THE WEST is not in this ghastly culture, in which our kids, liberal and conservative, are allowed to wallow, or in our ugly, grubby, tit-for-tat politics.

IT’S NOT in the Woke, postmodern perverts degrading the language, literature, music, art and sciences.

IT’S NOWHERE IN THE COVID CARTEL and its army of goons, medical and bureaucratic, devoid of intelligence and bereft of proficiency in anything but the use of force.

The aforementioned are imposters, interlopers; frauds, freaks and fetishists.

Beethoven is The West. It’s men like Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Debussy, César Franck, Dvorák, Tchaikovsky (a Russian homosexual, whose manly music could never be queered), Elgar, Fauré and more—they embody The West. They and the many young performers furthering their work, the work of the Lord, are examples of the best of the West. …

…READ THE REST. “Beethoven & Bach ARE THE WEST, Not Cardi B, Kanye, Rihanna” was a feature on WND, The New American, Unz Review and Townhall.com.

It’s now here, on IlanaMercer.com: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/02/beethoven-bach-west-not-cardi-b-kanye-rihanna/

UPDATE II (7/24/022): NEW COLUMN: Crappy Conservative Thinking: Protecting Power, Not Freedom (On ‘Manners, Solid Values & A Soul’)

China, Conservatism, Kids, Pop-Culture, Republicans, Sex

NEW COLUMN is “Crappy Conservative Thinking: Protecting Power, Not Freedom.” It’s a feature on WND.COM, The Unz Review, and on The New American, Friday.

Excerpt:

DID YOU notice the theme on the Tucker Carlson Tonight, July 18? Tucker Carlson got into TikTok mode, blaming China for pervasive American decadence, decades in the making.

The host petulantly saddled China and its algorithms for, among other things, America’s gutter culture, as acted out on TikTok.

If we are to believe Mr. Carlson, the Chinese made those Americans hos disrobe and simulate all manner of sex on TikTok. The Chinese made American TikTokers gesticulate and grunt and generally privilege Ebonics over English. And the Chinese made the same pornographic performers worship hip-hop and rap and energetically deploy their lower bodies to signal mating behavior that jibes with that of primates.

A non sequitur is when your argument’s conclusion does not follow from its premise. Milking illogic to incriminate China for cultural trends that pervade mainstream America culture—why, Laura Ingraham herself professed her love for the rap hump-a-long genre—Tucker offered up his proof for the blame-China thesis:

Chinese TikTokers are seen practicing piano, manners and magic cube mental skills, whereas Americans can be observed doing what they do on … TV, in the movies, on reality shows, on campuses from kindergarten to college and on political panels.

Say no more. Point proven (mine). QED. Doing dumb and degenerate has become the Alpha and Omega of American life. TikTok reflects not Chinese machinations, but the broader American culture.

China’s culture until Communism was Confucian, which is high-minded and genteel. And, contra ConOink (my variation on ConInc), China is reactionary, returning not to Communism, but to Confucianism.

America’s youth, enabled by indulgent and permissive parents and pedagogues, have become increasingly licentious, lippy and libertine. Most are ignorant and lousy at writing, reasoning, and conversing coherently about anything other than raaaaaacism and, “Like my sexuality.” The kids have also become un-moored from their finest traditions, which are being embraced by …the Chinese: They are returning to things classical, traditional and eternally and universally beautiful.

You don’t see many of China’s youth act out in estrus, because they can’t. China has banned corrupt hip-hop culture, and has a new export: Western classical music.

“Once, classical music generally traveled from the West to the rest,” marveled the Economist. “Now China is reversing the exchange, not merely performing Western classical music in China, but exporting it. …”

In China, they’re inclined to consider a youth-obsessed society such as ours a silly society. The standard inquiry, among Taiwanese engineers, I am told, about their American counterparts in hardware engineering is, “How many grey hairs and no-hairs are in the group?” Unlike their youth-worshiping American colleagues, these wise instinctual Confucians reason that the presence of “grey hairs and no-hairs” in the collaborating high-tech team bodes better for the project.

On the other hand, “in America,” as Oscar Wilde had observed, “the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.” And adults are always on-hand to facilitate their folly.

From Fox News we move to LinkedIn for a snapshot of the Zeitgeist

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Crappy Conservative Thinking: Protecting Power, Not Freedom,” now on IlanaMercer.com

* My “I might be a Chinese spy” look is suitable for this subversive material.

UPDATED (7/22/022): My batting average. Every week, over 22 years, the likes of these come in:

Hi Ilana,

This is excellent: https://www.wnd.com/2022/07/crappy-conservative-thinking-protecting-power-not-freedom/   One of Wnd’s best over the past few months. Way to go!

Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.
President
National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI)
Editor-in-Chief
Home School Researcher (peer-reviewed journal)

UPDATE II (7/24/022):  On “manners, solid values and a soul”: Some men like to break a warrior down. Others take the time to do their part in propping her up. Chivalry among men is on life support, but is not entirely dead. I don’t get the reader’s French, but appreciate his kindness. 

—–Original Message—–
From: es
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2022 5:51 AM
To: ilana mercer <ilana@ilanamercer.com>
Subject: the chinese spy look

Love it!

You should run for something. Good looks n’est-pas la seule chose, c’est toute chose, d’accord?

Wait, I take that back. You have brains, manners, solid values and soul.

You’d lose in a landslide.

ES

Tucker Carlson Gets Into Tiktok Mode, Blames China For Pervasive American Decadence

China, Communism, Conservatism, Logic, Pop-Culture, Reason, Sex, The Zeitgeist

Notice the theme on the Tucker Carlson Show today, July 18?

Tucker mindlessly blames China for, among other things, America’s gutter culture, as acted out on Tiktok. Accordingly, the Chinese made Americans worship hip hop and rap and twerk. The Chinese made American hos disrobe and simulate sex on TikTok. The Chinese made American Tiktokers privilege Ebonics over English.

Heavily into non sequitur mode, for the cultural trends Tucker blamed on China are mainstream American culture (Laura Ingraham loves rap by admission)–Tucker presented the proof to his blame-China thesis: Chinese Tiktokers are seen practicing piano, manners and magic cube mental skills, whereas Americans are seen doing what they do on TV, in movies, on reality shows, and on political panels.

Say no more. I’ve proved my point. QED.

China’s culture until communism was Confucianism, which is high-minded and genteel. And, contra ConOink, China is reactionary, returning to Confucianism; not Communism:

CNN’s Sinophobic Zakaria Is Clueless: China Is Reactionary, Returning To Confucianism; Not Communism

Enabled by indulgent and permissive parents and pedagogues, America’s youth have become increasingly licentious, lippy and libertine. Most are ignorant and lousy at writing, reasoning, and conversing coherently about anything other than raaaaaacism. They have also become un-moored from their finest traditions. The Chinese—who seem to know what’s good—are returning to things classical, traditional and eternally and universally beautiful.

Having banned corrupt hip-hop culture, China has a new export: Western classical music. “Once, classical music generally traveled from the West to the rest,” marvels the Economist. “Now China is reversing the exchange, not merely performing Western classical music in China, but exporting it. …