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T A B L E__T A L K

Are men's mags like GQ and Esquire turning into sex-obsessed, diet-crazed, vanity-driven smut? Share your thoughts in Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

The terrible mystery of Gayl Jones
By Sally Eckhoff
Why did a brilliant novelist's life spiral into obsessive horror?
(02/26/98)

Lady Macgrunge
By Michelle Goldberg
"Kurt and Courtney" paints a horrific picture of Courtney Love as manipulative, power-mad and possibly murderous
(02/25/98)

How do you spell Yiddish?
By Lee Dembart
A legendary Yiddish newspaper is changing its spelling -- and therein lies a tale of Talmudic proportions
(02/24/98)

Stop the millennium -- I want to get off
By Virginia Heffernan
As the year 2000 approacheth, so doth a Biblical plague of special issues of news weeklies
(02/23/98)

Earth to Mars and Venus
By Mary Beth Williams
Relationship guru John Gray's syrupy new mag
(02/20/98)

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English Professor Aldon Nielsen chanted lyrics by blues musician Leadbelly and spoke of "metaphoricity and vocal particularity" in "Blowin' in the Wind," by way of suggesting that Dylan, among others, wanted to sound black. Regarding Dylan's electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival -- mention of which seems obligatory in any Dylan scholar's deciphering of the obvious -- Nielsen said: "Dylan's blues were no longer attired in their racial workshirt." (Nielsen was good for these one-liners. My fave: "Uncle Remus was another pure product of American race dreams.")

Stepped forward Stephen Ronan, who never took off his sunglasses and went on for an hour or nine with "The Visionary Road: Rimbaud, Kerouac, Dylan," speaking mostly about the first two, and about the keen insight offered by fucked-up outsiders in general. Dylan apparently exhibited some during a road trip, toking weed from the dashboard and uttering platitudes like, "Time doesn't exist; it's an illusion -- the other side of Dali's clocks." Don't bogart that joint. From his podium, Ronan quoted his subjects with a repertoire of vocal impressions, like a misplaced and none-too-gifted Catskills comedian.

The grand prize for casting fog, however, went to the University of Victoria's Stephen Scobie, who delivered an audiovisual book report titled "Renaldo & Allen: Allen Ginsberg's Role in 'Renaldo & Clara,'" on a 292-minute cinematic indulgence directed by Dylan in 1978. "I'm afraid this paper does assume an audience that has had a chance to see 'Renaldo & Clara,'" Scobie said. Few, if any, had. (Dylan yanked it out of circulation after critics failed to recognize his cross-platform genius.) Scobie offered meticulous descriptions of various scenes and voice-overs featuring Ginsberg -- the best of which, for its almost folkloric invocation of the pretentious, left Ginsberg bare-assed and about to be horsewhipped by a negligee-sporting Anne Waldman. During a Q&A period, Scobie admitted that he had only seen one "barely watchable copy" of "Renaldo & Clara," whose ancestor, several bootlegged generations back, was taped directly off BBC during the film's sole telecast. Rarely does one have the chance to see so much energy put into the exaltation of bad art -- akin to deducing the shape of a priceless antique stencil from a doodle found by the urinal.

Listening to these scholars -- most of whom were males of boomer age -- I couldn't help but imagine them as kids, encamped decades ago in the pall of the TV, hapless as their critical faculties weltered and eroded in the bombardment. They had acquired little immunity to the broadcast, and it left them with no means to separate the fun from the profound. This might explain the monolithic importance some mid-lifers attribute to the trappings of their youth, and the present professors' desire to hand us ornate shoe boxes in which to hoard pop culture's trifles. These men were obviously well-versed theorists who had pursued their mark in earnest. So what.

Markworth defended the day's endless paving of Dylan: "Academic inquiry does not need to reside in an ivory tower." Though overstated (and suspiciously fretful about irrelevance), this is true: Anything public -- including pop culture -- should be fair game in academia. How, then, should professors approach this bohemian adenoid they love so much? By following the example of Maria Johnson (Southern Illinois University), who initiated her presentation with an admission: "I am not a Bob Dylan scholar." So much the better. Her paper, titled "Performed Literature: The Music of Bob Dylan," cited specific examples from Dylan's "Just Like a Woman" to illuminate song craft, even as she denounced the song's sexist refrains ("You fake just like a woman/But you break just like a little girl"). Johnson, a music professor, stuck with the concrete: chord movement, monosyllabic lyrical accents, changing dynamics, denigrating content. She was certainly less passionate than the others, but more cogent and more interesting. She could observe the song from enough of a distance to describe it, hairy harping warts and all. You didn't have to like Dylan to listen to Johnson. Her half hour elapsed like half an hour. Two presenters followed Johnson -- including one doctoral student whose point seemed to be that adding reverb to Dylan's recordings made them sound different -- but she outshone them and the rest.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with fandom -- it's endearing enough, even after several hours of labored analysis. And mondegreens are healthy enough as a pastime, if not as pedagogy. But professors who cloak the heroes of their youth in obfuscation are no different from the mullet-headed Black Sabbath fans who ardently hail Ozzy Osbourne as a genius, and "Vampire Lestat" groupies who insist that Anne Rice speaks to the ages. Groom your pets in private, where you can misapprehend their importance to the fullest. Exploring their anatomy in public becomes a charmless act of haruspication -- combing through bowels for want of magic.
SALON | Feb. 27, 1998

Michael Batty is a San Francisco writer.