December 7, 2016

Not sure what's more important: Stephen King criticizing people complaining about Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize or Fiona Apple's anti-Donald-Trump Christmas song.

1. Stephen King says: "People complaining about his Nobel either don't understand or it's just a plain old case of sour grapes. I've seen several literary writers who have turned their noses up at the Dylan thing, like Gary Shteyngart. Well, I've got news for you, Gary: There are a lot of deserving writers who have never gotten the Nobel Prize. And Gary Shteyngart will probably be one of them. That's no reflection on his work. You have to rise to the level of a Faulkner if you're an American."

2. Here's Fiona Apple with "Trump’s nuts roasting on an open fire" etc. etc.

http://fionaapplerocks.tumblr.com/post/154048464562

82 comments:

Kate said...

King. At least his comment is somewhat gracious. And it's kind of interesting that he sees American writers as having to clear a higher bar in order to win the Nobel.

campy said...

I vote "neither is of the slightest importance."

MayBee said...

How many drugs are we guessing Fiona Apple is on?

Fabi said...

She has a beautiful voice -- I'll give her that. Hearing it entirely unprocessed is even more impressive.

p.s., Fuck off, Fiona

Spiros said...

I'd like to comment about a single lyric from Ms. Apple's stupid song. It has to do with "creepy uncles." I don't get it! Is this some sort of race or class thing I'm not aware of? Are these "uncles" the nonstop parade of boyfriends Ms. Apple's (I assume single) mother had? Does Ms. Apple have any male influence in her life that she isn't threatened by? Something just seems vaguely chauvinistic about terms like "drunk uncles" and "creepy uncles." My uncles were successful businessmen and good family men. They weren't creeps or drunks or perverts! And I'm sure that that is the case for most people as well.

Wince said...

I want Fiona's nose hair trimmer for Christmas.

Her nostrils were perfectly shorn. Breath taking, really.

effinayright said...

Stay classy, Fiona.

Wince said...

You'd think Fiona might have a little more empathy for Trump's bad press.

This entry in Rolling Stone's list of particulars cracked me up for some reason.

Fiona Apple's Bad, Bad Girl Moments: The singer's most memorable outbursts, oddities and music industry rebellions

Her Boyfriend, the Magician
Though Apple has had relationships with other mercurial and famous men (Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson, Bored to Death-creator Jonathan Ames) it’s her late-Nineties relationship with magician/illusionist David Blaine that was the most curious – the pairing humanized him, and gave her a weird cultural cache; she wasn’t dating a guy in a band, she was dating a guy in an ice block.

robother said...

This progeny of The Beatles and a computer company is bringing shame on her good family name.

Rob said...

Fiona Apple is a tragedy. She could have been so much better and given us all so much joy if she was wise.

tcrosse said...

It could be worse. It could be Lena Dunham singing.
I bathe my hemorrhoids in their tears.

Titus said...

Fiona's been a bad bad girl.

dwick said...

Well, whatever you do make sure both you and everyone around remain quiet while you're listening to Fiona's little song - or else...

...According to Women’s Wear Daily, Apple became agitated while attempting to perform amidst excessive room chatter. She evidently climbed onto her piano early on in the set, requested quiet and, when that request wasn’t granted, produced a small bell. She rang the thing after challenging the crowd to remain silent for the duration of the tone (no luck). She also apparently hit herself on the head with the microphone and did a back-bend over her piano bench.

Among her recorded missives to the crowd: “Shut the fuck up!”...


http://www.spin.com/2013/08/fiona-apple-off-stage-louis-vuitton-japan/

Fernandinande said...

"She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me, all the time we recorded the last album."

William said...

I warn everyone again watching the Stephen King miniseries "11.22.63". It's not quite bad enough to give up on, but it's bad enough to make you hate yourself for continuing to watch it. All the plot holes delicately balanced against the plot hooks........I just hope that Fiona's condemnation of Trump doesn't cause any backlash against her in the music industry. Sarc/off. It will never happen, but I would love to hear a protest song against Colin Kaepernick or El Chappo or a sad lament about the little girls of Rotherham.

walter said...

"Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes just to decide what socks to wear to bed.
But this decision is instant."

Diamondhead said...

Is it really "sour grapes"? Are these other writers saying they wouldn't have wanted to win the Nobel because it's not that great anyway? Not that I've seen.

Fabi said...

Care to play "Guess the reaction" if Deplorable She prevailed and Kid Rock sang of roasting Hillary's private parts on an open fire?

Please forgive the imagery.

rcocean said...

Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart

One of the great things about Althouse is she constantly refers Pop culture figures that I don't know existed. This leads me to google them and listen/watch their music/art/whatever.

It also leads me to read about their personal lives and politics. Almost without exception they are political morons, with personal lives that are national disaster areas. Their education is usually non-existent.

Yet, they all persist in imposing their political opinions on everyone else.

mccullough said...

Amy Winehouse is what Fiona Apple wishes she had been.

rcocean said...

BTW, "Shteyngart" -Igor Semyonovich Shteyngart. Born of Russian Jewish Family in Lenningrad 44 years ago.

Why anyone should care what he thinks is a mystery.

DKWalser said...

I'd never heard of Ms. Apple. Now that I have, I'll add her to the list of people whose albums I will not buy and whose concerts I will not attend. I'm sure she's fine with that. I'm glad it works for both of us.

rcocean said...

Ms. Apple is obviously smashed or stoned. But i doubt her politics sound anymore intelligent when she's sober.

mccullough said...

Dylan is much better than Steven King.

walter said...

mccullough said...Amy Winehouse is what Fiona Apple wishes she had been.
--
Dead?

rcocean said...

English speaking writers who never got a Nobel Prize:

Mark Twain
Henry James
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ezra Pound
T. Williams
James Joyce
George Orwell
Graham Greene
E. Waugh
EM Forester
Conrad
A. Huxley
Nabokov
E. Wharton

Dude1394 said...

Boy lefties are vulgar people.

Dude1394 said...

Boy lefties are vulgar people.

Karen of Texas said...

Fiona Apple is a mentally ill. Certifiably, diagnosed, needs meds mentally ill. Google will tell you more. Any young-ish, diagnosed bipolar and/or OCD and/or BPD sufferer who listens to her music will tell you it's all right there in her lyrics.

walter said...

Give her a break..socks are complicated.

Michael K said...

Apple became agitated while attempting to perform amidst excessive room chatter.

I was a big June Christy fan in college. A buddy and I would go up to the Sunset Strip when she was playing the Interlude. We would sit at the bar and listen and, sometimes after her gig, she would come out and chat with us. She recognized us. If the audience was noisy and eating and talking, she would do a few songs and quit. If they were quiet and attentive, she would sing for an hour.

That was the 60s and late 50s. Manners are gone. I still have some of her albums. Her husband was sometimes her accompanist.

chickelit said...

In the grand scheme of things, Trump managed to father some wonderful children, while Ms. Apple wasted two good ovaries.

Is that mean enough?

madAsHell said...

Fiona Apple, Norah Jones, Alicia Keyes and that Kravitz fellow.

Some of the most BORING music I've ever heard. Norah earned a Grammy with BORING music.

Quaestor said...

King's point can be boiled down to one sentence: The Nobel Prize is sometimes awarded to the underserving. Big whoop. While was at it he could have noted that complaints about the weather are similarly futile. What's remarkable is his example of an under-derserved award. At least Shteyngar can write. There are far more egregious examples of meritless laurels.

As for Fiona Apple's anti-Trump song... jeez... much ado about nothing. She's proud of that sophomoric p.o.s. Our own Lazlo could on a moment's reflection knock it into a cocked hat, and has done so here many times.

Unknown said...

madAsHell, my wife calls her Snora Jones, so I couldn't agree more, boring music.

Anonymous said...

instead of riffing off a good song and lyrics and fronting irony as your creative output, how about actually craft or seek some inspiration for an original song, since ur an "artist." Even the Feed the World, early celeb virtue signalling has more merit than just applying your voice to a known song, and adding some colourful but shallow lyric. the disheveled hair thing also does not thrill me...

Lewis Wetzel said...

King's words remind me of Camille Paglia talking about Ginsberg. At least Paglia admitted that Ginsberg's "Howl" would wouldn't stand up to a close literary reading. So she moved on, almost acknowledging that the genius she saw in Ginsberg originated in her and not in Ginsberg the poet.
Boomers have this weakness: whatever they like is narrowly tied to their parochial response to a work, but they can't admit that. Ginsberg must be genius for ages; Dylan must a genius for the ages.
King can't really describe why he thinks Dylan deserves a Nobel, other than that he likes his songs and other people like Dylan's songs. He uses adjectives that describe an emotional response to Dylan.
Andrew Klavan wrote a critique of the committee's choice to award Dylan a Nobel by giving an example of what great poetry should be, an giving the beginning of an analysis explaining why it is great that does not depend on being born between 1946 and 1960:

You could spend and well spend a year or two of your life studying the way Milton describes, not the fall of Lucifer from heaven, but how the ancients incorporated that fall into their own mythologies:

"How he fell
From Heav'n, they fabl'd, thrown by angry Jove

Sheer o're the Chrystal Battlements: from Morn

To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve,

A Summers day; and with the setting Sun

Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star

On Lemnos th' Aegean Ile."

The density of thought, the precise arrangement of words (the placement of "Dropt" has the effect of a hangman's trapdoor opening) and the milking of classical beauty to enhance Christian mythology could and should be subjects of entire treatises. And that's before you even get to the deep philosophy that underlies the comparison of the two cultures.

I've read literary criticism and "craft of the story" essays by King. He understands literature well. What he does not comprehend is that there is gulf between literary writing and popular writing. King never actually explains why Dylan's songwriting deserved a Nobel, and why Steven King's horror stories (for example) do not.

Bart said...

Strange thought I was signed in as me, not as an Unknown.
Bart

Will Cate said...

Fiona Apple is the most overrated pop star of the 90s.

Why she has no career any more is pretty much self-explanatory from watching this video.

MikeD said...

Being well into my eighth decade who the F! is this Apple person? Don't bother as I don't care.
Vis a Vis "Mad", I don't understand why you're lumping Norah Jones into your legion of despicable's? While I quit buying/paying attention to/or otherwise following the numerous musical genres I enjoy (40GB music is enough)a decade or so ago, I still enjoy Norah's "NYC with The Peter Malick Group". BTW, what's your opinion of Neko Case and her debut album "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood"? You'll be judged, not that shud you care!
BTW, I really miss Naptster, a really great way to share music.

Jupiter said...

Remarkable. She's obviously at least half in the bag, maybe almost ready to pass out, but her voice and phrasing are perfect. She can't get past her own talent to display the malice she clearly feels. It's hard to sing a hate song well, and she would rather sing well than hate well. Hmmmm, I think she'd really rather hate well, but her talent is not under her control.

Can anyone think of a good hate song? You're So Vain is the closest I can come, but that's actually more arch, good-humored, mocking scorn than real hatred. Why D'ya Do It?, by Marianne Faithfull? Now that's some rancor.

Qwerty Smith said...

Will Cate said "Fiona Apple is the most overrated pop star of the 90s."

Maybe *was* overrated. I'm not sure she still *is* rated at all. She's like one of those people you don't think about but may vaguely recall when reminded. She's the the 1990's Benny Mardones.

Sebastian said...

No, Americans do not have to rise to the level of Faulkner to get a Nobel, as T. Morrison showed.

@LW: "Andrew Klavan wrote a critique of the committee's choice to award Dylan a Nobel by giving an example of what great poetry should be." See, you can read Milton's best work and even without all the knowledge to appreciate him fully nonetheless recognize the greatness of his poetry within a few pages. Further analysis, and there is a lot to analyze, confirms the recognition. Now, not everyone has to write like that, etc. etc. But I am with Klavan. I gather that C. Ricks takes Dylan seriously, and his book is on my list. But he has a tough case to make, and most Dylan defenders, King included, don't even try to make it.

Curious George said...

"mccullough said...
Amy Winehouse is what Fiona Apple wishes she had been."

Well, except the dead part.

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

At least Criminal was good.

Anyway, playing the part of the celebrity raging lefty is so boring. It's been done ad nauseam. If Fiona wants real publicity for being a bad girl, she should embrace Trump. That would get her trending in a heartbeat.

Joe said...

I honestly have no idea who Fiona Apple is. Wiki time.

Anonymous said...

Where's Joni Mitchell when you need her, doing a spoken-word duet with Joyce Carol Oates, while Yoko Ono screams, as Bob Dylan observes from the shadows some high holy prayer meeting at the Global Church of American Populist Self-Art-Folk?

Lewis Wetzel said...

Sebastian said...
No, Americans do not have to rise to the level of Faulkner to get a Nobel, as T. Morrison showed.

I read Beloved for Ethnic Lit. It wasn't bad, but it was confused. Morrison condemned the racism of the whites, but then condemned the whites for being whites. To be white was to be an oppressor. To be Black was to be oppressed. Even the white Quakers who ran the underground railroad were racists. How can you condemn racism while insisting that every person's defining quality is his or her race?

JackWayne said...

King likes Faulkner. Which explains why I don't like King.

Paul Snively said...

Jupiter: Can anyone think of a good hate song?

REO Speedwagon's "Roll With the Changes" is still my favorite, presumably about a person.

Steely Dan's "Home At Last" is my favorite about a place, possibly because it reminds the narrator of a person.

Comanche Voter said...

Who is Fiona Apple and why should I care what she thinks or sings? Is she auditioning for the Dixie Chicks?

Sebastian said...

"How can you condemn racism while insisting that every person's defining quality is his or her race?" Easy. The validity of the condemnation depends on the identity of the condemner. Logic has nothing to do with it. Didn't they teach you standpoint theory in Ethnic Lit? You are the one who is confused (kidding! I'm with ya).

Anonymous said...

Somebody should get her a better publicist real soon now, and pay top dollar, that picture is the worst I've ever seen of a woman sill breathing. Or maybe it's a scene from Alien. Glad to hear she has a beautiful voice, my heart stopped the first time I heard Adele. So what if she sings bad things about Mr.T Some of the most beautiful music ever was born of the inquisition. To say nothing of any press being good press because if shoves everything else out of the room, same as happened with any one who Criticized Luther just made him stronger. He's the enemy of people I hate? Wonderful. Way to go, party of the stupid bullies.

LakeLevel said...

I wish that for just one time,
You could stand inside my shoes,
And just for that one moment I could be you.
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes,
You'd know what a drag it is to see you.

Big Mike said...

Which is more important? Comparing one to the other it has to be Mr. King. But compared to killing a couple hours watching a thoroughly predictable, thoroughly twee Hallmark Christmas movie, I'd say both ars a waste of kilobytes.

sane_voter said...

It appears Fiona has a receding hairline which is very visible at her part. thus why her hair is hanging over her face

sane_voter said...

Bless her heart

Michael Fitzgerald said...

@fionaapple Singing bad, vulgar words. Ruined a classic Christmas song. Sad.

eddie willers said...

Neko Case (and Cat Power) good.
Norah Jones boring.

I'm also digging Vespers.

Dave in Tucson said...

You can always tell whether there's a (D) or an (R) in the White House, by looking to see whether the nearest lefty is genuflecting in obeisance, or throwing a conniption because they haven't gotten their way.

eddie willers said...

BTW...I meant The Vespers.

Heard their song "Lawdy" played over a tense scene during the TV show Longmire and was blown away.

Unknown said...

Who is fiona apple?

Unknown said...

Who is fiona apple?

Biff said...

I remember when Fiona Apple's first album was released. I immediately put her in the category of "artist whom all the cool people tell me I should love, but who repels me when she doesn't bore me." Lots of talent from a technical perspective, though. She's the musical equivalent of that "important" book that everyone carries around because all the cool kids are "reading" it, but almost no one actually makes it past the first chapter.

Ann Althouse said...

"Though Apple has had relationships with other mercurial and famous men (Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson, Bored to Death-creator Jonathan Ames) it’s her late-Nineties relationship with magician/illusionist David Blaine that was the most curious – the pairing humanized him, and gave her a weird cultural cache; she wasn’t dating a guy in a band, she was dating a guy in an ice block."

Cache?

The only thing worse than using "cache" when you mean "cachet" is using the word "cache" correctly and pronouncing it like "cachet."

The Vault Dweller said...

The still for the image of Fiona Apple makes, it looks like she has a load of cum on her glasses.

Clyde said...

"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

-- Dean Vernon Wormer, Animal House, 1978

Virgil Hilts said...

Always liked Fiona Apple, and read a lot about her couple years ago. Kind of a recluse - a super beautiful woman in her 30s living alone in some mansion in Los Angeles and rarely coming out (except for runs to Mexico to buy hashish?). Watch her great cover of Across the Universe (for underappreciated Pleasantville) - she is mesmerizing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpjscJmSg8g&list=RDPpjscJmSg8g#t=60

Guildofcannonballs said...

Fiona Apple, an American singer and songwriter, has had her share of troubles suffering with eating disorders. Her lonely descent into depriving her body of food started after she was raped outside her home, when she was just twelve years old. Not surprisingly this had an extremely adverse impact on the young girl, and as a result she suffered from major depression and started to follow an erratic diet. She became extremely paranoid after the ordeal and also embarked on a desperate bid to lose weight.

The media started to say that Fiona Apple was anoerexic, but she says that the drastic change in her appearance was not out of a desire to be thin, but as a reaction to being raped. Self-injury.net mentions that in an attempt to clarify the media’s misunderstanding of her eating disorder, Fiona explained in a ‘Rolling Stone’ interview: “I definitely had an eating disorder. What was really frustrating for me was that everyone thought I was anorexic, and I wasn’t.”

“I was really depressed and self-loathing. For me, it wasn’t about being thin, it was about getting rid of the bait attached to my body. A lot of it came from the self-loathing that came from being raped at the point of developing my voluptuousness.”

“I just thought that if you had a body and if you had anything on you that would be grabbed, it would be grabbed. So I did purposely get rid of it.”

http://www.sick-celebrities.com/celebrities/fiona-apple-developed-eating-disorder-after-rape/

Rusty said...

Ann Althouse said...
"Though Apple has had relationships with other mercurial and famous men (Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson, Bored to Death-creator Jonathan Ames) it’s her late-Nineties relationship with magician/illusionist David Blaine that was the most curious – the pairing humanized him, and gave her a weird cultural cache; she wasn’t dating a guy in a band, she was dating a guy in an ice block."

Cache?

The only thing worse than using "cache" when you mean "cachet" is using the word "cache" correctly and pronouncing it like "cachet."

Thank you. A pet peeve of mine.

mikee said...

$870,000 paid out, and only one damn live song, performed by someone else at the award ceremony. Somehow I think the Nobel committee wasn't planning on having it end like this.

richard mcenroe said...

Can't choose. In too much pain. Hurt myself tripping over the low barnin this topic.

Sam L. said...

Neither. What's the point.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Jack Wayne said...
King likes Faulkner. Which explains why I don't like King.

12/7/16, 10:00 PM

King deserves a Nobel for the Dark Tower saga, but having finished it, he can die now. Nobels can be posthumous, right?


Bad Lieutenant said...

mikee said...
$870,000 paid out, and only one damn live song, performed by someone else at the award ceremony. Somehow I think the Nobel committee wasn't planning on having it end like this.

12/8/16, 8:59 AM


Yeah, that was one expensive gig. Woulda been worse with Kanye though.

Portlandmermaid said...

I'm adding looking up someone's nose to my visual hate list, along with people in movies deep kissing or brushing their teeth with lots of foamy toothpaste. Gah, makes me gag.

viejo loco said...

Who the Hell is Fiona Apple?

veni vidi vici said...

Decades after one or two minor hits that were successful as much for her fitting the "Pretty Waif" stereotype of hotness for their time, Fiona Apple, bereft of her former aesthetic glory and a decent producer to coach her songwriting, struggles for relevance.

*yawn*

Smilin' Jack said...

The only thing worse than using "cache" when you mean "cachet" is using the word "cache" correctly and pronouncing it like "cachet."

I don't see the big deal here. When you toss a ball to someone, whether you yell "cache!" or "cachet!" is just a matter of personal taste.

Unknown said...

Who is Fiona Apple?

If Apple Paltrow Martin married her she'd be Apple Apple!

Guildofcannonballs said...

You sad assed-cunt Rusty. Face as far as you know I am Delroy Lindo, Star of "Get Shorty."

Last we kept up our property rights of all others 'cause they too dumb to take our props.

My pet's peeves outway yours versa with or sans vice.

Drunken assheadedlyshitstain.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Wish I woulda started over,

Thanked Him for gettin' older.

Not made promises unsoberr.

Dusty pictures on the wall,

Frameless memories all,

Surely soon some will fall.

And no more standing tall.

Wish I woulda started over.