this post is obviously against all new things

Ross Barkan:

The culture … does get stuck. We are too backward-facing already. The Metropolitan Review has run its fair share of retrospectives, but I’ve been in the mood, of late, to crack down on them. There is always going to be another anniversary of a great old work of art. There is always another famous dead writer we can celebrate. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, as I begin work, for this Substack, on an essay celebrating the 60th anniversary of Pet Sounds. But I want new musical horizons, too. Imagine if the rock musicians of the 1960s spent much of their day fixating on the pop of the 1940s. As a culture, we need less mimesis and less retrogression. A lot of this is the fault of the algorithmic internet, which rewards copycat trends and wearying groupthink. Cultural nostalgia is nothing new, though it can feel especially repressive these days.

Responses:

1) There is no art without “mimesis,” in the sense that Barkan uses the term here: all art responds to prior art in a thousand ways. And the problem, according to him, is not people copying older art but rather being too interested in it. He seems to want, as an alternative to mimesis, amnesia.

2) Interest in and knowledge of the past is neither “retrogression” nor “nostalgia” — not does it constitute “groupthink,” because a staggeringly wide range of opinions is possible (and indeed extant) about pre–21st-century cultural productions.

3) It’s noteworthy that Barkan, because he edits a Substack publication, thinks of himself as a cultural policeman who can “crack down” on those overly attentive to the past. (Remember this day the next time you want to write a piece about an old book, comrade!)

4) Writing an essay on Pet Sounds is not, in my judgment, something to feel “guilty” about. (Unless it’s a lousy essay, of course.) Albums like Dark Side of the Moon and Rumours are regularly near the top of the charts, but when Pet Sounds hit number 136 after Brian Wilson’s death last year, that was the highest it had been since soon after its release — and after that it immediately disappeared again. It’s not an under-rated record — almost everyone who has listened to it knows that it’s great — but it’s an under-listened record, and if Barkan can bring it to the attention of a few people who don’t know it, he will be doing a mitzvah. Ninety percent of everything is crap, and anything non-crap needs and deserves our celebration, whether it’s old or new.

5) Indeed, “There is always going to be another anniversary of a great old work of art” — which makes for a great opportunity to write about it, alert readers to its existence and its excellences, and maybe even inspire young artists to try to match it. Bob Dylan wasn’t “fixating on the pop of the 1940s,” but he was compulsively fascinated by and profoundly knowledgable about the long great history of demotic American music, what he calls “historical-traditional music.” And his absorption in that vast old musical world was absolutely essential to his greatness. When we write about great things from the past, we’re helping to feed future Dylans.

6) “Repressive”?? To paraphrase Lenin, who’s repressing whom?

7) Barkan has a new novel out, which may play a role in his desire for less attention to be given to old books and more attention to new ones. I am not immune to the feeling myself, but consider this thought experiment:

It’s the year 2046. Back in 2028, Ross Barkan experienced a conversion to Theravada Buddhism. He quit the Metropolitan Review and entered a monastery in remote Thailand, and has never been heard from since. A young critic found a copy of Barkan’s Colossus in a used bookstore and devoured it. He wants to write an appreciation of it for the Metropolitan Review, but the editor says, “Don’t bring that cultural nostalgia in here. Do you think the great novelists of the 1920s were fixating on the fiction of the 1900s? Get outta here and come back to me when you have a review of something published last week.”

Is this the future Ross Barkan wants?