Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3)

Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3)

Non-fans regard Céline Dion as ersatz and plastic, yet to those who love her, no one could be more real, with her impoverished childhood, her (creepy) manager-husband's struggle with cancer, her knack for howling out raw emotion. There's nothing cool about Céline Dion, and nothing clever. That's part of her appeal as an object of love or hatred - with most critics and committed music fans taking pleasure (or at least geeky solace) in their lofty contempt. This book documents Carl Wilson's brave and unprecedented year-long quest to find his inner Céline Dion fan, and explores how we define ourselves in the light of what we call good and bad, what we love and what we hate. "Brilliant." -- Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise "It's fascinating stuff...By turns hilarious and heartwarming." -- Guardian Unlimited Arts blog, March 2008 "A wide-ranging book, one predicated on the possibility that what repels us may say more about us than what attracts us...[an] insightful, engaging, and unexpectedly moving book." -- The Globe and Mail , January 19, 2008 "An important study- not just of Dion and pop music but also of the changing nature of criticism in the popular realm." -- Bookforum , January 2008 "This could be the best book of the series...razor-sharp and unerringly intelligent." -- John Wenzel, The Denver Post “The always critical and erudite Mr. Wilson actually approached Let's Talk About Love as a non-fan grappling with questions of "good" and "bad" taste... -- Idolator.com “a rigorous, perceptive and very funny meditation on what happens when you realize that there's more to life than being hip, and begin to grapple with just what that "more" might be.” -- Montreal Gazette “A book pondering the aesthetics of Celine risks going wrong in about 3,000 different ways...Instead, this book goes very deeply right.” --Sam Anderson, New York Magazine Punk, metal, even social-justice rock such as U2 or Rage Against the Machine, with their emphatic slogans of individuality and independence, are as much "inspirational" or "motivational" music as Céline's is, but for different subcultural groups. They are just as one-sided and unsubtle. Morally you could fairly ask what is more laudable about excess in the name of rage and resentment than immoderation in thrall to love and connection. The likely answer would be that Céline is conformist, quiescent, unsubversive. "Subversion" today is sentimentality's reverse: It is nearly always a term of approval. To show the subversiveness of a song, TV show or movie is tantamount to validating it, not just in pop criticism but in academic scholarship. Tens of millions of people around the world love Céline Dion. Many millions more can't stand her. Why? Carl Wilson, by no means a Céline fan at the sta