2013: the year of Give The People What They Want! More Vin Diesel movies! A new Eminem song! A government shutdown! Jonathan Rhys Meyers as TV’s Dracula! What more could the American people want and need, with so many great offerings already on the table? Why, a newly expanded book about Celine Dion, of course! I mean, what American home is complete without a book delving into the life and work of Canada’s Sweetheart on its coffee table?
But this isn’t just any ol’ coffee table book, no! It’s the new and expanded version of Carl Wilson’s Let’s Talk About Love for Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series — and it’s really more about the whys and hows of personal taste than Celine’s challenges as a young teen, her growth as an artist, and favorite milkshake flavor when she was growing up in Montreal. (Hint: it’s vanilla. The joke makes itself!) The new and improved Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste includes the complete text of the original version, plus essays from people like Mary Gaitskill, James Franco, Nick Hornby, Owen Pallett, Krist Novoselic, and more. Oh, and it’s out March 13, 2014, just in time for you to super conspicuously read it on your flight to SXSW.
Table of Contents:
PART I
Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste
Carl Wilson
1. Let’s Talk About Hate
2. Let’s Talk About Pop (and Its Critics)
3. Let’s Talk in French
4. Let’s Talk About World Conquest
5. Let’s Talk About Schmaltz
6. Let’s Sing Really Loud
7. Let’s Talk About Taste
8. Let’s Talk About Who’s Got Bad Taste
9. Let’s Talk with Some Fans
10. Let’s Do a Punk Version of “My Heart Will Go On” (or, Let’s Talk About Our Feelings)
11. Let’s Talk About Let’s Talk About Love
12. Let’s Talk About Love
PART II
Essays: This Is What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Carl Wilson, “Introduction”
Nick Hornby, “The Artists We Deserve”
Krist Novoselic, “With the Lights On, It’s Less Useless”
Ann Powers, “If the Girls Were All Transported”
Mary Gaitskill, “The Most Obvious Thing”
Jason King, “Compared to What?”
Daphne Brooks, “Let’s Talk About Diana Ross (In Memory of Trayvon Martin)”
Drew Daniel, “Deep in the Game”
Sukhdev Sandhu, “Children of the Corn”
James Franco, “Acting In and Out of Context”
Marco Roth and the Editors of n+1, “Too Much Sociology”
Jonathan Sterne, “Giving Up on Giving Up on Good Taste”
Owen Pallett, “When I Come Home”
Sheila Heti, “Playlist: Let’s Listen to Love”
PART III
Afterword
Carl Wilson, “Let’s Talk Later”
• 33 1/3: http://333sound.com
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