The guilty pleasures of great minds
As told to Philip Oltermann of the Guardian.
Stanley Fish, literary theorist, legal scholar - Country music
Every time I return to it after an absence, I am struck again by the power and integrity of country music. In part it is the lyrics, self-consciously clever (“If I said you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?”), alert to and accepting of contradictions (“She’s a Saturday night out on the town/Church on Sunday girl”), precise in their observation of small detail (“She left the suds in the bucket and the clothes hanging out on the line”). In part it is the structuring of a narrative (usually unabashedly maudlin) by a line that gradually changes meaning, as when George Jones sings, “He stopped loving her today”, and reveals in the last verse that he has stopped only because he is dead. In part it is the affirmation and exploration of a raunchy Christianity that holds drinking, cheating, criminality and Jesus in a volatile and energising mix. In part it is the extraordinary musicianship of pianists, fiddlers and guitarists who bear comparison to members of any symphony orchestra. And most of all it is the fact that when I’m in the car searching for something to listen to, the sound of country music, even in just a few notes, is unmistakable. Country music knows what it is.
Martha Nussbaum, philosopher - Baseball
When the Chicago White Sox won the World Series in 2005, I was in Japan, lecturing on justice for all the world’s people. But all the while, my heart was with my team, my boys: with the heroic strength of Paulie, the heart of Bad Bobby (even larger than his 270lb body) and, not least, the in-your-face manner and indomitable spirit of AJ. I felt it was unfair that I was in Japan talking about justice, rather than at home, where I could be near them. I expressed my annoyance by wearing Sox T-shirts throughout the conference. Their all-black elegance fitted well with the rest of my wardrobe. I have been a baseball fan since childhood, when my father took me to Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia to show me examples of will, excellence and joy. I associate baseball with those values, and with my delight at going to a special event with my father. My father was a working-class man, yet I was brought up in a snooty aristocratic milieu, because that was what he had made his way into. But he secretly communicated disdain for its airs and graces, showing me that the real world was the ballpark, not the Junior Dance Assembly. I love the fact that the White Sox are Chicago’s working-class team. Marcus Aurelius said that the first lesson in ethical impartiality was to learn not to be a sports fan, and I have not learned that lesson, nor do I want to learn it. Pondering that apparent contradiction helps me think better about how we can build a world where we support the urgent needs of people everywhere, while still having something improbably wonderful to love.
Steven Pinker, psychologist - Rock lyrics
Just let me hear some of that rock and roll music, any old way you choose it, it’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it, any old time you use it. I know that classical music is more sophisticated, but - I feel like I’m confessing to a murder - I just don’t listen to it. The 1,900 songs on my iPod include jazz, blues, soul, klezmer and country, but the largest single category (49.4%) is rock. In my books, I’ve analysed rock lyrics for their relevance to linguistics: Bob Dylan’s “God said to Abraham, kill me a son” is a perfect example of a benefactive double-object dative construction; Paul McCartney’s “She could steal but she could not rob” illustrates a subtle contrast in lexical semantics. I’ve also used them to exemplify features of human nature: Jim Croce’s “You don’t mess around with Jim” explains the psychology of reputation; John Lennon’s “I want you so bad it’s driving me mad”, though hardly the most poetic expression of endearment, encapsulates the logic of paradoxical tactics in courtship and similar problems of binding one’s implicit promises. Still, I can’t say that my musical tastes are driven by my scholarly passions. In the words of a certain poet and philosopher: it’s only rock’n’roll, but I like it.
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