Stuck in the Past
Lionel Shriver, writing for the Guardian UK, tackles a few topics in this column, starting with contemporary book cover design, and ending with contemporary jazz. Both of these topics are widely off the mark and betray a mindset that is stuck resolutely in bygone days, as well as a whiff of anti-intellectualism.
Regarding book cover design, and the larger world of design in general: his complaint is that young designers are growing up with computers as their prime tool, and lack the ability to draw, and this leads to poor cover design. I’ll agree that there is a glut of poor book covers flooding the market today, the most obvious of which consists of “mysteriously” cropped stock photography and self-consciously “edgy” typography. But book covers, like most art, obeys Sturgeon’s Law (in brief: 90% of everything is crap), and there are always fresh and exciting covers being produced. Poor design comes not from a lack of traditional drawing ability, but an unwillingness to edge away from what is currently in style. He also asserts that “many enduring classics of packaging involved someone sitting down to draw or paint a picture,” ignoring that the overwhelming majority of classic book and album covers are photographic in nature. Sure, there’s plenty of great illustrative cover design out there, but illustrative art is no the be-all and end-all of cover design, and whether or not it has fallen out of favor seems to bear little on the advent of computer design. After all, computers are capable of being used as illustrative tools, just as pen, pencil, paint, etc. Maybe if he wasn’t getting what he wanted from the 13 rounds of revision his publisher went through in designing his latest book cover, he should aim that ire at the individual designers (or better yet, perhaps his own ability to communicate his needs to them!), rather than their tools. There’s no lack of talented illustrators out there today.
And, regarding jazz: Using Blue Note Records’ announcement of their plans to sell ringtones of classic jazz tunes as a springboard, rails against the commercially dire straits of jazz music today. He places the blame solely at the feet of Free Jazz musicians, who apparently have “[t]he same perverse obliviousness to what an audience really wants that has alienated so many would-be viewers from modern art.” In Shriver’s mind, this has turned people off from seeing “many jazz musicians today, playing at a club near you, whose music is accessible, tuneful, and tap-your-foot rhythmic.” Never mind that Jazz since the 40s (a time he cites, along with the 60s as jazz’s heyday) left behind such populist concerns in favor of the sounds of bebop and its descendants, a musically sophisticated style that wrenched jazz from the dancefloor and required engagement and musical knowledge from both listener and performer. “I’m convinced that, while it may be fun to play, even most jazz musicians can’t stand to listen to it,” he insists, referring to Free Jazz. Of course, he can’t be bothered to understand the form as anything other than “unstructured, often atonal and unmelodiously improvised,” ignoring the sheer range of tonalities and levels of melodic content in the genre. Apparently, it’s just not toe-tapping enough, so he can’t be bothered to investigate further, or attempt to engage the music on terms other than shallow pleasantries and adherence to European-classical derived notions of craft. It’s an act of contempt and a disservice to the fans to explore what lies outside of the realms of traditional Western music forms and rules, and because of those bad, bad, Free Jazzers, none of his friends will go see the accessible, danceable jazz bands he likes. Poor Lionel.
