Okay, so I figure this won’t be the venue for soliciting reactions (I have no strong reaction myself, frankly, beyond mouthing what a few others have already said), but here’s a bit of what’s out there:
But this is all part of a nastier trend in writing about music, one that resembles a dying yawp of a certain type of white dude who still believes in Real Rock And Roll and who is genuinely unnerved by the idea of women fashioning pop culture in their own image.
Often seems to me that an unacknowledged subtext of this kind of dispute connects to how seriously and literally the commenter takes romantic love. I don’t know anything about Moody’s personal life and have never wanted to read his fiction, but from what I can gather he makes a great deal of the dysfunctional family. For all her celebrity bubble etc., Swift takes these matters seriously — more than many in the celebrity bubble. This in itself excites Moody’s contempt.
[note: Christgau’s words are comments he posted at his Expert Witness page. Might be worth pointing that out, comments being something different than an actual essay, and truthfully, if it were anyone other than someone famous like Christgau, I’d probably think twice about re-posting this.]
The Twitter search “Rick Moody” is currently pulling up a few gems.
And by the way, did you know that Rick Moody interviewed Richard Meltzer in 2012?
RockCritics.com 