LET'S TALK ABOUT LOVE

 Let's Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson. 176 pgs. © 2007

This is quite a little brilliant book. The 33 1/3 series are short tomes on popular music by a variety of authors and each one is unique. One could be a straightforward album review and the next could be a memoir on the author's relationship to the music. This one falls under criticism but it's not criticizing Celine Dion per se--the author is critically evaluating their own critical evaluations--meta, right? 

Wilson uses Dion's award winning yet polarizing album to dive into a larger philosophical discussion about taste and makes some unique points while observing the artist through multiple lenses. What is taste? How do we come by it? Is it the amalgamation of imagination and understanding of an object, as Immanuel Kant suggests? Or is taste a marker of social class in society that we use to exclude others and rise in social ranks? How can an artist who is so reviled and made fun of also be so enduring and loved the world over? The prose is witty in a way that only good critics can achieve but gets the reader thinking about their own perspectives on the things they like and dislike. In the context of Dion, Wilson doesn't let anyone off the hook--not even himself.  He criticizes his own tastes while still getting in good punches on Celine, but by the end he’s found some common ground with her.  The book hits on larger conversations about art that aren’t really talked about enough—we can always argue over what makes good art/bad art, but we rarely stop to ask ourselves, why? This is a great entry text into that process and lends itself to multiple conversations.