Square? No. And yes.

Another brief hiatus from posting comes to a close. Family in town, job interviews and the related (aggregiously expensive) shopping for suits and hose have kept me from this cushy seat. But I'm back.

Hello again.

I heard Michael Cunningham, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hours, on the Diane Rehm Show today. He has a new book. Diane was asking him about his focus on past literary works in his stories. He was waxing on about how beautiful Walt Whitman's poetry is, how renegade the quiet, subversive Virginia Woolf was. He sounded very typical. He said, "ah, yes" too much. I pictured him leaning back in his studio chair, his stuffy British-type closed-mouth laughter indicating some sort of higher level of understanding he and Diane had reached during the last program break.

This guy is a square, I thought. A square with one hell of a flair for short fiction. But still, a square.

Here is his photo. Hm.


But then (I always write people off too quickly) he said something that caught me. He said that Whitman and Woolf were renegade authors (true) and that some of the best canonical authors and poets began their literary careers as outcasts (also true). He asserted that Dante's Inferno, written in the vernacular of the day, could be comparable to an epic rap today. His implication was that hip-hop is the next renegade literary form. One day, Mos Def may be the next Whitman. A common man writing of the joys and hardships of common people.

This guy isn't square.

This guy, however, is square. He is Brent Staples, an opinion writer for the New York Times.

Here is his photo. Hm.


Just so happens that this piece in today's NYT comments on hip-hop and how "the hip-hop media" and "the hip-hop press" advocate violence and glorify crime. Ah, those poor minority youth, he writes.


First, this is old hash.

Second, Mr. Staples doesn't know the difference between rap and hip-hop (the terms are not interchangable and are not synonymous). Maybe Brent needs to spend some time with the common people, shoot the breeze with the minority youth he's so concerned about. Rap and hip-hop are underground phenomena, created by people who are either angry or hopeful (or both), but who see injustice. Yes, there are bootie songs and drug songs and killing songs, but those won't make it into history. True hip-hop has roots and respect.

People like Brent Staples need to get hip to the notion that poor, angry communities raise poor, angry children. This music speaks to them and their feelings, glorifies what they see around them. If you want the children to have nicer, kinder music to grow up with, let's talk about the reasons gangsta rap has gotten so popular and so violent.

Let's talk with the people, not about them.