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List Price: $10.95 | | Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group
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Editorial Review:
Non-fans regard Céline Dion as ersatz and plastic, yet to those who love her, no one could be more real, with her impoverished childhood, her (creepy) manager-husband's struggle with cancer, her knack for howling out raw emotion. There's nothing cool about Céline Dion, and nothing clever. That's part of her appeal as an object of love or hatred -- with most critics and committed music fans taking pleasure (or at least geeky solace) in their lofty contempt. This book documents Carl Wilson's brave and unprecedented year-long quest to find his inner Céline Dion fan, and explores how we define ourselves in the light of what we call good and bad, what we love and what we hate.
Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3) Reviews:
Brought to you by Celine Dion 
2008-06-07 - What would you do if you were a multi-platinum selling artist with millions of adoring fans world wide; yet still, for some reason completely inexplicable to yourself, you were all-too-often vilified by non-fans and 'snobby' music critics? How about pay a music critic to write a book about why people shouldn't hate you, targeted to that very audience?
Enter Carl Wilson. Let me be clear. I liked this book. It is well-written and thought-provoking, and my little conspiracy theory doesn't imply readers have nothing to learn from his experiment. I agree, that we should put less energy into actively hating anything so banal; and certainly a good thing to keep in mind the humanness of Celine fans. So they like to cry; they're still the same species as I am, no? OK, granted.
The tip-off came (I'll forgive the author mistakenly referring to John Cage's silent piece as 3'33", perhaps a 'radio-edit' for Celine fans) when Mr. Wilson went to Vegas and got so sad he locked himself in his hotel with a pint of bourbon. Feeling alienated in that big bad pinnacle of American Capitalism (for better or worse) opened him up for a true Celine experience: A New Day, Dion's Vegas show. I went to Vegas and had fun. It wasn't about feeling like I was about to cry, though thinking of Wilson locked in his hotel with no one to talk to but Jack Daniels was mildly depressing. So maybe this predilection to feeling sad and sentimental even at a time you could be out having a great time is a main difference between me and Celine fans (not that every Celine fan locks themselves in their hotels rooms when they go to Vegas, or can't have a good time; but something about enjoying a good cry...often.) "It's OK to feel sentimental sometimes", Wilson wants us to appreciate. Grandmothers die, relationships come and go, and it's all so very very sad. Even when it's happy it's somehow sad: eg, "My Heart Will Go On". Art doesn't always have to make you think, it can just resonate with all these emotions swimming around. But that is just the point. Who goes to Vegas and locks themselves in a hotel room? Someone who is lame. OK, OK, I don't hate that person. I'm even sorry they feel so alienated and sad, but I just don't get it. Open the door and go have some fun. He's so bent on figuring out how to appreciate Celine, he can't even appreciate Vegas for what it is. It seems almost inconsistent.
The second tip-off came when the author gained a teary-eyed appreciation for "My Heart Will Go On" because it was featured on one of his favorite shows: The Gilmore Girls...uh, OK, maybe not the best writer to tackle the tediousness of over-sentimentality.
In another way, it may be the most postmodern piece of writing I've ever read. So postmodern are we that we can learn to like anything now. So relative is 'taste', that once we recognize the subjectivity of our own likes and dislikes, we can learn to appreciate others' tastes and gain a deeper understanding of them. True, Wilson puts it better. He's a better writer, and this and other points make this an interesting self-exploration to witness. But I prefer to think of the postmodern condition as one we need to temper, not embrace and jump in head first. Maybe we can actually take a step back and not let it define everything we do or like. Maybe this relativism can be restricted somehow, not expanded. I still want to be able to passionately dislike something, even if I can explain it away as my own subjective tastes.
And what about Celine? I could rattle off plenty of sentimental music I like, even "schmaltzy" music. There's nothing inherent about those qualities that repulses me. It can be done effectively, tastefully. So why do I so abhor Celine? Her religious devotion to her own voice, for which she is the God-appointed guardian; the watered-down lovey-dovey lyrics that are so purposefully inoffensive to anyone on planet Earth; a look that suggests enough hairspray and plastic surgery can make anyone into a glamorous diva; a stage presence that makes Barry Manilow look like Prince; and that God-awful contrived mouth resonance that transforms her tone into a ring modulator and makes every "S" sound like an "SH". Not much about that in the book.
I'll give the author the fact that we can no longer define aesthetic taste in Kantian terms. But it's not so much that I think Celine is in bad taste, as I think she is tasteless and lukewarm. Her fan-base is for the most part not made up of people who research out tasteful music. They don't want to, it's too time-consuming. I can allow for people to listen to her without having to admit that it is now good music. And could we reverse the author's appeal for democracy in taste back to Celine fans? Could we, say, talk them in to appreciating death metal, experimental jazz, or acid house? I think, generally speaking, no. And further, if someone said they hated black metal, and talked to me all about how it's so consumed in nonstop negativity, monotonous in sound, and you can't hear the lyrics anyway...that's OK. I would laugh. They are so totally right and I like it anyway. It's OK with me if somebody doesn't like it. Why should it be so important for Celine and her fans for me to like her? Everyone has stuff they don't like. Are we all just feeding our egos by thinking we're better than the other? No.
So, sure, Celine is a human being with real feelings; so are her fans. And we all have subjective tastes. I can still think it's tasteless drivel that takes up more than its fair share of our airwaves.
A Highlight of the 33 1/3 Series! 
2008-04-01 - I've read all of the 33 1/3s, and most of them are great books, each in their own way. So when I say Let's Talk About Love is my new favorite, you should trust me, b/c I know what I'm talking about. And I don't care one whit for Celine Dion... can't stand her. But Carl Wilson is an amazing writer. Maybe the best music critic we've got (visit his blog, Zolius!) and this book is truly a brilliant piece of work that waaaaay exceeds the parameters of its subject.
Check it out - you'll be glad you did, I swear.
Let's talk about a little book that packs a powerful punch...
2007-12-11 - When I took Introduction to Aesthetics in college, I wish we had a text as smart, accessible, funny, and just plain awesome as this little book on Celine Dion to introduce us to the material. What Wilson has done here with his approach to the subject of taste and tackiness is nothing less than stunning. It is a must read for people who write about music and those that love to read about it.
Nota bene: You need not be a fan of Celine Dion to love this book.
