• Title: The Rest is Noise
• Author: Alex Ross
• Genre/Subject: Music history
• Publisher: Picador
• Publication Date: 2007
• Start date: 8/31/2022
• Finish date: 9/10/2022

Review:

591 pages, but as the Byzantine Emperor (Constantin’s illustrious successor Justinian) declared

“Solomon I have bested thee!”

Meaning I thought Life of Johnson was the most odious tome I had ever struggled through, but then this.

I learned a lot: Strauss, Mahler, Bartok, and lots of history illuminated for me that I never learned in high school. Where’s the however pivot?

However (here it is!). Get a fucking editor. And not one of your fawning sycophants that think because you are the music critic for The New Yorker you are above all other authors.

Avante-garde, en français, means vanguard in a military sense. In the 20th century it was corrupted to mean “I got tenure, bitches!”. John Cage can suck my nuts. Schoenberg too.