Okay, go read this.
My supervisor asked me to consider O’Donoghue's review in reference to Transmetropolitan, with a question in mind, "How seriously can I really take this stuff?"
I'm struck, firstly, by O’Donoghue's clear desire to appear 'clever.' This is a common illness amongst reviewers, and it usually presents itself in a series of pretentious condemnations of whatever they review. I have no idea if this particalur book on Dylan is in fact crap, but I'm also not sure O’Donoghue's review will help me with that.
His objection seems to beg the question. He declares that "Dylan’s lyrics are meant to be heard, not read," but that comes only a few sentences after he tells us that "Ricks ... suggest[s] that those who wish... to deny Dylan his place alongside Shakespeare [are] elitist." This is an utterly bizarre comparison to make, since (to paraphrase) Shakespeare's lines are meant to be performed, not read. I suspect that O’Donoghue doesn't mean Shakespeare's actual plays, or even his published poetry (which was written for the page).
Instead, he uses Shakespeare as a metonymic reference to "literature which we have already agreed is 'good,'" and there's the circular reasoning. Ricks is a crackpot for claiming that Dylan has a place next to Shakespeare because, seemingly, Shakespeare is axiomatically worthy of our attention. Given the tone of the review, it's just as important to ask why we should study Shakespeare as text, as we it is to ask that question of Dylan. Now, the irony is that I pretty much agree that neither Dylan nor Shakespeare come off nearly as well from dry text as they do in performance (assuming a somewhat skilled performer), but O’Donoghue's blind spot makes me wonder if he's really thought all of this through.
I suspect that his objection isn't really that Dylan's supposed to be heard not read, but that Dylan's "a pop singer" (a point he mentions twice in a sentence), and not 'a poet.' Again, I don't know who this "O’Donoghue" person is. He might be an expert on this stuff, but amongst music enthusiasts, Dylan is a Folk Singer or a Rock Singer and occasionally a Protest Singer. A good test of a genre is whether is applies not based on a perception of quality, but on a somewhat object set of observable stylistic criteria. Dylan doesn't actually belong to the category 'Pop Singer,' into which we can throw both the amazingly talented (Chuck Berry) and the utterly banal (Christina Agulera).
I hear the real content of O’Donoghue's review a lot from first-year students, and occasionally from my girlfriend. "Why can't you just enjoy the book without ruining it?" By 'ruining' they of course mean 'analysing.' There's a particularly enthusiastic (and somewhat self-righteous) objection to 'ruining' anything that the Objecter genuinely enjoys, as if my analysis will ruin his or her enjoyment. Therefore, popular entertainment, the stuff that isn't traditionally associated with literary study, is supposedly totally off-limits to analysis/ruination. A lot of people genuinely enjoy it; ergo, us literary critics shouldn't be allowed to go anywhere near it. Serious critical attention sucks all the ‘cool’ out of it. The corallary, of course, is that what we can analyse/ruin is necessary not something that is enjoyable.
Now, again, I haven't read Ricks' book and I don't know the "O’Donoghue" guy from a hole in the ground, but his review echoes a lot of sentiment I've already heard in objection to the study of popular entertainment, so I'm as yet unconvinced that his review is an accurate portrayal of Ricks' book, as opposed to O’Donoghue's own attitudes.
Now, as this applies to me and specifically to Transmetropolitan and how seriously I should take it, that is a very good question. I think I'm ethically required, even forced, to take it as seriously as its content requires me to. The series is full of over-blown references designed specifically to horrify, offend, and amuse the reader (the off-hand mention of buying "powdered Welshman" from the corner store is my personal favourite!), but all of that revultion and amusement supports the framework of the story, which is to make readers hyperaware of their own cultural assumptions.
My friend Jay, who read the series long before I did (as well as Sandman and all things Moore), asked one day, "What would I do if I woke up 200 years from now in a world that was that radically different than ours? I'd like to think I'd embrace it, but I don't know." I think Transmet, when it works (and isn't just a mouth-piece for Ellis' anger du jour), forces readers to ask that very question: how would I live in a world with such radically untraditional morality? Do I live in one already? How do I define 'traditional morality'? Against what am I comparing the 'untraditional'?
The real question at the bottom of it all is this: how do I tell the difference between cultural drift (usually based on aesthetics masquerading as ethics) and rock-bottom morality? I'm reminded of the boy who turns himself into a cloud of nanobots. The notion is initially horrific, but through description and explanation, readers are forced to ask themselves a whole series of questions about what constitutes life itself and human identity.
So, how seriously can I take it? About as seriously as its content tells me to.