On his book Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination
Cover Interview of February 28, 2017
Lastly
This is probably a boring or obvious answer, but first and
foremost I’d really just like people to read the book and enjoy it. Apart from
that, I’d like to think it’ll challenge and hopefully change some of the ways
we discuss both Sixties music and rock music in general. I really do love all
of the music that’s discussed in this book and have no desire to be contrarian
or overly critical towards any of it. In many senses I think trying to get to
the bottom of some of the ways artists have been misheard is actually a
way of shining a light on just how extraordinary their work is, even when it’s
people we already know are really great. For instance, writing this book gave
me an even deeper appreciation for the music of artists like Bob Dylan, Aretha
Franklin, and the Beatles, all of whom are already pretty widely praised! So maybe
it’s just the educator in me, but I think my main goal for the book’s
consequences would be that people read it and learn from it, and have a good
time while doing so.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Lastly
This is probably a boring or obvious answer, but first and foremost I’d really just like people to read the book and enjoy it. Apart from that, I’d like to think it’ll challenge and hopefully change some of the ways we discuss both Sixties music and rock music in general. I really do love all of the music that’s discussed in this book and have no desire to be contrarian or overly critical towards any of it. In many senses I think trying to get to the bottom of some of the ways artists have been misheard is actually a way of shining a light on just how extraordinary their work is, even when it’s people we already know are really great. For instance, writing this book gave me an even deeper appreciation for the music of artists like Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and the Beatles, all of whom are already pretty widely praised! So maybe it’s just the educator in me, but I think my main goal for the book’s consequences would be that people read it and learn from it, and have a good time while doing so.