Monday, September 11, 2006

The return of Philosophywatch

Once upon a time, I dreamed up and co-edited a column called Philosophywatch, which kept a sharp eye on the MSM for gratuitous references to philosophers, theorists, critics, and artists. Dragging Sartre and Martin Amis into a CD review is the definition of bathos, if you ask me, and it still cracks me up when magazine and newspaper writers do stuff like that.

So I thought I'd resurrect Philosophywatch for Brainiac. Every Monday, if I can find enough to write about, I'll tell you what I've found. Readers, please send me any examples that you run across.

Here's that CD review I mentioned, from the Sept. 10 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Beck, The Information. Is that title of Beck Hansen's new album cribbed from Martin Amis' 1996 novel about professional jealousy? Is the former boy wonder irked that all his musical skills can't help sell records? It could have been reading Jean-Paul Sartre, or maybe listening to the music that now tops the charts, that inspired him to pen the strummy funk tune "Nausea."

An "Executive Pursuits" essay that appeared in the Business section of the Times on Sept. 9, meanwhile, dragged Camus (kicking and screaming) into an account of rock-climbing in upstate New York:

Terrified, I stared back at the rock wall, crouching into a semifetal position and puzzling over my apparently contradictory case of acrophobia.... I felt a sudden kinship with the mythical rock-roller Sisyphus. But rather than calming my nerves, that only prompted me to remember an observation of my existentialist philosopher hero Albert Camus: 'A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself.'

I understand, BTW, that Sacha Baron Cohen name-checks Camus in the movie "Talladega Nights," but that's another, less odious phenomenon.

Posted by Joshua Glenn at 03:19 PM

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