Flop Eared Mule A Country Music Death Beast and Worker in the Dylan Industrial Complex | Sydney, Australia | Est. 2004

I'm aware of what the words "Céline Dion" mean in conversation, particularly a musical one. It's the absolute opposite of everything you want to be and everyone you want to be a fan of. I don't have to tell you that. But two days ago apart from "that Titanic song" I couldn't have named a Céline Dion song, let alone album. I also had little idea of specific charges against her, other than: " corporate pap." The most formed thought about her was actually based on the fact someone, at some time, somewhere for some reason told me she had an album of folk songs in French that was actually quite good. (I still don't know if that is true.) I have occasionally mentioned this in a Devil's Advocate bemused tone in conversation like, hey, she may not be all that bad if only she let out her inner Daniel Lanois. Condescending, sure, but beyond that I put no effort into hating, nor liking, nor thinking about.

I now know specific technical charges include (J'accuse Céline!) that she has pointy features, over-emotes every note, thumps her chest and bulldozes through a song. Oh yeah, and she sang that Titanic thing.

Carl Wilson, being Canadian, sometime resident of Montreal and forced to watch indie hero Elliott Smith steamrolled by the Dion machine at the Oscars had no such luxury of benign/oblivious neglect; he hated Dion. And it felt personal.

Why are "tastes" so personal? What is "taste" anyway? Are they socially and class based? The answer to that is SPOILER!! yes. If so, why do they feel so natural and so spontaneous and seamless? If so, are they wrong? What is cool? How do the hierarchies of "coolness" replicate the consumerist/capitalist/conformist batterings of The Man and the desperately uncool (Céline, hon, that's you.)

This is also a funny book. Hilarious in spots. But not try-hard. It satisfies if you have or have not heard of Bourdieu. (I have, but only because he's been brawled over in countless Internet flame wars on high/low culture.)

You are allowed to remain unmoved by Céline, too. It's not "Céline's as important as Louis Armstrong and Bach, so shutupsnobs." I suppose if I had to sum up the "message" in one hyphenated word it would be: Self-reflection. And more one words: curiosity, humanity, humility, democracy, sprawl, discomfort.

Céline is a MacGuffin, a hook to hang these reflections on but also the book is about Céline. Some of the most interesting points, to me, come from the examination of her particular Quebecer culture, and how this makes Céline more of a blank slate for Anglophone critics and audience. When we see and hear the particular forms of emotional and personal performative and musical "excess" by African American cultures in soul or hip hop or white American cultures in country, we can put them in a social-cultural-racial-theoretical context instantly and have some intellectual empathy because of it. But ... Quebec? White North American but ... different ...

So, uh ... what about those Expos, eh?

I don't know where to put Quebec and Quebec-ness in my mind map of these issues, like I can Dolly Parton or even 50 Cent and Britney. Neither do most other people, so it's almost like Céline comes before us without a cultural backstory that might explain her to us. A working class country music fan, of course, knows all about how their music gets sneered at as a way of asserting cultural/economic superiority. The "I like all music except country" phenom. I don't need to tell you about that.

Turns out Céline had a classic Appalachian country music story -- poor, non-urban, sprawling religious family. Ridiculed by the cultural insiders for her "frizzy hair and snaggle teeth." Pursuing fame as the way out. AH! NOW I understand! I mean, I still don't want to kick back to her music but I can begin to see her now. The complex ebb and flow of the province's relationship with its most famous fille is fascinating.

The book wings between matters Céline-specific and the issue of musical taste from multiple angles, the philosophical, the sociological, the empirical, the neurobiological, the evolutionary. It looks at the history of "schmaltz" and "sentimentality" in music and how and when those things got surgically removed from "cool" and what if anything we have lost because of it. And it still finds time for Carl's own -- if I may use a sentimental Oprah-trademarked phrase -- "personal journey." And it does all this in 161 pocket-sized pages. It is exhilarating.

In my Céline- free cage, I had also not caught up on her 2005 Larry King appearance which apparently caused a stir and became another part of the flaky diva joke but which? Is AWESOME. Watch! I'll be right here waiting ... for you. (Richard Marx joke! I mean Carl Wilson offhandedly bags Richard Marx but, man, I remember when I was 12 ... )

You know, some people are stealing and they're making a big deal out of it. Oh, they're stealing 20 pair of jeans or they're stealing television sets. Who cares? They're not going to go too far with it. Maybe those people are so poor, some of the people who do that they're so poor they've never touched anything in their lives. Let them touch those things for once.

You can see here maybe some of the discomfort-making excess which turns people off her singing and stage persona -- the manic pointing to heaven, wide eyed emoting, skinny chicken arm fist pumping, miming kayaking while talking about a kayak (not to mention the imprecise English) but also who could say it was pap? Frankly Larry King's bulldozing on comes off the worse.

And then she sings that song which, OK. I sort of recoiled. But as this book points out, all art is fake. The point is, is it a real fake or a fake fake? I gonna go with real fake, here.

Wilson takes this plea "Let them touch those things for once!" as a way to access Céline Dion's great appeal, and the appeal of schmaltz and sentimentality in general. It's a successful choice because isn't it (in general, not looter-specific) quite a moving plea, even for the most far gone culturally omnivorous hipsters among us? And it can easily spin out to that very human grasping for ... anything you want, emotional or real. If a reach to grasp Dionysian LOVE is too much, think of beauty or truth or the bottle.

Freedom, just around the corner from you
But with truth so far off
What good will it do ...

This is surely just waiting to be turned into song. Oh, but of course it already has been:

Do I want too much?
Am I going overboard to want that touch?
I shout it out to the night
"Give me what I deserve, 'cause it's my right"
Shouldn't I have this
Shouldn't I have this
Shouldn't I have all of this, and

Passionate kisses
Passionate kisses
Passionate kisses from you

There's a reason "ironic" is coupled with "distance", sentimentality brings us too close. Sentimentality wants too much. Irony disavows even enough. Country fans have a special dilemma here, we have already made peace with schmaltz. But not all schmaltz. What, really, is the difference between the schmaltz of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "My Heart Will Go On"? Yet we will solemnly make documentaries about the one and make a punch line of the other. They feel different of course, I strongly want to loudly proclaim they are different.

I've spent the night surfing YouTube for Dion and I'm not dashing out for the CDs. Typically, I like the French songs better, where some mystery is maintained by virtue of monolinguilism, than the English where the emotional porn is hanging out for all to see. But the real problem is not the sentimentality or the gauche theatricality, it's the voice. Those damn pipes. There's just something about the voice that doesn't grab me, technically proficient and expressive as it may be. But that's the same "natural" reservation I have about someone critically acceptable like, say, Patty Griffin. Just something about the voice hits me and slides off, rather than sticking. I did however spend the weekend while reading this book listening to the new Dolly Parton record and all that time I was wondering what appeals about Dolly but bores about La Dion? I mean, schmaltz? Gauche theatricality? Dolly makes Céline look like Ed Murrow. Which brings us back to irony vs sincerity. Dolly is sincere too, no doubt, but she also made all the best big boob jokes first and refers to herself as a hillbilly Barbie doll.

What makes sincerity so uncool? And does it matter? This book can't answer all the questions but it is a great start.