Shelving - On Celestial Music by Rick Moody

As a rule, I try to not write about books I haven't finished yet, but I was happy to find a copy of Rick Moody's new book, On Celestial Music , at my local library only a few months after its release and not have it land on a waiting list forever.

I'll spare you the "dancing about architecture" tropes; I really enjoy writing about music, especially from a fan perspective. He can get a little ostentatious deconstructing individual Wilco songs, but I find his prose almost achingly beautiful at times.

The highlight is a lengthy piece on The Who's Pete Townsend. Not being a fan of the Who (actually, I loathe The Who), it's hard for me to muster much empathy for Pete Townsend the man, especially after this, but it's a good exercise in writing from the point of view of a fan (which Moody is), and maintaining some sense of objectivity when one's heros fall.

I don't know an easy way to segue into "feminist writer mode," so I'll do it the only way I can: awkwardly, but I hope honestly. I wish more women wrote from the nerdy, music geek prospective, or at least, have their writing recognized when they do. I have a small collection of music books penned by women posted here , but largely when I go to a library or bookstore, music criticism is mostly written by men. And for me. As much as I love guys like Greil Marcus or Robert Christgau, I'm I'm not the one in mind when they're writing. Fandom as a whole is guys'game. If girls' fandom is dismissed as something fleeting, fickle, and unduly sentimental, women's fandom is seen as nonexistent.