Bono's awful new column

Please, Rod, find that Benedictine retreat. Where there is no electricity, where you can write with pen and paper from your heart and not from the crawl at the bottom of the screen.

Isn't it wonderful to know you are at a minimum solidly in the middle of "all writers from crappiest to the best" - no slur intended, it is something I feel that I can say about myself, even if in the lower middle range ;-). My own personal "should I quit" moments are often forestalled by perusing the voluntary simplicity literature that various readers send me. With a couple of exceptions that always reminds me that while I'm not Faulkner, I could always be worse.

Sharon

Oh, it's not so bad.
Believe me, I teach undergraduate comp. It's not so bad. What is bad, I imagine, is that his editor was too star struck to force him to tighten up a little.

Rod, you need to give yourself a break. Really. Please.

Bono. The NYT wanted his column to boost readership, but no one had the heart to pick up a pen and edit the poor guy. Breaks my heart, it does. This is a first draft, written with a fairly thoughtful thesis in mind, but I don't think the man knows the meaning of the words "outline" and "revise".

Rod, I beg to differ - anyone with minimal musical skills could write a song equally as bad as the drivel U2 has produced lo these many years. "Boy" was a decent album but it's been straight downhill ever since.

I think Bono *was* trying to be in the moment, like jazz. It couldn't have an outline or a second draft. It's not a bad thing to try to expand your horizons. He has spent years and years as a musician and no time at all writing. So, of course it will sound like freshman writing.

As for Rod, your blues about your vocation help me feel a little more normal. I admire your writing and read your blog every day. I waiting for the next book to come out. I feel dreary about my art all of the time, no matter what sort of praise I recieve.

Sounds like Bono's been reading his Heidegger.

I didn't hate the column, but it really should have been re-thought. The whole "You are here" thing is annoyingly patronizing. You don't have to take me to "there", Bono, to make your point. Just make your effing point. The clever quotes should have been dropped, along with some of the scenery. Also, what's with the sneering at the Celtic Tiger? Would he prefer the days of Eamon de Valera, squalor and semi-theocracy?

The biggest dissonance is that this column, a piece that extols Sinatra's lack of sentimentality, oozes with it.

The reason you don't like it, Rod, was that it attempted to elevate the pursuit of a gratifying moment to an important philosophical, religious, or perhaps even personally revelatory insight, and it's not. It's just a transitory emotion, not even an important one.

You attempt to write about things that have relevance, that matter, that change lives, affect lives, improve lives, and he's trying to raise such irrelevancies as his own emotional gratification to that level.

Sometimes we have those moments in our lives, they are fortunate coincidences or perhaps even "serendipity". It is not something you can pursue, and it is not relevant to our lives. They color and enrich our lives, but should never define it. Sadly, Bono probably really is that shallow, as are most dyed in the wool lefties, and others who have achieved great fortune mostly due to the transitory whims of fashion and celebrity rather than character and integrity and productive ability.

Real insights occur to the prepared and disciplined mind, after effort and persistence have laid groundwork. Sadly, Bono's probably not aware of any of this, or, if he is, doesn't grasp why his ramblings leave us flat and unenlightened.

It's an example of almost unadulterated situational thinking. Personally, I think it is quite good even though I don't share Bono's premises and outlook. He is right that in looking closely at the present mess we are in in the West, collectively we have not yet actually grasped what it is that we are facing; all these panicked pseudoanalytical assessments by the punditry to date amount to guesses. The central power and focus of situational thinking is, after all, to discern and speak the true name of the Presence or Activity that stands before us. That is what he tries to do in the piece and gets respectable results for the method.

We have a domination, though increasingly resisted, of analytical, abstraction- and category-based thought and writing in American culture. It's a bias taken from English tradition. It works great in the lesser parts of life that suit its reductionisms, such as figuring out advantage and converting that to exploitation and power. Its inherent flaw is that the (often) better part of reality and experience resists being reduced, doesn't truly jam into the narrow categories and labels. Analytical thinking properly pursued drives at identifying the fundamental facts and governing laws of things, at the mechanical rather than the organic. As a mode of thought, socially the analytical works better in urban mercantile life than rural agrarian life, and better for the exploiters and manipulators than the exploited and manipulated.

Bono reflects a long tradition in the arts, as well as highly rural and agrarian Ireland, perhaps even the Celtic world more generally, of holding up situational thinking against the pressures of the analytical/reductionist mode used by the traditional oppressor classes of businessfolk, aristocrats, Englishmen, and high clergy. And it's how and why his best art works, be it 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' or 'One Tree Hill' or 'Red Hill Mining Town'. Perhaps it's also why U2's work ultimately does not fully persuade despite being so emotionally compelling.

Friedman meets Dowd? No, I don't believe it; nothing could be that bad.

Huh . . . well, I read Bono's column expecting that it wouldn't be very good, but I have to say, it made a lot of sense to me. And I'm not drunk. ; ) I think he writes like a lyricist--poetry, not narrative, except in a quick-cutting, vignettish way, setting moods with tones and intervals. And he's Irish. You don't go to an Irish singer for objective analysis in data-packed paragraphs, any more than you'd ask Picasso to do you up a Power Point.

But that's really neither here nor there, since everyone's entitled to pick their own poison when it comes to columnists. (I do wonder just how well those of you who are sure they could do better upside-down and blindfolded would fare if they got the chance to try . . . .)

As a writer myself, I've decided that being quick to pounce with criticism and dislike doesn't serve me well. The message my muse gets from harsh criticism of others isn't that I'm so much better, but rather, that I can expect the same treatment any time I'm less than perfect. And that's a daunting message guaranteed to lead to depression and procrastination.

I prefer to turn a situation like this one around, and say to myself, "Well, look at that. Bono wrote his very first column, and even though it may not be all that good, a lot of people still read it and were energized by it. Maybe I could take a risk, try something new, and survive it too--even if I'm not perfect first time, every time." I learn from other people's mistakes . . . but even more, I learn from the fact that they had the courage to try.

Much ado about nothing.
I love U2.
I don't care if Bono can write an essay or not.
The man is a poet, not an organized linear thinking essayist.
Also, he'd done more good for humanity than all of us combined. Look into his work offstage. The man is tireless.
"Shallow?" Bono is the least shallow of all rockstars.
When is the last time you managed to get the west to forgive billions in African debt? When is the last time you raised billions to combat AIDS?

All of us have something to offer. Comparisons are brutal and unnecessary.

Robin Thomas @ 3:23 PM writes:

"When is the last time you managed to get the west to forgive billions in African debt? "

Since when is that a good thing ? The said African countries hired the money, didn't they ? Now other, blameless parties have to make good for this "good deed".

I count this on the "liabilities" side of the ledger for this fraud and con-artist who styles himself a "musician". This is an excellent argument against allowing people such as Bono to be allowed to meddle in politics and other things above their station.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Sharon, you said, "With a couple of exceptions that always reminds me that while I'm not Faulkner, I could always be worse."

Don't be like Faulkner. He's greatly overrated. You are not Faulkner, you are much better than that.

It took you a couple of tries to polish your snark, eh Karth? And who is going to "allow" people "of his sort" to meddle in politics. The great you?

Mrs. Toad

I take it back. I re-read this without any lead in thought regarding my response. And I liked it. Very much. Because it had a point of genuine sentimentality and irony in it, and nostalgia used correctly.

As for the poster here whose point was that Bono was (in effect) name dropping...that he knew Frank Sinatra and we didn't; I am hard pressed to believe that Bono...after nearly 3 decades in music, countless Grammies and lest I mention the Peace Prize and a lot of other global accomplishmenst...that this man (whose music I have never cared for) would be ever accused of name dropping. He IS a name that many drop. And I decided that he showed us a rather circular moment in time in this piece. And I apologize for responding to it poorly earlier, purely to pile on.

I like it when men...including Rod... take time to tell stories that betray emotion and an eye for living in the moment while recalling the past.

No Watsy. Not drinking. At least not when I posted the positive comments earlier. I'm now finishing the cheap champagne I started New Year's Eve.

I take this piece at face value. I bore easily and I am intent to listen when someone is interested in conveying male sensitivity on any level. It is something that I as a man and women in general have been denied by men in general because, until recently, it was never considered 'manly'. Today it is becoming 'cool'. Coool.

I would (anytime as in always) rather hear a man talk like he's sharing a pint on a good night in a good bar than read still another man write as if he has never really lived and resents those who have and do. I promise; I know both. The latter always want to be interesting despite never having dared to live an interesting life. But of course there are those bores who seem to think that it's interesting they were married on the beach in Jamaica. It is but come on. Whatever.

The other night a man, 30ish, gave me a USB with his poetry on it...to read. I did and it was worse than awful. But it was wonderful that he WROTE poetry. And even better that he was willing and indeed asked another man to read it. This guy is a bouncer at a very macho club and has always been the epitome of 'guy' the few times I had seen and watched him at my favorite watering hole, Lee Harvey's here in Dallas. I thought more of him because of this. THAT made him more of a 'man' in the modern sense in my eyes. Bono is probably an archetype of that genre long before it was a generational trend.

I never liked this dude's music. But as someone (Another Believer) said on me last week on this blog per Rod's generous post re; my latest commentary on Dallas' NPR affiliate; "I like his attitude". And why not.............

Okay, I just read this Bono piece one more time, and I seriously don't get you people. It's just not that bad. It's actually quite good. I am a former English teacher, a columnist, and an editor, and I simply disagree that it's poorly written. It's a bit free-style, sure, but it's full of poetry and music and meaning. You might not LIKE the meaning, or agree with it, but that doesn't make it bad writing. And you might not like the idea of rock stars writing for the Times, but that still doesn't make it bad writing. And I agree with Rawlins (in fact, I made the same point yesterday) that it's absurd to suggest that Bono – BONO, for crying out loud! – needs to drop names to impress people. I think you guys might be coming at this thing with something less than love in your hearts. I confess, I didn't WANT to like the piece... but I do.

"Thus far, I haven't been able to finish it."

Don't bother. It's shit.

I just don't get it, I read this when it first came out and thought it was a good read. Obviously, Bono is not an article writer, he writes songs and lyrics, with that context it's a good read. As a young man, I didn't know much about Frank Sinatra and thought it was actually a sign of respect that Bono would write about him at length like that and show how much he respected and loved him as an artist.

Besides, Frank Sinatra gave him a painting......painted by Frank Sinatra. No wonder everyone hates Bono.