From mcmahon@mail.lemoyne.edu Sun Jul 28 05:38:49 2002 Received: from mailscan3.cac.washington.edu (mailscan3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g6SCcmeY090332 for ; Sun, 28 Jul 2002 05:38:48 -0700 Received: FROM mxu4.u.washington.edu BY mailscan3.cac.washington.edu ; Sun Jul 28 05:38:47 2002 -0700 Received: from kiwi.lemoyne.edu (kiwi.lemoyne.edu [192.231.122.6]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.06) with ESMTP id g6SCcklq020044 for ; Sun, 28 Jul 2002 05:38:47 -0700 Received: from mail.lemoyne.edu ([192.168.250.109]) by kiwi.lemoyne.edu; Sun, 28 Jul 2002 08:42:05 -0400 Message-ID: <3D43E5C4.18DC04F9@mail.lemoyne.edu> Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 08:38:29 -0400 From: "John M. McMahon" Reply-To: mcmahon@mail.lemoyne.edu X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu, mcmahon@mail.lemoyne.edu Subject: (Son of) music for a dull Saturday afternoon References: <8a.1bf50431.2a74c41c@aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Some semblance of OCC follows ... Julilla1@aol.com wrote: > << I don't think that Ozzie > ever really did the bat thing, especially with a real bat > .. and it surely was after his departure from BS in any event. >> > > Actually he did, albeit accidently. Not to be confused with purposely biting > off the dove's head in the record company meeting. Ugh. Awful. Didn't know *that* ... and (I think) I should be glad I didn't. Someone once suggested to me that some of the most talented musicians (in any number of genres) were/are otherwise "not really very nice people." So from now on, I'll have to pay more attention important sources of information like *Entertainment Tonight* vel sim. I've been pretty lax in that regard, lo these many years. ;-) Anyhow, this now leads me to ask whether folks on this list consider -- however subtly -- the personal behaviors and/or political and philosophical views of authors, artists, musicians, etc. -- *or* even of, say, modern commentators on Classics (or other fields) -- in reacting to their contributions. Can/ought one discount what one might consider unseemly behavior of the producer of art -- however broadly defined -- while still *enjoying* (and not necessarily studying/analyzing) a creative work? If not, does something get diminished for the listener/reader? If so, can the intellectual appreciation override an emotionally-generated reaction to things beyond the confines of the work itself. How about Petronius for personal behavior -- accepting for the moment that the Tacitean description is of the author and is accurate, just to cite one obvious example? Or maybe, politically, Sergei Eisenstein or Prokoviev in recent times? Does pop celebrity status matter more in such cases? Clearly living a sheltered existence from *real* pop culture, John McMahon Classics Ler Moyne College .