From those wonderful folks who gave you Pearly Harbour – Jerry Della Femina,

Very interesting book that shows that nothing much has changed. The only difference that counts is still between good and bad work. The rest is just marketing rubbish.

VW lemon worked because of “an advertiser was saying that all wasn’t sweetness in life” (Della Femina, 1970, p.26).

“I know this sounds crazy, but I sometimes don’t understand why we can’t talk in commercials and ads the waywe really talk” (Della Femina, 1970, p.30).

“The hotagencies, they don’t need this. What does Doyle, Dane need with a whoremaster (an account man with a book of names)? They’re turning out terrific work” (Della Femina, 1970, p.61).

“An art director also has a portfolio. Or they’ve got reels, short presentations containing all the commercials they ever shot. But what does the account man have to show? Nothing.” (Della Femina, 1970, p.83).

“Step one (of losing an account): fear. They’re afraid to even show him work. So they show him what they consider safe. And safe is not what he came to the agency for.” (Della Femina, 1970, p.93).

“It’s not their (clients’) job to express what they need. That’s the agenciy’s job- The client simply knows where he wants his product to go in the marketplace.” (Della Femina, 1970, p.93).

“when an account executive comes in to see me I don’t even know what to ask him. (…) I have nothing to tell the guy, nothing to ask him. Should I ask him how he smiles?” (Della Femina, 1970, p.95).

“Creative revolution may be an awkward way of saying there is good advertising and then there is garbage.” (Della Femina, 1970, p.145).

An Introduction to Music Studies - Harper Scott and Samson

It does what it says on the tin:

Twelve tone music:
- the arrangement of the twelve notes into a ‘row
- generating of forty-eight versions of the row through inversion (turning it upside down), retrograde (reversing the order), retrograde inversion and multiple transpositions
- using these rows as building blocks for composition
(Harper-Scott and Samson, 2009, p.35).

Adorno describes Serialism as totalitarian, because it effectivey prescribed ‘the order in which each pitch should appear’ (Harper-Scott and Samson, 2009, p.45)..

On Critical theory (Adorno): Music and society are intertwined. Modern music always struggles between expression and convention. It aims to be absolutely unique and ignore convention but then it will not be understood by anyone: “The difficulty for music is to avoid mere convention without losing the ability to express something significant” (Harper-Scott and Samson, 2009, p.89).

Philipp Roth – I married a Communist

Another one of the Zuckerman series, i.e. it is about how to become a writer. In this case it is also about politics and how political believe influences personal life – and vice versa.

“to teach them that you don’t have to be Al Capone to transgress – you just have to think (…) Cri-ti-cal think-ing (…) --- there is the ultimate subversion” (Roth, 1998).

“I was sitting between two shirtless brothers well over six feet tall, two big, natural men exuding the sort foforceful, intelligent, manliness to which I aspired. Men who could talk about baseball and boxing talking about books. And talking about books as though something were at stake in a book. Not opening uo a book t worship it or to be elevated by it or to lose yourself to the world around you. No, boxing with the book.” (Roth, 1998, p.27).

“He has outlived dissatisfaction. This is what remains after the passing of everything, the disciplined sadness of stoicism. This is the cooling.” (Roth, 1998, p.78).

“The incompatabilities were endless. But then, that was the challenge. With Ira, the more that’s wrong, the more to correct.” (Roth, 1998, p.83).

“You can’t bring to private life the ideologythat you bring to the great world. You cannot change her.” (Roth, 1998, p.84).

“His mind moved all right, but not with clarity. It moved only with force.” (Roth, 1998, p.86).

“You look with your big eyes into the capitalist shop window, you want and you wnt, you grab and you grab, you take and you take, ou acquire and you own and you accumulate and there is the end of your convictions and the beginning of your fear. There is nothing that I have that I can’t give up.” (Roth, 1998, p.96).

“Generalizing suffering: there is Communism. Particularizing suffering: there is literature.” (Roth, 1998, p.223).

“who has no family and no relatives and no house – who is without all that stuff that was pulling Ira in twenty differen directions, without all those emotions pulling Ira in twenty directions.” (Roth, 1998, p.235).

“How drunk on metamorphosis could he get, the heroic reinvention of himself he called Iron Rinn?” (Roth, 1998, p.301).

“No one finds his life. That is life.” (Roth, 1998, p.319).