If you had to choose ...

[calimac]

Arts writer Terry Teachout has published the Terry Teachout Cultural Coherence Index in his blog. [For some reason this permalink goes to the top of his blog: it was posted on July 5] One hundred questions, asking you to choose between two things, usually works of art or artists (in the broad sense). The more times you choose the first option, the more you agree with Mr. Teachout.

I found the quiz very difficult. For every one I had no trouble with:
Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick? Huck
The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show? Dick
Stravinsky or Schoenberg? Igor
Cats or dogs? Cats, how dare need you ask
Sushi, yes or no? No, no, a thousand times no

there were others such as
Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser?
Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando?
Swing or bebop?
for which my answer would have to be a heartfelt "Neither"

or others, especially pairs of similar painters like
Constable or Turner?
for which I'd have to say "I know these guys, but I've never considered their oeuvres as a whole, so I can't express a comparative preference"

and many more like
Partisan Review or Horizon?
V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera?
Letterman or Leno?
for which I'd have to confess I don't know either one well enough

and a few like
Wilco or Cat Power?
for which I'd just have to say "What?"

Only a few, like
The Music Man or Oklahoma? The Music Man (much more musically sophisticated)
John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? Gielgud (better voice, less erratic)
Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde? ooh, tough ... hm, I guess ... Wilde
really made me think

and only a couple composer choices,
Shostakovich or Prokofiev?
Schubert or Mozart?
really made me whimper and say "Do I have to choose?" (Very well, Shostakovich and Schubert. If I must.)

The problem is, I think, that most of the pairs are too similar or too closely related to really say anything about your general artistic bent. Instead of
Vermeer or Rembrandt? and
Van Gogh or Gaughin?
how about "Rembrandt or Van Gogh?" Now there's a question I could answer right away without having to review my knowledge of the painters: Rembrandt.

And instead of
The Who or the Stones?
to which my answer is "Neither, but if I had to have one forced down my throat, I guess The Who are slightly less obnoxious," which I don't think really says anything about my preference, how about the classic "The Beatles or the Stones?" to which I would of course reply: The Beatles.

Now those answers I think might say something about me. Namely that I'm an Apollonian, not a Dionysian. Which I already knew.

What do you think of the quiz?

Comments

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

There are some hard choices in there:

Steely Dan or Elvis Costello?

North by Northwest or Vertigo?

Some are like choosing between death by firing squad or lethal injection:

Diana Krall or Norah Jones?

By the way, the correct answer is Wilco.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

After some thought I picked Vertigo: I'm pretty settled that I think it the better film. As I know nothing by Steely Dan, I am by liveavatar's rule forced to throw in my lot with Elvis Costello, much as it pains me to admit liking anything by someone who actually voluntarily renamed himself after the egregious Presley.

If "Wilco" is the answer, what's the question? In other words, what issss it, my preciousss? Is it a fruit-bat, a breakfast cereal, a hand-grenade, what? Is it scrumptiously crunchable? I don't want to have to Google to find out, especially with the false drops a name like that is likely to produce. (Nor do I have any idea who Diana Krall or Norah Jones are, though I suppose I could find out. Sounds like that's where you'd agree with my "the answer would have to be a heartfelt 'Neither'.")

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

Wilco = rock band; Cat Power = singer/songwriter. Scrumptiously crunchable, maybe. Explosive, probably not.

No, no, my rule applies only to something where I've experienced one and read enough about the other to have some kind of opinion.

Bands. They're all bands.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Actually, "Diana Krall or Elvis Costello" might have made an interesting pairing, as they got married a little while ago.

Re: Bands. They're all bands.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

He married a band? Never mind, I think I know what you meant.

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

Definitely some hard choices in there. I ended up with a 54% TCCI score, which might make me half Apollo, half Dionysus. Or, as Woody Allen would have it, half saint, half whore.

For a very few choices I'd directly experienced one item, but had only read about the other, e.g., Out of the Past or Double Indemnity. In that case I chose the one I knew best (Double Indemnity for that pair) instead of leaving the question blank, because I'd still formed an opinion.

What do I think of the quiz... I enjoyed sussing out my preferences, but I don't think this quiz does more than measure how closely one mirrors Teachout's tastes. The quiz choices themselves are almost entirely Apollonian -- what about Peter Tosh or Toots & the Maytals, or Burlesque or Hooters?

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Did you read his explanation? There's a link in there somewhere, possibly here.

I think the quiz mainly was a way for Teachout to have fun picking juxtapositions. For the rest of us, it's an interesting topic to bounce conversations off of.

Personally, I refuse to be constrained by others' choices (life's too short) and came up with the following tally:
Don't know (16), neither (2), both (35), A (20), and B (24).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I tried it on your basis and got:
Don't know (30, which could be "Never heard of 'em" or "I can take or leave both"), neither (16: I hate more things than you do), both (11), A (22), and B (21).

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

Sure, I looked at his explanation, and several posts later on too. Perhaps I was including a telepathic component in my response, which I'll write out now: I was looking at Teachout's overall palette, rather than just his pairs, a thought sparked by calimac's Apollonian/Dionysian comment. That is, I'm thinking about what he didn't include.

Anyway, as an old commercial said, "Momma, I am calling." Here I am, bouncing my conversation off the topic.

Using your method of tallying, I got Don't know (1, for "never heard of 'em," when I realized my grasp of Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins was too weak, even though I'd heard the names), Neither (9), Both (47, because I contain multitudes), A (23), and B (20).

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Teachout and I generally disagree. Sometimes I didn't know either choice (including Wilco or Cat Power), sometimes I am simply unwilling to choose (Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf indeed!).

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Agree: 38
Disagree: 23
Don't know: 20
Don't care: 19

"Don't cares" automatically included anything involving dance or country music, plus a few others, even if they would also have qualified as "don't know" - in this case they would be "don't care to know." It also included nine cases where I simply could not choose.

I suspect that Teachout is primarily interested in showing how culturally ay-leet he is.