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

[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!).