Classical Pop

July 3, 2009

Classical Pop

New York Magazine has an interview with Iggy Pop, inter alia:

You describe the album as an “alternative score” to Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 sci-fi novel, The Possibility of an Island. What else have you been reading lately?

I read The Jazz Ear, by Ben Ratliff, and I just finished Vermeer’s Hat, by Timothy Brook. And there’s a killer translation of Herodotus out now. I enjoy reading about the Assyrians and the Medians and the Egyptians. I get off on that shit.

This comes just as we were discussing on the Latinteach list some modern songs with a Classical bent … Iggy has a couple that I can recall off the top of my head: Caesar and Curiosity,

David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist

Popculch

5 responses to “Classical Pop”

coh

July 3, 2009

He also once wrote a piece on Gibbon for Classics Ireland:
http://www.ucd.ie/cai/classics-ireland/1995/Pop95.html

Reply
Jamie M. Forbes

July 6, 2009

As a book agent a decade or so ago, I represented a former wife of James Osterberg [and knew girls he dated], particularly with regard to contracts with the renowned Barney Rosset.

Around here, which is Downtown New York, a lot of folks think the Igster is a jerk — I mean, musicians, artists, writers, and such, are infantilistically competitive. If I’m a duck, this water rolls off me.

In my main life I read Rogueclassicism.

I want to know which new translation Iggy Pop thinks is killer.

Got any candidates?

Reply
rogueclassicist

July 7, 2009

I assumed he’s referring to the Landmark Herodotus, translated by Robert Strassler … it just came out in the last month or so.

Reply
1. Jamie M. Forbes
  
  July 7, 2009
  
  Okay. Good. I’m just now reading an essay in New York Review of Books online that incorporates both The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories edited by Robert B. Strassler, translated from the Greek by Andrea L. Purvis, with an introduction by Rosalind Thomas Pantheon, 953 pp., $45.00 and Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV by David Asheri, Alan Lloyd, and Aldo Corcella, edited by Oswyn Murray and Alfonso Moreno, with a contribution by Maria Brosius.
  
  Many thanks.
  
  Reply
  1. Jamie M. Forbes
    
    July 7, 2009
    
    For anyone interested in the NYRevBoks essay, here’s the slink link…
    
    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21370
    
    Have a fine day…