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The Fan Who Knew Too Much
Aretha Franklin, the Rise of the Soap Opera, Children of the Gospel Church, and Other Meditations
1 of 1 copy available
In The Fan Who Knew Too Much, Heilbut writes about art and obsession, from country blues singers and male sopranos to European intellectuals and the originators of radio soap opera—figures transfixed and transformed who helped to change the American cultural landscape.
Heilbut writes about Aretha Franklin, the longest-lasting female star of our time, who changed performing for women of all races. He writes about Aretha’s evolution as a singer and performer (she came out of the tradition of Mahalia Jackson); before Aretha, there were only two blues-singing gospel women—Dinah Washington, who told it like it was, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who specialized, like Aretha, in ambivalence, erotic gospel, and holy blues.
We see the influence of Aretha’s father, C. L. Franklin, famous pastor of Detroit’s New Bethel Baptist Church. Franklin’s albums preached a theology of liberation and racial pride that sold millions and helped prepare the way for Martin Luther King Jr. Reverend Franklin was considered royalty and, Heilbut writes, it was inevitable that his daughter would become the Queen of Soul.
In “The Children and Their Secret Closet,” Heilbut writes about gays in the Pentecostal church, the black church’s rock and shield for more than a hundred years, its true heroes, and among its most faithful members and vivid celebrants. And he explores, as well, the influential role of gays in the white Pentecostal church.
In “Somebody Else’s Paradise,” Heilbut writes about the German exiles who fled Hitler—Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Marlene Dietrich, and others—and their long reach into the world of American science, art, politics, and literature. He contemplates the continued relevance of the émigré Joseph Roth, a Galician Jew, who died an impoverished alcoholic and is now considered the peer of Kafka and Thomas Mann.
And in “Brave Tomorrows for Bachelor’s Children,” Heilbut explores the evolution of the soap opera. He writes about the form itself and how it catered to social outcasts and have-nots; the writers insisting its values were traditional, conservative; their critics seeing soap operas as the secret saboteurs of traditional marriage—the women as castrating wives; their husbands as emasculated men. Heilbut writes that soaps went beyond melodrama, deep into the perverse and the surreal, domesticating Freud and making sibling rivalry, transference, and Oedipal and Electra complexes the stuff of daily life.
And he writes of the “daytime serial’s unwed mother,” Irna Phillips, a Chicago wannabe actress (a Margaret Hamilton of the shtetl) who created radio’s most seminal soap operas—Today’s Children, The Road of Life among them—and for television, As the World Turns, Guiding Light, etc., and who became known as the “queen of the soaps.” Hers, Heilbut writes, was the proud perspective of someone who didn’t fit anywhere, the stray no one loved.
The Fan Who Knew Too Much is a revelatory look at some of our American icons and iconic institutions, high, low, and exalted.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 19, 2012 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780307958471
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780307958471
- File size: 3988 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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April 23, 2012
Full of contagious enthusiasm, razor sharp wit, and stunning insights, Heilbut’s affectionate fan’s notes range brilliantly over topics as diverse as gospel singers Rosetta Tharpe, Mahalia Jackson, and Marion Williams, novelists Thomas Mann and Joseph Roth, and soap operas, homosexuality, and opera. A Grammy Award–winning record producer and cultural historian, Heilbut (The Gospel Sound) readily acknowledges his consummate fandom, and admits that “an old fan knows a few things—that his fandom has been a major portion of his self, a source of as much pleasure as his love or his work.” In these meditations, he continues to reconsider his great loves—especially gospel music, a thread that weaves its way through this colorful quilt of cultural reflections—dignifying both himself and his subjects through his elegant prose. For example, his musings on Aretha Franklin alone are worth the price of the book, for they not only carry us from her early days of singing gospel in her father’s church, her ascent as the queen of soul, and her return to gospel after a series of personal setbacks, but also through a labyrinth of considerations of race, the role of women in the black church, sexual abuse, and the healing, transcendent power of music. Recalling Keats, Heilbut reminds us that “immersion in sensation can be a fan’s highest bliss,” and the sensations of spending a few moments in Heilbut’s company provide great bliss indeed. -
May 1, 2012
Detailed, freewheeling and very personal cultural essays from an admitted obsessive and an amiable and intelligent rambler. For Heilbut (Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, 1996, etc.), knowing too much can be a "supreme experience." Indeed, "[f]or a great many of us, the outer reaches of fandom have become our most essential selves." His own sources of obsession are gospel music (he's a Grammy-winning producer on his own label), Thomas Mann and German exiles from Nazi Germany in America. Heilbut has written books on all three, and he returns to each in this collection. In the first and longest section, the author explores the gay subculture in gospel music, where "sissies" who were not welcome in society found a home in the church closet. He also traces the gospel roots of Aretha Franklin's soul music. Switching gears, Heilbut writes about the impact of emigre Germans on American culture. He focuses on Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann, with a beautiful tribute to Austrian novelist Joseph Roth, before digging into the history of the soap opera and neglected blues master Josh White. Like a true fan, Heilbut sees examples of his obsession in everything; an essay on male sopranos draws in Stephen Colbert, the intern from 30 Rock and the former lead singer of Faith No More. Heilbut is a discursive writer, often trailing numerous rabbits before circling back to the subject at hand, and his conversational style occasionally seems absent-minded. A cook's tour through the passions of an expert whose style is as eclectic as his subject matter.COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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June 1, 2012
Heilbut blends biography with criticism and anecdotes to create marvelously zesty, erotically frank, assumption-blasting essays. The son of German Jewish immigrants, Heilbut found his soul's music in black gospel, and he has been writing about that tradition since the 1970s. The author of a major book on Thomas Mann, Heilbut has also been an adventurous record producer, and his love for music shapes his keenly modulated prose. This vigorous collection begins with a throw-the-door-open look at the history of gay men and lesbians in gospel music and continues with an acutely musical and sympathetic profile of Aretha Franklin, a wry look at the blues, and an investigation into the male soprano voice. Heilbut also pays tribute to writer Joseph Roth and reflects on the oceanic influence of gifted European refugees on America. Finally, his history of soap operas as a revolutionary form of storytelling that domesticated Freud and his anatomy of fandom take us on a guided tour unlike any other through the spirals of the psyche and the mazes of social and cultural convention and dissent.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)
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