The Michigan Review

Welcome to Living Culture

by Tom Jolliffe

Thank you for visiting the Review’s Living Culture section. The difference between Marmaduke on these pages and a viable arts department is your readership. Like any review of the arts, what we do back here is a hodge-podge of cultural analysis: album, book, and film reviews seasoned with coverage of live fine-arts performances. Completing the repertoire are music editor Chris Hayes’s red-hot interviews with eminent artists. We also dabble in outrageous editing!

We are not your father’s Art’s Review. We like to add new names to the campus consciousness, therefore you may be unfamiliar with some of our subjects for criticism. In devoting one half page to, say, a single album, we try to be more informative than a cursory ten-blurb rundown of the Top of the Charts. Of course, we will not intentionally ignore important mainstream events; after all, our overarching objective is to stimulate you. In concluding this mission statement, the Review wags remind you that we are not professionals, and we welcome written engagement with you, the real campus cognoscenti.

Ann Arbor is the state’s cultural Tigris-Euphrates junction. It is fertile in the way of artistic activity. Besides a perennial host for high profile entertainment like Henry Rollins and They Might Be Giants, Ann Arbor is also home to emerging talent like Getaway Cruiser and Benjamin Kepple. Ann Arbor has film festivals, art fairs, museum shows, and theatre guilds. It has campus orchestras, choirs, and dance groups, and the University hosts concerts and speakers every week. Such are the advantages to attending a very large and well-known institution like the U-M. We’ve got stuff.

A very, very important caveat: don’t go forsake your old stamping grounds for the agenda advanced by some Review hot air bag! If minute-long inverted draws of barley, hops, water, and yeast is your entertainment bread-and-butter, I am right behind you, or, more specifically, I am hoisting your left leg, shouting GO, GO, GO ! But remember, neither this lifestyle, nor the Study-Lounge D&D lifestyle, nor the sack-lunch-at-the-UGLi lifestyle exclude patronage of Ann Arbor’s auditoriums, stages, and cinemas. Each of us carries a different set of evaluative machinery to a performance. The distinctions lie in our upbringing, our ideology, and our interests. In addressing a work of art, we measure the artist’s expression of the human condition against our own experience, and we call it a success, failure, or something in between. No matter our routine or calling, our attendance of a concert, film, or reading can enrich us with the perspectives of others.

I won’t forget Wynton Marsalis’s stirring production “Blood on the Fields” two years ago at Rackham auditorium. It was jazz and history coming together in an awesome way, and showcased a talent that is already legendary. The University can bring in big music. And if you’re a film buff, occasional visits to the Michigan Theater may fit your bill . 2001: A Space Odyssey is the most dazzling thing seen I’ve seen on the big screen down on Liberty Street. The latest Current magazine will tell you which classics are playing this month. I could tell you myself, but the first step on this undergraduate-enhancement program is figuring out where the Current is. Do this and pretty soon you’ll be sleeping with it.

The ‘98/’99 year will undoubtedly pass us by like Coach Carr’s notions of Repeat. You’ll be wearing wool soon enough, then comes Thanksgiving, followed by finals, holidays, the February nap, and then it’s all over. Undoubtedly, too, will Ann Arbor witness the kind of creative groundswells that characterize it year to year. We at the Living Culture salute all of you bright-eyed culture mavens, and hope our pages can be thoughtful, provocative sources of discussion. MR

This article was published in the 16 September 1998 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 17, Number 1).
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