Adam Gopnik, The Man Who Doesn't Know Squat

[Larry Kart]

but pretends that he does strikes again. From Gopnik's review of "The Letters of Cole Porter " in the Jan. 20 New Yorker:

"In the mid-nineteen-seventies, you had to haunt London record shops to find Ella Fitzgerald's Gershwin or Cole Porter albums. Now those recordings, and the songs they illuminate, are everywhere."

What?!! I don't have sales figures in front of me, but haven't those albums sold steadily over the years? And what's with that "London record shops"? They stocked those albums over there in the '70s, but U.S. record stores didn't? Has the New Yorker's fact-checking department been relocated to Sri Lanka?

[Brad]

He’s terrible. A pseudo intellectual. I tend to skip his articles. 

[JSngry]

4 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

What?!! I don't have sales figures in front of me, but haven't those albums sold steadily over the years? And what's with that "London record shops"? They stocked those albums over there in the '70s, but U.S. record stores didn't? Has the New Yorker's fact-checking department been relocated to Sri Lanka?

I seem to recall a time when the songbooks were not readily available on LP. This was in the early 1970s, when the label was all but dead. MGM was just letting it die. Then the reissue boon began, and one way or another, stuff came back in print. So, not an entirely crazy thing to say.

[AllenLowe]

Gopnik is a schmuck.

[Chuck Nessa]

44 minutes ago, AllenLowe said:

Gopnik is a schmuck.

Too much credit.

[Chuck Nessa]

Did I mention I was writing a doctoral thesis on squat? I might have a sub chapter on schmuck. Please keep me up to date on any developments.