If It Ain't Got That Swing: The Rebirth of Grown-Up Culture [Hardcover]

Mark Gauvreau Judge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2008

In a world dominated by teenagers, it is easy to forget that popular culture once catered to adults. A countercultural "Gen-X" writer shows in his new book that the rise of rock and roll and the suburbanization of America have produced a narcissistic society drained of joy and hope. Yet in the spreading revival of swing dancing-an artifact of a more sophisticated and convivial way of life-he detects a harbinger of cultural renewal.

Mr. Judge recalls the Washington neighborhood of Shaw, birthplace of Duke Ellington and once a stylish hub of black culture, which was suddenly devastated by riots and radicalism in the 1960s-a fate emblematic of urban America in general. Suburbia's simultaneous conquest of America delivered the death blow to adult culture. Without the traditional "third place"-the tavern, dance hall, or corner post office where neighbors once met-civic life withered and families retreated into domestic cocoons.

The rock-and-roll culture that replaced the ballrooms of Shaw is adolescent, narcissistic, and humorless to the point of suicide. And despite its pretense of rebellion, rock has become the establishment-elitist, intolerant, and hollow. Mr. Judge finds true rebellion in the exuberant, breezy, joyful world of swing, a world where people are not afraid to have fun. With its emphasis on elegance and maturity, practice and skill, and complementary roles for men and women, it is an antidote to our demoralized popular culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Judge, a contributing writer to the New York Press, devotes this slim volume to his transition from a leftist liberal to a radical, right-wing, swing-dancing polemicist. He identifies the two blinding lights of his conversion experience as reading Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and his first swing dance. Through these encounters, he explains, he realized the emptiness of the current promiscuous rock'n'roll culture and wistfully looks for a return to a Leave It to Beaver America. In these meandering pages, Judge counterpoises the male chivalry of the swing dance revival with Bill Clinton's philandering, which he uses to condemn the hypocrisy of liberalism and the bankruptcy of a feminism that encourages disrespect. He also overstates the importance of swing to the emergence of rock'n'roll and bludgeons the reader with Elvis Presley's much-documented connection to the church. Displaying little knowledge or understanding of past or current American culture, Judge presents a sophomoric, opinionated diatribe that offers little to any reader.DDave Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A book-length essay about the recent resurgence of swing dancing and the supposed implications of its renaissance.In the opening pages of his broadside disguised as paean, New York Press writer Judge comes clean about his youthful radicalism and his turn from it, but even someone incapable of reading between the lines could determine that his was a simple case of teenage antiauthoritarianism followed by the gradual onset of maturity. Abruptly compelled by the work of the historian and social critic Christopher Lasch (in particular, by a reading of The Culture of Narcissism), Judge, like a heathen on the low road to Tarsus, abandoned his leftist ideology of compassion and proceeded to apply Lasch's post-Freudian interpretation of individual development to society as a whole. American society is missing discipline, community, and a healthy sense of play, he declares. He then argues that the recent rebirth of swing dancing has provided exactly the sort of structured and civilized interaction that has been missing from contemporary American civilization for many years now. It is an interesting notion that, with a less Pauline, reactionary tilt (and a touch of wit or a bit less self-consciousness), might seem convincing to those who are not as dour in their view of modern society as Judge, and it would seem a matter of simple common sense to those who participate in similar activities with similar, positive aspects. But Judge's study lacks the open naïveté and amusement of Jedediah Purdy's recent For Common Things; in trying to explain the collapse of morality and cultural integrity since the end of WWII, he roams through a catholic range of references, but his argument has a tone of moral penitence and self-righteousness. In the end, his diatribe comes to resemble a rant.Ambitious pop-cult criticism that fails because of its single-mindedness and humorlessness. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Spence Publishing Company (December 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890626244
• ISBN-13: 978-1890626242
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,630,109 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hitting the Nail on the Head!, August 8, 2000

By 

Robin L Cunningham (Arlington, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: If It Ain't Got That Swing: The Rebirth of Grown-Up Culture (Hardcover)

How refreshing to find someone, in a world that tells us over and over that good's bad and bad's good, who can see and is willing to declare the emperor's nakedness. Mark Judge describes himself as a former left-wing radical who, through tough personal experiences, came to reject his own leftism. (Why is it almost always thus, and not the other way around?) By thoroughly and convincingly tweaking the precepts and icons of the left on the subject of our current American culture, he's undoubtedly invoked the ire and disdain of the literary establishment. So be it - the changes that he chronicles, centering around the Swing Revival in Washington DC in recent months, would never have occurred anyway had not that establishment's campaign of suppression and misdirection against our cultural life already begun to collapse into its own vacuum. At 118 pages it's a quick and easy, yet provocative, read; its rich set of references invites further study. If I were to pick a bone with Mr. Judge, though, it wouldn't be at all about his analysis and conclusions - for me they hit the nail right on the head! It would be about his somewhat pessimistic view that those of us with the common sense to be able to distinguish beauty from trash should be prepared to settle for a secret cultural life under the vast ocean of putrescence that styles itself as today's American culture. Remember the little boy who told the crowd what the emperor was really wearing? Take heart - we only need one plain voice being heard by most Americans to break this vast and entrenched spell against our better nature. After reading "If It Ain't Got That Swing," I'm persuaded that Mark Gauvreau Judge is now, and will continue to wax heavy as a key chord in that Voice. Thanks for a great book and keep swingin', Mr. Judge - they've wishfully pronounced Swing dead, but they ain't seen nothin' yet!

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The music one listens to actually matters, August 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: If It Ain't Got That Swing: The Rebirth of Grown-Up Culture (Hardcover)

I don't see how one could read Mark Judge's book with any care and then write that in his ideal world "there would be a lot more Brittany Spears and N-Sync." He makes a solid argument that the kind of popular music people listen to has an effect on the tone of society. He goes on to argue that the popular music of 50 years ago was associated with a healthier social life than we have now. That is not "mindless nostalgia". Judge may or may not be right in his interpretation of the evidence (and I have my own doubts about swing music), but his book cannot be dismissed as a "boring, self-righteous rant against human expression and substance in art". Indeed, the thrust of his argument is precisely that the "substance" of art matters.