The title of my new PUP book鈥�American Sophistication鈥� names a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. In Nature鈥檚 Nation, sophistication offends as anti-nature鈥攑ublic deportment that depends on style, artifice, theatricality鈥攓ualities that challenge our proud self-understanding as plain dealers, straight shooters. The sophisticated, that is, fail to pay sufficient respect to sincerity, the sacred tenet of our national (moral) nature. The tumultuous mid-1960s offer a number of examples of an emergent sophistication overthrowing virtue; in what follows I focus on two moments that, to my knowledge, have never been connected. Two caveats: treatment will not be equal and while my comments on the first figure stick to her biography, I discuss the second figure less as 鈥渉imself鈥� than as he is depicted in two films.
When in 1964 Susan Sontag made public an open secret鈥攖hat 鈥渉omosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard鈥� of 鈥渃amp taste,鈥� and that the latter is 鈥減art of the history of snob taste鈥濃�攚hat really struck a nerve was her candor about what this 鈥渢aste鈥� demands we abandon: 鈥淥ne is drawn to Camp when one realizes that 鈥榮incerity鈥� is not enough. Sincerity can be simple philistinism, intellectual narrowness.鈥� This is from her famous debut book Against Interpretation, whose title is provocatively at odds with itself, for it collects her essays, densely analytical interpretations. Provocative too was the cover of the Dell paperback reprint which featured the author鈥檚 striking face. The New York Times gushed鈥� she is 鈥淯ncommonly brainy and darkly beautiful, smart enough to tell America off and glamorous enough to make America like it.鈥� Sontag quickly became an international icon鈥攖he hip arbiter of the 鈥渘ew sensibility,鈥� whose first tenet is to banish high culture鈥檚 genteel solemnity; hence her 鈥淣otes on Camp鈥濃�攓uoted above鈥攊gnited instant notoriety. Accused of abusing high seriousness by taking the frivolous seriously, Sontag鈥檚 deeper offense was rudeness toward sincerity.
A year later sincerity suffered a new outrage: Bob Dylan made an explosive break with the Newport folk festival in 1965, an invented tradition started in 1959 to celebrate the socially progressive music of America鈥檚 heartland. Its raison d鈥櫭猼re was 鈥渢o fight a riptide of inauthentic shit,鈥� as pioneering folk archivist Alan Lomax says of the enemy鈥攔ock and roll鈥攊n A Complete Unknown, the 2024 film of the singer鈥檚 early years (James Mangold, dir.) Dylan mocks Lomax as the 鈥減osse of purity鈥� for insisting in effect that Dylan鈥檚 precocious mastery of the folk ballad obligated him to lifetime servitude to the form. Meanwhile, Dylan goes electric with Highway 61 Revisited, permanently alienating the earnest folk community that had nurtured him in his early (Greenwich) Village years. Sontag and Dylan each craft a momentous, stunningly influential sophistication, its cutting edge augmented by their chic bohemian hipster garb and stylized coolness. Work and appearance fuse into a 鈥榖rand,鈥� to use current parlance. But whereas Sontag will flourish as an impeccable cosmopolitan, with occasional touchdowns for cultural work in global hotspots such as Bosnia, Dylan鈥檚 sophistication, enacted in the less rarefied world of popular culture, will ignite perennial contestation. His relation to sincerity and authenticity (think of authenticity as the truculent cousin of sincerity) will remain controversial, always unsettled, under suspicion. How could it be otherwise given that the songwriter found 鈥渇reedom鈥� in his 鈥渞efusal to be fixed as a single self in a single voice鈥� (Todd Haynes). Who else could inspire such disparate films as I鈥檓 Not There (2007) and A Complete Unknown, the latter a conventional (and beautifully observed) bio-pic, the former an audacious, polyphonic meditation by Todd Haynes, which features six Dylans (one is a thirteen year old Black actor; another is played by Cate Blanchett). For all their stark differences these films find common ground in their titles: each announces an irreducible absence, a blank where a name should be.
That absence preoccupies A Complete Unknown. It concludes with the Newport debacle but its main concern is to pursue Dylan鈥檚 elusive identity. Who are you?, Where do you come from? are the exasperated questions posed repeatedly by lovers and colleagues. 鈥淪top hiding,鈥� one implores. Dylan offers up the sketchiest answers鈥攚orked in a 鈥渃arnival鈥� is his most consistent response about origins. Rival and lover and occasional singing partner Joan Baez, for one, doesn鈥檛 buy it. But Dylan agrees when Baez tells him, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e kind of an asshole, Bob鈥�; 鈥測eah, I guess,鈥� he blithely admits. And then he plays her a new song鈥斺�淏lowing in the Wind.鈥� Who are you, indeed? When he is getting to know Sylvie, eventually his girlfriend, she tells him of her involvement with CORE and he asks what that means. Not long after, as Sylvie watches on television the March on Washington, she is startled to see her unworldly Bobby singing 鈥淥nly a Pawn in their Game鈥� to the vast crowd.
Both moments open up a disparity or contradiction: the self-absorbed, self-protective, withdrawn songwriter, typically mumbling in inward creative revery, catches the conscience of a nation, while expressing little of the political and moral solidarity, the goodness, that the folk bard traditionally embodies. Somehow Dylan鈥檚 terminal disengagement as a person produces anthems of political engagement as an artist; this gap baffles and frustrates his folk circle: Lomax and Pete Seeger join Sylvie and Joan as 鈥渃haracters, well-intentioned and committed to social change,鈥� who are left, writes Timothy Hampton in a January 鈥�25 Ideas post, 鈥渄isappointed and鈥mpty-handed by Dylan鈥檚 overwhelming ambition.鈥� A Complete Unknown, Hampton writes, is 鈥渁bout the failure of goodness鈥� and the 鈥渄eath of community.鈥�
But these terms鈥攁mbition vs. goodness and community鈥攁re too mundane: Dylan is not simply deserting communal warmth for cold careerism. He turns a refusal to be good into a basis for his art鈥檚 sophistication; foregoing moral virtue, he embraces high modernist formalism, with its insistence on autonomy, a logic enunciated by Dylan鈥檚 idol Rimbaud, one of the 鈥楧ylans鈥� in I鈥檓 Not There. Early on the poet declares: 鈥渁 song is something that walks by itself.鈥� Respecting the difference between art and life, keeping a distance, modernist aesthetics esteems an objectivity that implicitly rebukes the romantic national mandate of sincerity and authenticity which welds together artist and work. But Dylan鈥檚 sophistication also knows that these values, sanctified in public discourse, are themselves unstable, ungrounded, knows that the ludic is in command, what Ralph Ellison calls 鈥渢he American compulsion to improvise upon the given.鈥� Hence we are a country 鈥渙bsessed with authenticity鈥� while knowing 鈥淎uthenticity [is] the perfect costume/ America the land of masks, costumes, self-transformation鈥merica鈥檚 about false authenticity and creativity,鈥� to quote Todd Haynes鈥� Ellisonian notebook jottings about I鈥檓 Not There. Dylan鈥檚 embrace of aesthetic autonomy and of the shape shifting offered by the slippery status of American authenticity have made him a 鈥渃omplete unknown,鈥� or at least never quite 鈥渢here.鈥� To put it another way: Dylan has conducted a more than six decade experiment in living the oxymoron American Sophistication.
Ross Posnock retired as the Anna Garbedian Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author of many books on American literature and culture, including Philip Roth鈥檚 Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity (快色直播).