Boys for Pele

33⅓ Main Series #135

by Amy Gentry

It's hard to think of a solo female recording artist who has been as revered or as reviled over the course of her career as Tori Amos. Amy Gentry argues that these violent aesthetic responses to Amos's performance, both positive and negative, are organized around disgust-the disgust that women are taught to feel, not only for their own bodies, but for their taste in music. Released in 1996, Amos's third album, Boys for Pele, represents the height of Amos's willingness to explore the ugly qualities that make all of her music, even her more conventionally beautiful albums, so uncomfortably, and so wonderfully, strange. Using a blend of memoir, criticism, and aesthetic theory, Gentry argues that the aesthetics of disgust are useful for thinking in a broader way about women's experience of all art forms.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Feminism, Essays, Gender, Criticism

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2018

About the author

Amy Gentry is the author of the novels Good as Gone, Last Woman Standing, and Bad Habits, as well as the 33 1/3 book about Tori Amos's Boys for Pele. Also a critic, she has reviewed for the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Review of Books, Paris Review, LitHub, and Electric Literature, as well as writing introductions for two books in the NYRB Classics line. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Chicago and lives in Austin, Texas.

Reviews

[Schizanthus Nerd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I was really looking forward to reading about Tori’s Boys for Pele (I’ve been sort of obsessed for 24 years with all things Tori) I found myself glazing over whenever the discussion moved into a discourse about the nature of disgust or how the concept of taste can be, I don’t know, something about Kant and aesthetic philosophy. I blame myself; I saw Tori on the cover and neglected to read the blurb where it warned me that this book was a “blend of memoir, criticism, and aesthetic theory”.

Sure, I understood where the author was coming from when she explored disgust; the image of Tori suckling a piglet in the album artwork did elicit a WTF response from me when I first saw it in 1996. Perhaps you need to be smarter than I am to fully appreciate the connections between Tori’s music and the philosophical and sociological treatises mentioned in this book but it came across to me as kinda pretentious (sorry!).

In the end, Bourdieu’s sociological lens merely neglects what Kant purposely excludes: the body’s role in aesthetic experience.

I know a lot of people call Tori ‘pretentious’ as well but I just wanted to hear about her songs. I already knew the early Tori biography and had read a lot of the articles referenced. I also didn’t want to keep hearing about Wilson’s book about Céline Dion. I’ve got nothing against Céline (I quite enjoyed her Deadpool 2 music video) but I was here to read about Tori.

While it wasn’t what I was hoping for this book is definitely thoroughly researched and well written, and I expect a lot of Toriphiles will love it. The sections that actually deconstructed Tori’s songs were interesting and I did learn some new (to me) meanings behind lyrics and background information about the media’s portrayal of her. There were several passages I had to highlight including:

Process and product are never far apart in Amos’s music, which is, I suspect, one reason why her answers to questions about what the songs mean can often sound like additional lyrics rather than explanations. For Amos, it seems, to sing and play is to think through a complicated problem out loud, and that thinking is never really finished. Neither is the song; neither, perhaps, is the woman.

I was very disappointed that, in a book about a specific album, some of its songs were barely mentioned, including some of my favourites. In particular, Putting the Damage On is mentioned in passing twice and Talula is only mentioned once! Songs that aren’t even on this album were given more air time.

This series has been on my radar for a number of years and I expected that after reading about Pele I’d be bingeing the rest but it turns out they’re not for me and I’m really bummed about that. I usually have to buy any book written by or about Tori so this is a first for me.

Word of the Book: Abject. Abject and abjection are used a combined 47 times, although it felt closer to 100.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic for the opportunity to read this book.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is outstanding: a treatise on disgust and the abject, taste, gender, excess, pain, femininity through Boys for Pele and responses to it, including the author's own initial negative assessment in a review written for her high school newspaper. The analysis of the songs and the critical discourse surrounding Tori's career, especially the dismissive, eyerolling evaluations of even female rock critics, are unparalleled. Fresh structural approach (chapters titled Y Kant Tori ___, citing Tori's early glam rock band Y Kant Tori Read) and an especially valuable, nuanced chapter wrangling with Tori's identifications with Native culture and history. One of my favorite 33 1/3s.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

33⅓ is an on-going series of non-fiction books with each volume centered around a single music album. If you've been in the Tori Amos fandom long enough, you'll know that a book on her third album, Boys For Pele, has been a long-time coming; over a decade, in fact. After postponements, missed deadlines, and the album being back up for grabs, Gentry's proposal landed her the project.

She knows how to reel a reader in; the book starts with the sentence "the first time I heard a Tori Amos song, I was disgusted". While providing just enough anecdotes to drive the point home and keep the reader engaged with a personal touch, she proceeds to analyze the record through scholarly ideas such as Kant's philosophy on taste and Kristeva's concept of the abject. Both of these were necessary for the approach to Pele the author went with, but the expositions could've been trimmed down some, and I also could've done without the parallels she kept drawing to another volume in the series, concerning Céline Dion, whom I could not care less about. If you go into this book hoping for a track-by-track break-down of the album, you'll probably be disappointed: The first third of the book wonderfully recounts Tori's projects leading up to Boys For Pele, all necessary to understand her journey of (re)claiming womanhood which led to the album's genesis.

My first reaction to Boys For Pele was similar to the author's; after falling head over heels in love with Little Earthquakes, Boys For Pele was a complete departure, and felt impenetrable to my sixteen year old ears. It was dense and cryptic in a way I couldn't even begin to unpack ("gibberish" would be the less kind description), wrathful and intense in a way I hadn't been exposed to (I could deal with the fierce, male-energy anger of bands like Hole, but this was very different), and just plain inaccessible with its dissonant melodies and often out-of-control vocals. It was unnerving; a new kind of raw, and I dismissed it as inaccessible for years—it sounded like she was undergoing an exorcism, which, in a way, is exactly what the record is about ("it was that feeling of ripping open your vein...", Tori said). Gentry summed it up beautifully in this passage:

"Softness was all but missing from Boys For Pele; at once alien and archaic, the harpsichord is not capable of softness. The transitions were too abrupt, the stripped-down songs too stripped-down—"Twinkle" was a one-finger lullaby, "Beauty Queen" a single note plunked over and over—and the whole thing sounded as if submerged, not in musical white space, but in something like black space. The more complicated songs, "Blood Roses" and "Professional Widow" and "In the Springtime of His Voodoo", were exhausting, the thread of their bizarre lyrics and multiple bridges and breakdowns and deliberately contorted vocals impossible to follow. Melodies were stretched like taffy and then suddenly interrupted to make way for abrasive, spitting lyrics: You think I'm a queer, I think you're a queer! Chickens get a taste of your meat! Stag shit! Starfucker! It better be big, boy! Fragments of prettiness would reenter the scene, skewed and nonsensical, band-aids of grace just soft enough to hurt when ripped away."

It took years to click, but when I most needed it, the album was there, waiting for me. Nowadays I like to joke that you can't possibly "get" this record until you've listened to it at 2AM while curled up sobbing in the bathtub, choking on the shower spray, but it's really less of a joke and more what literally had to happen for Tori to take my hand and lead me to the edge of the volcano. It almost crosses into progressive rock territory by defying common song structures and playing with unconventional time signatures, and now easily ranks as my third favorite record of hers. I don't think From the Choirgirl Hotel and Scarlet's Walk, which share/swap around for the number one spot, will ever be dislodged, but if I were asked to single out the most important or essential album in her long career, it would be my pick, hands down.



A pianist herself, I really enjoyed reading the author's descriptions of the songs; she even managed to draw my attention to little details I'd never caught on to before, which is quite the feat. Her prose was so beautiful and involved when writing about the song girls that some of the passages truly and honestly knocked my breath out, and I dare say even the most seasoned Tori fan will likely gain a new layer of understanding in one respect or other. I loved the feminist approach she adopted to write about this record (is there really any other way to tackle it though?), while also, and most importantly, daring to ask the sort of questions that get silenced as soon as they are uttered in this fandom: For instance, whether Tori has the right to appropriate the pain of Native and Southern Black Americans in the way she's been known to do throughout her career.

Of the eighteen tracks on Boys For Pele, Gentry goes into stunning in-depth analysis of Blood Roses, Professional Widow, Marianne, Caught a Lite Sneeze, Hey Jupiter, Way Down, and Little Amsterdam, lightly touches on some others, while largely ignoring a good portion of the album, especially the latter half, which, the author admits, doesn't hold many favorites. Muhammad My Friend and Doughnut Song are never even mentioned, and Father Lucifer's, Talula's and Twinkle's passing name-drops are of no account, either. Not having read any of the other books in the 33⅓ series, I don't know if it's common practice to pick and choose songs to focus on rather than delve into the whole album, but the choice baffled me: Boys For Pele, like no other Tori album except for Scarlet's Walk, is a journey—those are the only two of hers that I cannot listen to on shuffle; if I put them on, I have to listen in order, and all the way through. In Pele's case, the journey is the climb out of the belly of the beast, and because of that narrative it should be taken in and considered as a whole. Tori herself said "there is to me, more like novel form on this, chapter to chapter. It is a story. She does descend, she goes to visit Lucifer, she finds the Black Widow, she finds Mr. Zebra and some of the other characters that she takes along with her. It's very Alice In Wonderland, in a sense".

I can't help but feel a little affronted at how Twinkle, especially, was completely ignored. I wouldn't single it out as a favorite song of mine, but in the context of the album, it's crucial: It signifies the hopeful redemption at the end of the narrative, and allows for the final healing and moving on; after all the blood-letting, Pele's raging fire has burnt down and cooled to a distant, twinkling star. I've always loved that imagery, and since I feel that it's a criminally underrated and largely overlooked song, I wish it had gotten the spot-light it deserved.

Despite her impressive and meticulous research work (lots of credits go to Jason Elijah at yessaid, who is about to release his own self-published tome on Tori), there were some inaccuracies that jumped out to me; most notably, American Doll Posse is not a double album, and Caught a Lite Sneeze was the first ever single to be offered as a free digital download at the end of 1995, and not an unnamed song in 1998, as Gentry writes—this was an uncorrected proof though, so perhaps these errors have been caught in editing and will be rectified in the final version.

Overall, when the book got it right, it was incredible, but I can't give it a full five stars because it meandered a little in the early chapters, while the latter half, when Gentry finally started digging into the individual songs, didn't end up giving me the full deconstruction of the album I craved—it just left me wanting more, and if she were to publish an expanded version on the full album, I'd be first in line to buy it. Still, even as it is, I'd go as far as calling it an essential read for any Tori Amos fan, and I look forward to having a physical copy on my shelf. Spoon is thanked in the acknowledgements, so I really hope Tori gets to read this; I can say without the shadow of a doubt that she would love it, and that's really the highest compliment you could wish for.

—————

Note: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Jessica Hopper · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books of feminist music criticism I have ever read. I am not an Amos fan by any stretch, and yet yelled "FUCK YES", out loud, while reading. Love all that Gentry brings into consideration here, and all that she unpacks not just about Tori, but all the performers and artists that critics have long deemed "too much".

[MissBecka Gee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic for this ARC.

I've said it before and I apparently have to say it again......
I WANT MORE EMOTION!!!
This is always my problem with the 33 1/3 books, sadly I am completely addicted to them despite knowing I will never get the emotions I want.
I always hope for a love story told through the deconstruction of the album.
Personal emotions and memories mixed in with the reasoning and inspiration behind the songs instead of a dry delivery of other critics thoughts.
The author did include some memories and personal emotion, but they seemed out of place or too badly timed to be relevant.
She starts with recalling her review she wrote for the school paper on this album in the 90's and that was more how I had hoped the rest of the book would have played out. It just felt dry and got off topic far too much (I'm looking at you entire chapter on the history and development of "taste").
She delved into most of Tori's library of work, not just Boys for Pele, which was interesting and the reasoning behind some off the songs did have more to them than I knew prior...
I just wanted MORE.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely identify so strongly with music criticism, but wow this book is wonderful. You don't have to be a Tori Amos fan to enjoy it, but if you are, it's going to touch some nerves. It helps if you have a working knowledge of abjection theory (especially Kristeva), but Gentry does a great job of using Amos and the way her fans have been ridiculed by rock critics to explore her themes.

On a more personal note, I submitted a proposal to 33 1/3 back in 2014 to write about this album, and I'm so happy they rejected my idea in favor of Gentry's. There were some points while reading this book that made me want to reach out to every weird kid I knew back in 1996-1998 and say "this book is for us." She gets it.

[Alex Sarll]

Explicitly in conversation with Carl Wilson's 33 1/3 about Celine Dion, Amy Gentry*'s entry in the series is, like that earlier book, one of the ones you can profitably read even if you're not a huge fan of the act it's ostensibly about. Addressing an artist often criticised for lacking a filter, Gentry opens in an appropriately confessional vein – "The first time I heard a Tori Amos song I was disgusted. I was an eighth grader with an underdeveloped chest". What follows is in large part an investigation of that disgust – and of our attempt to shield against it with "taste, condom of the soul". A struggle which feels all the more urgent for the fearful penetrability of the body by sound (just think of the way a song you don't like can 'get into your head', be described like a ghastly parasite as an 'earworm'), and worse, the fact that you might even end up liking it after all...and then what does that say about you? The book's chapter titles all riff on Amos' disavowed debut Y Kant Tori Read?, of which a partial defence is mounted; my favourite goes right in for the pun with 'Y Kant Tori Kant?', its discussion of the Königsberg bore's aesthetic theories, alongside those of Burke et al, shedding valuable light on how male-created theories of what matters in art have so often sought to marginalise women as audience, never mind creators. Something which remains the case in Wilson's book, where for all his attempts to examine taste, there remains an unshakable underlying assumption that Elliott Smith is on some intrinsic level superior to Celine Dion**. One of the big themes here is the way that the cultural conversation takes man stuff more seriously than woman stuff, and though I broadly agree, there are times when Gentry weakens her own argument by overplaying it. It is interesting how many champions of other female acts have taken against Amos, and while there's certainly something to the notion that Amos seems to rebel in the 'wrong' way even for them (too twee, too precious, too abstract, simply too much), I don't wholly buy the notion that Amos has been uniquely hard done-to. Gentry rightly criticises press attempts to turn 'Professional Widow' into a diss track/catfight with Courtney Love, but in a sense she's engaged in a similar sort of fannish one-up(wo)manship here; I'm fairly sure fans of Love, surely the alternative scene's Hillary Clinton, would make a strong case that Love has had a tougher ride in terms of genuine hate than the condescension and incomprehension with which Amos has contended. But even beyond that, the likes of Kate Bush and Björk, who here tend to be referenced as more respected, have each suffered an awful lot of mockery over the years. And at the risk of coming over all MRA, you'd never know from this book that male rock stars weren't treated with universal reverence. Whenever Mick Jagger is mentioned, it's as an example of the object of general awe, despite the equally plausible counternarrative which saw him move straight from horny little oik to ridiculous old has-been, decried as a rip-off merchant the whole way. Similarly, when Gentry suggests that pretentious male rock lyricists may be mocked as fey, but never as dim-witted...well, that may be true of the US rock press, but it really doesn't hold in the UK.
(This is not the only example of a slight blind spot for the non-American perspective. The cover line 'Hips. Lips. Tits. Power.' for the Amos/Björk/PJ Harvey piece in Q is taken at face value, rather than being noted as a Silverfish reference, which naturally makes it seem more reductive. Similarly, while 'Professional Widow' is discussed at length, there's not a whisper of the Armand van Helden remix - even though it surely speaks powerfully to the book's angle that Amos' biggest hit single was the result of a man removing most of her words and music. But of course, in the US that was only a club hit, not a hit hit like it was in Europe)

Still, even if Gentry's fascination with Amos can occasionally lead to these slight overstatements, it's worth it. Amos is an act whose fans identify powerfully with her – as confidante, big sister, alter ego – and to have the book written by someone who doesn't share that would feel bloodless and false. You get much more sense of the author from this book than you do from many 33 1/3s, and often it's Gentry talking about the things which bring her close to Amos; from the obvious, like being female, through being generally odd and growing up in a religious family, to the distinctly niche. This was the first time I learned of Amos' jaw ailment, which Gentry shares, and which provides a great lynchpin for discussing the grain of Amos' sound – the way she'll twist or swallow words, the little details which ensure that you can never forget that what you're listening to was made by an organic body existing in a concrete physical space. Gentry contrasts this to "the diamond-hard vocals of Kate Bush, to whom Amos is often compared", which I'm not sure is quite right (you say 'diamond-hard vocals' to me and I think Billy Mackenzie, where Bush is more like a mighty wave), but I can absolutely see what she's getting at. And it's this physicality, this refusal to shy away from the grubby and abject, which put Gentry off Pele at first, in a teenage review to which she keeps returning. With which I can sympathise – I was also, as a fan of the first two albums, somewhat nonplussed by this long and messy new record. In the intervening years, I've come to realise that yes, there's a lot there. And next time I go back to it, it's going to be with a fresh appetite and all sorts of new perspectives. Like its subject, this book is uneven and a bit all over the place, but taken as a whole, well worth it.

*There are still references here and there online, including on Goodreads, to another 33 1/3 on Boys for Pele which was meant to be happening about five years ago, written by Elizabeth Merrick. Maybe some day we can get a 33 1/3 about the stories behind 33 1/3 books and find out what happened there.

**For the record, I'm not really a fan of either. I have a lot of friends who love Smith, but the one time I saw him live I was left entirely unmoved. Whereas Dion...well, the association of her song with a video featuring Kate Winslet, during my phase of peak Winslet fandom-by-association, left its traces. But even before that there was the youth hostel in Verona which always had the same mixtape playing at breakfast, and the only other track I remember was a very soulful live version of Bowie's 'Changes', but there was a Celine Dion song on there too, and one other guest who would always be reduced to floods of tears by it. And even as a snotty teenager, I suspected this was closer to what art is meant to be about than the vague air of disaffected cool fans of eg Fugazi seemed to derive from their own choice of band-I-didn't-get.

(Netgalley ARC. Which, of course, may also mean that some of my quibbles above get addressed between this uncorrected proof and the finished product)

[Girl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

If you need to know anything about my music habits, it would be that Tori Amos has been the most important artist for me for the past 17 years, give or take. I started to listen to her music in December 2001, and I have been around for the release of every new album of hers ever since.

Amy Gentry's book is about Boys for Pele, Tori Amos's third record as a solo artist, originally released in 1996. Boys for Pele is a behemoth of an album, clocking in at over 70 minutes and counting 18 tracks. Written in the aftermath of Amos's breakup with her boyfriend of seven years, it is angry, raw and melancholic, concerned with exploring and exorcising demons, both inner and outer ones. It is, arguably, one of Amos's masterpieces*.

There is a lot that can be said about this album. Gentry chooses to examine it through the lens of the Kantian notions of aesthetics and Julia Kristeva's concept of the abject. The latter, in particular, has a considerably apt resonance with regards to this record, which is ugly, difficult and, in parts, unpleasant. (Surprisingly for me, though, Gentry quotes some reviews that described Pele as "precious" and too cutesy / girly. Seriously.)

I found this quote particularly resonant:

Women and girls have a particularly complicated relationship with disgust. We learn at an early age to be grossed out by our bodies, with their ungainly fat deposits and nipples guaranteed to be the wrong size and slimy, bleeding, wrinkly holes. Later on, we learn that the things we like are also disgusting, because we like them. These things include, but are not limited to: unicorns, romance novels, the color pink, Tori Amos.



Gentry's discussion of Boys for Pele is both fascinating and deeply personal, as the author draws on her early experience of listening to the album and dismissing aspects of it in order to appear more sophisticated. What is a little strange for me is that although Gentry analyzes some songs in considerable detail (Blood Roses, Professional Widow, Marianne, Hey Jupiter, Little Amsterdam), a few others are barely mentioned. In fact, there is not even a brief overview of all the tracks in succession. While in other respects I find this book insightful and valuable, it is lacking in this regard; while it has some outstanding tracks, Boys for Pele forms a cohesive whole out of its separate parts.

Still, I recommend this book to fans and non-fans alike: this album and the artist herself definitely merit this kind of thoughtful critical attention.

(* Personally I consider Scarlet's Walk to be on par with Pele)

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this – one of the best 33 1/3 books I've read. It functions partly as a rebuttal of the 33 1/3 book on Celine Dion, which I enjoyed but also acknowledge is a fine example of Straight White Male Bullshit. Read that one, then read this one.

I like many of Tori Amos's songs, though not this album particularly, and I wouldn't call myself a 'fan.' But even if you're not a fan of Tori Amos's music or public persona (even if you've never listened to her), there's a lot to take from this about women in the music industry, mental health, how we discuss fame and famous people, and who gets (and doesn't get) critical attention and acclaim – and why.

[Britton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Came for the "Professional Widow" fangirling stayed for the deconstruction of Kant's definition of taste and the centering of the abject in a new theory of aesthetics.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amy Gentry's book on Tori Amos' Boys for Pele is excellent. Not only is it a dissection of an interesting album but there's a section on musical taste, with references to my fave 33 1/3 volume, Let's Talk about Love, sexism in music, motherhood, being a woman and how the author's life reflects certain moments of Tori's career.

The album analysis is insightful and encapsulates all the themes in this volume.

One of the must reads.

[Tess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amy Gentry's comprehensive and insightful look at Tori Amos' music, with her album Boys for Pele as the anchor, was breathtaking. I gobbled it up in two sittings, and wanted more once I reached the end. As a lifelong Amos fan, I loved reading her take on Amos' career, learning new things, and thinking differently about the music, lyrics, and sounds that have been a part of my soul since middle school. I can certainly see myself re-reading this beautiful book many times throughout my life, and that is one of the best compliments I can give!

[Katarzyna Bartoszynska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Characteristically brilliant. Gentry sifts through the complex layers of how we respond to Boys for Pele; illuminating the sexism conditioning our responses to female creativity while keeping a critical eye on some of the more problematic aspects of Amos' oeuvre (and also offering a robust and compelling account of the important work she has done, particularly for victims of sexual assault). Drawing on her extensive knowledge of all things Tori -- music, biography, criticism, interviews, memoirs -- Gentry sketches out a persuasive narrative of her evolution as a musician and public figure. She describes the music in breathtakingly vivid ways, and offers incredible explanations of how it works, both musically and lyrically -- one of the most stunning aspects of the book, to me. Interweaving lucid accounts of aesthetic theory (and offering, in the process, a feminist rejoinder to Carl Wilson's Celine Dion book), and powerful descriptions of her own experiences from adolescence to adulthood, Gentry crafts an incredible reflection on how music matters to people. A really phenomenal book.

[Simon McMurdo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would imagine that any book considered "a blend of memoir, criticism, and aesthetic theory" may find readers more drawn towards one approach more than the others - for me, memoir and criticism yay, aesthetic theory nay. In all honestly, even above memoir and criticism, the reason I'm drawn to this book is my adoration of the music of Tori Amos.

This wasn't what I thought it was going to be. My first venture into the 33 1/3 book series, I was perhaps expecting something of a 100-page album review, or a track by track analysis, maybe even a behind the scenes look at the creation of the album. This book touches on all of those expectations and, for my taste, delivers even more. Firstly, memoir. I felt I got to know Gentry whilst reading this. Not intensely, certainly not as extensively as a fully-fledged memoir, but her relationship with Amos and the impact that discovering her music had.

The criticism portion of this text is possibly the part I found most fascinating. Gentry doesn't go into detail of many of the songs on the record, but the few that arguably shape the sound of the record and the response to it ('Blood Roses', 'Professional Widow') get in-depth explorations. First negative for me - I enjoyed these bits so much that I'd have liked to see songs such as the touching 'Putting the Damage On', 'Talula' and 'Father Lucifer' get a similar treatment. Arguably, these would have steered the author away from her initial focus - the idea of the abject and disgust. Religion (as in 'Father Lucifer') is as fascinating a subject as it gets, especially where Amos is concerned, but it's also a topic that may have felt a bit out of place in this text. OK, I've talked myself down - maybe i'll retract that negative and replace it with a warning instead - as you venture into yet another paragraph about 'Blood Roses', don't expect all the other songs to get the same treatment.

Finally, we have the aesthetic theory. More so than even Amos and the album, this seems to be the thread that holds the book together. When it feels Gentry is on some sort of theoretical tangent, she does always bring it back and it makes sense to the album in discussion. It's the area I was least interested in upon reading the blurb, but for the most part it did keep my interest and helped to inform some of the criticism Amos faced from the press during this record cycle and subsequent releases.

Approaching this book primarily from the perspective of an Amos fan, it wasn't necessarily what I thought it would be but I'm pleased I wasn't too tied to my expectations. Whilst I perhaps thought that the author's eye would be cast more towards Tori and the recordings (and arguably it is in some sections), it seems the most pressing issue in discussion is the eyes cast upon Amos- from the media, reviewers and even a younger Gentry herself.

[Teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even having read the description of the book before I started reading it, I was still so pleasantly surprised by how much political commentary and theory was included here. I learnt so much about the subjects brought up (some of them I hadn't even thought about before!) and new things about Tori and her music too, which is all I could want from a book about her. The way Gentry unveiled new deep meanings to songs (whether or not they are true) was so so cool and gave me a newfound appreciation of songs I already love. How she connected dots to Tori's history and to societal issues was extremely impressive and made my mind and heart so happy. Reading something about one of your favourite people written by someone who clearly gets the person is my choice of drug.

Seeing as Gentry is a pianist herself, I was enlightened to many musical aspects my horribly unmusical self would've never picked up on, so I am eternally grateful my eyes could be opened to the small details that really add beautiful touches to these wonderful songs. 
Another thing I appreciated was the acknowledgement of the way Tori dealt with the pain and trauma that Native Americans (even though Tori is part Native American) and African-Americans endure in her music. Gentry not confirming or denying whether or not it is problematic while still talking about it and the complexities of such a topic was refreshing. 

This would've gotten 5-stars if there was more time given to other songs in the album. I'd say some of the others are vital for getting the full picture and progression of the album.

Even though it seems Gentry had a difficult time writing this according to the Acknowledgements section, I would instantly buy anything else she'd write on Tori considering how wonderfully she handled this album.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the way Kant and other philosophers and their theories of aesthetic taste (male biased of course) were woven together here. I was not expecting so much depth - so many components coming together to create something as seemingly simple as taste. Hard to grasp at once all the ways we are trained to think and all the biases entailed in that training. I guess the nuances of that training, whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly, are what flavor our lives. I feel I’ve always tried to honor the “ugly” aspect of the internal part of myself. She and I danced all the dances with this album. I sometimes think I spent too much of my early life with that dancing, wallowed away too much of the good. Then I witness, almost daily, individuals being thrown off course by the most superficial pettiness, and I can’t help but think they should have gotten to know their own ugliness a little better. Maybe they would be nicer people.

“Boys for Pele was Tori Amos’s baroque phase. It was also the last time she ever allowed herself to be quite that ugly, and ugliness, I am now convinced, is much more important for an appreciation of Tori Amos than beauty, though both are always present. On Boys for Pele, their very coexistence is what disgusts. For a woman to be ugly in a way that’s not readable as rebellious, or punk, or cool – ugly in a way that, because of its proximity to the remnants of beauty, reminds you all the time of your potential failure to be the right kind of woman, to be any kind of woman at all – ugly because trying too hard, overflowing, whining and gibbering, too much – not a scream, but a broken soprano – is worse than tasteless. It’s disgusting."

[Stephen van Dyck · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book builds on Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love like a necessary part two. Gentry shows how Bourdieu's sociological lens leaves out the body's role in aesthetic experience. Everyone should read this, but it's such a treat to have a well written book about an album I know so well that explores abjection, disgust, divadom, cuteness, and Immanuel Kant.

I feel like I have a better intellectual understanding now of why gay teenage-me needed to put up a poster of Tori nursing a piglet. I also relate to the author at first finding Tori icky and then realizing it was an icky they also had. When I was 15 and had just completed my Tori CD collection, my friend reminded me that only a year earlier I'd referred to her as Tori Anus.

Send this book to all the Tori haters.

Did you know "chickens get a taste of your meat" was inspired by a scene in an Alice Walker novel where a girl's clitoris was cut off and fed to chickens?

My one quibble: the author gets something wrong about the harpsichord, my main instrument in college: Harpsichords do have dynamics. They're just not literally loud/soft like a piano's dynamics.

[Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's the 33 1/3 Boys for Pele book! I've been a fan of Tori Amos since hearing Silent All These Years at probably around age thirteen, but Boys for Pele was a whole other thing for me, one of the top two or three if not *the* most formative album of my young life. It remains the only CD I've purchased specifically on the day it was released, and oh how I still remember bringing it home from Twist & Shout, opening it reverently, and sitting on the floor of my bedroom with the linear notes for the rest of the night, basically just losing it. Gentry does a deep dive into the album (although I freely admit I skipped the chapter about Kant) through the lens of a handful of songs and tackles the question of why this immensely talented artist didn't get more props back in the day just because she writes weird lyrics and talks about faeries. Even though I agree with Gentry when she says she stopped memorizing Tori after Scarlet's Walk, I'm definitely due for a post-divorce sit down-re-listen session with this album wherein I weep from the opening note to the closing and die of nostalgia.

[Lady Jayme, · Rating 4 out of 5]

My heart literally skipped a beat when I saw this in the bookstore and I thought, "This book was written just for me." Which is silly, of course, but it's kind of true. This book was written for any Tori fan.

The second chapter almost lost me as it's a deep dive into the meaning of taste and art and felt a little academic/textbook-y. I understand why it was included, but it was a relief when the chapters returned to being Tori-centered, considering lyrics and musing about musical composition.

I would've preferred if the book went song by song and touched on each one, but instead it focuses heavily on a handful of songs and briefly mentions others. Despite that, I did learn plenty I didn't know about Tori, this album, her previous career wtih Y Kant Tori Read, and more. It also spurred me to relisten to all of my favorite albums as I read along. I don't normally listen to music as I read, so this was a fun, different sensory experience for me.

I'm thrilled to discover this imprint, 33 1/3 by Bloomsbury, along with the British Film Institute's BFI Classics. (Thank you to So & So Books in Raleigh!) I will be reading more from these imprints and I feel like I'll reread this book again as well.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could give half stars, I'd give this 3.5. I really appreciated Gentry's approach here and I thought her interpretations of the songs she chose to highlight were bang on. I was a bit disappointed that the latter half of the record got short shrift, and not talking about how the piano burning imagery and Not the Red Baron connect to the larger themes of the album was a missed opportunity. Regardless, it was well organized, convincing, and I still want to write my own version of this because I'd come at it from a much less academic approach and it would be different!

[Nathan Wade Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good!

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good assessment of the album and in particular the climate around it- an unpacking of some of the baggage that Tori Amos seemed to arrive at this album with, at least in the eyes of others.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

As deft and intelligent as the masterpiece it discusses, Amy Gentry has finally accorded this album and Tori Amos the thorough and thoughtful critique it and she deserve. Whilst celebrating the art (and retaining a critical eye) Gentry also manages to expose the embarrassing lack of understanding the average rock critic has of Tori Amos and her music. The book demonstrates that while the artist is operating on a plane not accessible to the casual listener (i.e. critic), the journalists who have tried to undermine and dismiss her as a kook themselves end up looking ridiculous. Gentry herself reflects on her own initial reaction to the album and admits that as a listener she was inadequate - the failing was not with Tori. Assumptions that the lyrics are nonsense because the meaning isn't immediately apparent is offensive but all too common. Gentry firmly places Tori Amos where she well and truly deserves, in the vanguard of musical visionaries, with critics taking two decades to begin to catch up.

[Michael Abernethy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, thought-provoking examination of a landmark work. No one else has ever made an album quite like Boys For Pele in its tone, instrumentation, and emotional sprawl. Gentry does an exceptional job critiquing the ideas, ethos and cultural significance of BFP. I wanted it never to end.

[Graham Catt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This appraisal of Boys for Pele is pretty good. There is plenty of information and insight here. But did we really need the lengthy examination of Immanuel Kant’s definition of disgust?

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Amos's music for a while now, since hearing her album, "Scarlet's Walk." At the time, I was going through a difficult relationship and many of Tori's songs seemed to reflect back to me exactly what I was thinking or feeling. Since then, I have most of her back catalogue, and have read the book she collaborated on with Ann Powers, "Tori Amos: Piece by Piece." So, I have to admit to being intrigued by this examination of Amos's album, "Boys for Pele." Having now finished, I have to admit that I'm in two minds about it.

I agree with another reviewer, who said that they wished there had been more emotion. Gentry begins the book by divulging how she felt when she first heard Amos's music. She also writes about reviewing the album, when she was writing as a teenager for a school paper. For Gentry, disgust plays a big part in understanding, and perhaps appreciating, Amos's music:
"Boys for Pele .... was also the last time she ever allowed herself to be quite that ugly, and ugliness, I am now convinced, is much more important for an appreciation of Tori Amos than beauty, though both are always present. On Boys for Pele, their very coexistence is what disgusts." (p.11)

Certainly, for anyone familiar with the album, they will be aware of the artwork, and so may instantly see where this ugliness may be apparent. For those who aren't aware, the artwork includes the cover, showing Tori sitting on a rocking chair, one leg draped over the arm, a shotgun in her lap, a python under her chair and mud covering both feet and her exposed leg. Another photo shows a piglet suckling from her breast, whilst another shows Tori in white, on all fours, in the dirt, with farm animals in the background. So, where is the beauty? I'm not sure that Genrty managed to illustrate this.

In all fairness, Amos can be a 'difficult' artists to get. Her work is not always easily accessible. For me, that was what captured my imagination; up until hearing her, I hadn't really heard anyone doing anything like she was. The beauty here, then, is the beauty of original, challenging music. But also, as you learn more about the album's genesis. the beauty of a female artist doing what she wanted to do.

Reading Gentry's examination of Amos's album, there were times when I came across something new about the artist that I have admired for so long. But, Amos's music is nothing if not emotive, yet Gentry seems to leave her emotional responses behind. Apart from her introduction, her writing seems to come across as being too academic, too removed from the music and the artist that she was studying. The saving grace, for me, is Amos herself; because she is such an innovative, challenging and dynamic artist, that made Gentry's examination of her work worthwhile.

[Janet Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 33 1/3 series has made a name for itself by combining music criticism with anything from memoir to social theory, or often (as in the case of this book) both together. And, as a huge fan of Tori Amos, and particularly her early albums, I was champing at the bit to read this latest edition to the series looking at her Boys For Pele album. It was a great read, both challenging and thought-provoking, encompassing everything from Kant's philosophy and the concept of 'good' taste, to biographical details about Amos's early career and the recording of the Boys For Pele album, to more traditional musical criticism. However, it's very possible I enjoyed it so much because I'm currently a postgrad student in sociology and therefore what one reviewer has (not inaccurately) described as pretentious, I relished. But that's the nature of the 33 1/3 series: anyone coming to them for straightforward biography is always going to be disappointed.

[Amy Gentry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adult Amy remembers 17-year-old Amy listening to this dark psychological thriller of an album with traces of feminist body horror for the first time, and uses tools she did not have then, but has now--feminism, a PhD, an appetite for ambivalence and abjection--to analyze the experience. Written not all that long after I left academia, this is a book about an album about trauma, and I don't think that's a coincidence. At any rate, it was a healing book for me to write, about someone I used to dream about meeting and thanking for her amazing art.

[Linden · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great little book! I am not a Tori Amos fan, but I am an Amy Gentry fan, and this book presents a smart read on the ways cultural ideas about women shape our taste and our responses to female artists. Even if you don’t know Amos, you might enjoy this intersectional feminist reading of her work as an exploration of why we react with disgust to the work of female artists.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I desperately try to complete my 2019 reading challenge, I've been on a 33 1/3 kick this past week. I've read about a half dozen (and read several more earlier this year and last year) and I've enjoyed all of them. Although short, I have found these books are far from light reading and they inevitably send one down rabbit holes revisiting albums and er...um, writing reviews!

Anyway -- this study of the 'aesthetics of disgust' in regard to Tori Amos' third album (and the public's reaction to it) is masterful. I genuinely loved this book. As a straight white male, my love of Tori's music might be an anomaly to some, but good music is good music. Tori's poppy singles are fantastic, catchy, and have substance (both technically and poetically). Her darker songs like "Bells for Her," "Horses," "Blood Roses," "Mother," etc. are exactly the kind of rich, melancholic songs I was searching for in the mid 1990s when I first discovered her music. While I was admittedly a bit infatuated with Tori's carnal flame-haired Pre-Raphaelite fairy goddess persona when I first saw her, it is her MUSIC that has endured for me. In the background, I cued up my favorite songs from all of her albums up through "Scarlet's Walk" as I read this book and was struck by just how incredibly GOOD these songs are. They do not sound dated, nor as quirky or precious as many condescending rock critics would claim.

What I loved about this book is that it brilliantly slips between personal memoir, informative journalism, theoretical analysis, and pointed criticism (to both other critics and Tori's work itself). It is objective, yet thrillingly subjective at times too.

There are quite a few very sharp and illuminating observations that recontextualized aspects of Tori's career that seemed to have been set in stone. Gentry's comments regarding the "Y Kant Tori Read" era in relation to "Little Earthquakes" was particularly mind-blowing. I never thought of it this way before, but Tori was somewhat more liberated with the Lita Ford-esque rocker persona that characterized her first album. She was in a sense made more palatable to the masses with "Little Earthquakes," for it seemed as though she was free to be more candid and personal -- more like the 'real' her. But that kind of soft, shy, sensitive singer-songwriter persona was in some ways, just another trap. She was still conforming to expectations that were established by a dominant patriarchal culture.

Thus Gentry makes a strong case that "Boys for Pele" was a radical album that deliberately shattered these barriers, but also elicited even more confusion, discomfort, and animosity as a result. The book is frightening and sad, as it shows how deeply entrenched certain misogynist views truly are, even from those that one would presume would have understood and supported Tori Amos (i.e. female rock journalists). After setting the stage with the author's discovery of Tori Amos as a teenager, and providing background info on Tori and the album itself, the book's remaining chapters tackle the ways in which Tori was criticized for not conforming to the expectations set out for her (a chapter on the physicality of her piano playing; her seemingly flaky persona and pretentious lyrics; her fanbase, etc.)

All in all, this is a fascinating read. I wouldn't count myself as a die-hard Toriphile, so understand, this book was not written to only appeal to Tori's dedicated fans. It is NOT a gushing defense of Tori Amos against an evil cabal of mean-spirited detractors that just don't like or get her; it is a very carefully constructed and illuminating study of one multi-faceted and challenging performer that also points to larger issues that pervaded the alternative rock scene throughout the 1990s. It grapples with conceptualizations of 'taste' and aesthetics that continue to be politically and culturally relevant today.

Highly recommended!