I ought to declare an interest: I do not intend to say anything nice about Reading Lyrics, [1] the new magnum opus edited by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball, because Mr. Gottlieb, one of the grand panjandrums of American letters, was snotty about me in The New York Times. So nuts to him: I regard him, in that useful British expression, as a complete pillock. It’s all personal, and we should not pretend otherwise. (Martin Peretz, in The New Republic the other day, loftily deplored an “ugly” column by “one Mark Steyn.” That “one” is an exquisite and characteristically American touch—they teach it in journalism school, I believe. Mr. Peretz knows full well who I am, as the only reason he’s sniping at me is because, in an entirely different column, I sniped at him; he had criticized Governor Bush for calling his dog “Spot” and I pointed out that, as canine names go, it was better than Al Gore having a poodle called “Martin.”)

However, if I were to say anything nice about Reading Lyrics, I think I would congratulate Messrs. Kimball and Gottlieb on the breadth of the book. It is in essence a survey of lyrics and lyricists from a century ago (George M. Cohan, the “Yankee Doodle Dandy” lui-même) up to more or less the present (gloomy Sondheim). Song words on paper are inevitably of limited value. Unless you already know the tune, you’re never going to be impressed by: