Thought for a Thursday: Is It Really “Entertainment” That Needs Defending?
Great authors are not to blame for your lack of education., June 17, 1999 By A Customer:
For God’s sake— why do so many people write these idiotic reviews, these reviews that are nothing so much as confessions of stupidity? Why do people believe that the primary aim of all art, even that of fictive prose, is absolute simplistic clarity? These are the same chuckleheads who fail to understand impressionism and cubism; they are the people who fail to recognize that distortions of photographic reality (or the use of abstract, metaphor-laden prose with poetic, rather than simple reportorial, qualities) are attempts to reveal a hidden truth or an occult sensation, something intangible lurking beneath the surface of the hubbub that constitutes our everyday lives. “Guernica” strives to convey the absolute chaos and horror of war, something of the mental distortion endured by those unlucky enough to fight; “The Scream” tries to convey the sense of terror that resides the very nature of being, a sense only perceived by the introspective and the sensitive; and “The Crying of Lot 49″ dissects the effects of sixties culture, and its cultural precedents, on the bare skeleton of America. It uses metaphor to make sense of the welter of confused action that is American life (read: it does not strive to obfuscate it). None of these masterworks fail simply because they refuse to be obvious. There is a place for the realism of Michelangelo and the journalistic minimalism of Hemingway, but artistic expression should not, is not, and cannot be confined to those styles that lend themselves to easiest comprehension. Some art reaches for wispier, more difficult ideas, and demands that we, the readers and viewers, make the effort required to understand.
Reading is like weightlifting. It is a skill. It requires repetition and practice. One must read incessantly and carefully to become a good practitioner of the art.
One should not skip anything, not so much as a single ambiguous phrase, not so much as a single word that falls outside one’s vernacular. One should strive to ascertain the primary meaning of every word of a given text and as many secondary meanings as possible as well. And one must never expect that educated and erudite and soulful being, that being that John Milton called a “master spirit”— the writer— to dumb his prose down for easy consumption by dim-witted orangutans. Thomas Pynchon is not to blame for the fact that you know nothing of history, culture, literature, and so forth. Yet people blame him, and Shakespeare and Dante and Baudrillard and everyone else, rather than themselves and their TV-addled ignorance. For shame! There is more at stake here than the dignity of great writers themselves; there is more at stake here than the possibility that Thomas Pynchon might have to endure reading one of these asinine reviews and wind up asking himself, “Am I just throwing pearls before swine?” No, the matter is graver than that: potential readers are also victims. They read some numbskull’s pronunciamento that Pynchon’s book is a “great idea” with— I can barely repeat it— “flawed prose” (all the while writing in a terrible prose style himself, this astute reader, employing that stilted language of imbecility that everyone can easily understand), and think to themselves, “Humph. I guess it’s not so good.” And then these misled readers will buy John Grisham instead, whose work the fans of facile clarity and structural simplicity have awarded numerous five-star reviews. Literacy in America is limping toward death. The confederacy of dunces is on the verge of conquering the last bastions of a proud intellectual tradition. Wake up, America. Man cannot live on “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Firm” alone— unless he wishes to celebrate the millennium by returning to the trees.
October 8, 2009 at 10:33 am
Depends on who you’re at war with…
October 8, 2009 at 10:35 am
I’m afraid reading is dead. Books are dead. The last outliers of this dying art will soon die off. We have programmed our computers to be smarter than us so we no longer need to think. The paradigm shift will occur at or near 2012. We will fuse with technology and shed our human skin as we finally get absorbed into the ether of the intersphere. All signs of evolution point to this conclusion. There will be vampires. They will be wearing bell-bottoms. They will be bearing their chest hair. You have been warned.
October 8, 2009 at 11:13 am
To give you something to complain about?
Are all those Americans who don’t understand quantum physics and can’t derive the calculus from first principles also dim-witted orangutans?
October 8, 2009 at 11:14 am
True dat. I like all kinds of fiction, but when I read a throw-away Grisham-like novel, I don’t claim it’s literature. I’m just throwing the question out there, but I would observe that you do see a tendency lately that reminds me of high school: denegrate rather than respect the smart kid in the room.
October 8, 2009 at 11:14 am
Tyson–I’m not complaining about anything. I’m throwing it out there. A question is not a conclusion.
October 8, 2009 at 11:15 am
And, hey, it’s a slow Wednesday.
October 8, 2009 at 11:22 am
I’m pretty sure it’s Thursday, Jeff.
I thought it was interesting. I know I’ve met more than a couple folks at sci-fi conventions who are looking for a movie in their mind and read so fast one suspects they can get little else from the experience.
Different strokes for different folks and all.
Jeff, since when did we ever truly leave high school? How long has it been since you worked in an office?
October 8, 2009 at 11:23 am
My first reaction was a hearty Huzzah! You tell ‘em! But upon further reflection, I’m with you, Jeff. It really depends on what type of mood I’m in. I mean sometimes I want steak and sometimes I want a PBJ sandwich. I like both.
JKS
October 8, 2009 at 11:24 am
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: “A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can not expect an apostle to peer out.”
Or as Robert Anton Wilson had it:
“This book is a mirror; when a monkey looks in, no philosopher looks out.”
Regarding the maths and physics issue, you never hear people actively moaning that things like that are difficult, they accept that they’d have to work to understand them. Art, on the other hand, is constantly expected to stoop to the level of the philistine.
October 8, 2009 at 11:26 am
John: That’s a good point about maths and physics.
Crap, it is Thursday. You can tell how tired I am. Hee.
Erm, I’m telling no one. That’s a comment from a customer on Amazon, from 10 years ago. I posted it in part because I wonder how different the whole book culture and book world is now than it was then.
JM–I haven’t worked in an office for three years.
October 8, 2009 at 11:29 am
Also, I wouldn’t assume just ’cause I offer that up for debate that I agree with everything that’s being said. Readers like what readers like. At the same time, do we foster an atmosphere in which we respect and appreciate “literature”, for lack of a better word, in genre and the mainstream, or do we dismiss it as pretentious hooey?
October 8, 2009 at 11:46 am
The older I get, the more I suspect I’ll be dealing with the same high school nonsense in the nursing home that I’ve been dealing with since I was old enough to notice the silly social nonsense in high school.
Anyone who is different from the herd will face the consequences. Raising your hand in class, in meetings, in life, a little too much is a crime against the group. Quoting smart books people don’t recognize is threatening to the group.
There is no escape, Jeff. When you’re in a nursing home, the cool kids will steal your pudding, and taunt you for reading when you should be watching Wheel of Fortune. You will be the last picked for the canasta tournaments.
I imagine it’ll only get worse in the afterlife.
October 8, 2009 at 11:51 am
Here here! Next time I nearly go on a rant to defend some of my favorite books, I’m just going to link folks here.
October 8, 2009 at 12:06 pm
JM–i don’t recall saying I was the smart kid. I was usually the absurdist/class clown.
October 8, 2009 at 12:26 pm
So wait, your saying if I don’t know how to weight lift I don’t know how to read? I’m so confused. Please use shorter, easier to understand sentences next time. Thanks.
October 8, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Thank you! Yes! A million times yes!
October 8, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Most people don’t get art. Most people never have. Art, in any form, has never been all that popular. Just like science, in any form, has never been all that populist or popular. Even sport is mostly a spectating opportunity for the majority. Anything that requires more than a basic level of committment from Jo Average isn’t popular.
Jo Average spends her time at work, busting her behind in pursuit of a quality of life that might get her time to read a book. When Jo is home, Jo is worrying about dinner. Or kids. Or homework. He’s trying to keep his relationship together and wondering when he’ll next see his mom. Jo is busy with the million and one things that life seems to demand these days. She doesn’t have time for Grisham, let alone Pynchon.
Thing is, people keep telling Jo he’s dumb because he doesn’t read. Oprah says that people should read, so maybe he crams in thirty hypnagogic minutes at bed time. At that end of the day, the complexities of metaphor and allegory are lost on Jo anyway; she’s about capable of following a story that’s reasonably clear and reasonably sane, and really not much else.
It’s always a matter of time. We’re still peasants, toiling in fields, and until science makes good with the promises it made us in the ’70s (you know the ones, science! the intelligent houses and the flying cars! And the unemployment due to robots! and the food cubes!) we will remain peasants toiling in the fields with no time to do anything but work – at our jobs, lives, the futures of our children – and sleep. Jo Average needs facile because Jo don’t have time for anything else.
October 8, 2009 at 4:19 pm
D-W:
I’d believe your assessment if these same “Jo Average” folks weren’t going home and watching TV shows like True Blood and The Sopranos and Rome and Battlestar:Galactica which are as dense and meaningful and difficult in their own way as any artistic novel.
I don’t think this Jo Average/Peasant stereotype is a fair assessment of the majority of Americans. I’ve heard it before, and I just don’t buy it. My mother busts her behind all day at a hospital with difficult, brain-draining work, and comes home late, hungry, and tired. She still reads; she just reads business books and non-fiction titles. These books are – to me – about as accessible as stabbing my face with a pencil. She’s getting her fiction fix from HBO and Law & Order reruns, which are well-told stories, and artistic equals, in their way, to novels. (Whereas I often prefer History Channel and PBS documentaries…)
Something to think about, D-W:
Having lived with scientists, I’ve noticed that it’s easy for them to operate under the assumption that people who don’t understand science are “dumb” – like me – until it comes time to write a paragraph with words, and someone like me becomes a godsend of insight and brilliance with language skills. It’s also very easy for people who read a lot to assume that someone who prefers to watch Dancing with the Stars is some kind of mental maroon. This is a dangerous assumption to make about people, and one that should be avoided.
Different people like different things, lead different lives, and prefer different art. It may be a reflection of their imagination, but not of their mental faculties, or social status as some kind of toiling peasant.
This hypothetical person you’ve invented isn’t a peasant toiling in a field, mindmute and enslaved. This hypothetical person is leading the life they choose with the art they want, which might be television, trashy romance novels, Netflix, old radio shows, and etc.
I’ve heard that assumption before D-W, and I just don’t buy it.
October 8, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Not gonna touch DM’s or JM’s comments, except to say this: True Blood?! WTF. True Blood is a total and utter soap opera. The damn credits sequence is more complex than the show.
October 8, 2009 at 10:18 pm
I’m always on the fence about this argument, because I really enjoy just reading a good story that doesn’t have thick daunting prose, but just enough talented prettiness that I enjoy the craft as well as the tale it tells me. I’m all about story. I have a deep and (I think) rational hatred of overly pretentious “literary” fiction that spends an entire book trying very hard to be special and poetic and dramatic without actually doing anything story-wise or character-wise. I think true talent is being able to tell an engaging story and have that story also SAY SOMETHING about culture or society or gender or love or need or pain or…
Well. You get the point.
I can enjoy books that frankly have nothing to say, but have engaging plots. I can also enjoy dense narratives that have a thin story working to a greater ideal. But the best books do both. The best part is? An “untrained” reader who prefers the fun stuff with also get the creative pretty language and the message and the themes, even if they don’t articulately KNOW they’re getting them. A “talented” or, rather, “trained” reader will appreciate the story AND the craft.
October 8, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Fine, so how do we convince the tyrannous publishers to promote the artists? Who is the artist now anyway? The one who dreams up the cleverest variation of the dream ending? As a friend of mine once wrote, “You can place me in a bridle and shove a feather duster up my arse, but that still doesn’t make me a pony.”
October 9, 2009 at 1:42 pm
J-M:
“Having lived with scientists, I’ve noticed that it’s easy for them to operate under the assumption that people who don’t understand science are “dumb†– like me – until it comes time to write a paragraph with words, and someone like me becomes a godsend of insight and brilliance with language skills.”
What’s this got to do with anything?I actually agree with you on the whole Joe Average thing, but the part about scientists thinking everyone else is dumb and being unable to write a descent paragraph is just unecessary. It’s the same mindset behind the atitude criticized by the amazon reviewer.
October 13, 2009 at 11:20 am
Thiago:
The point is that it is easy for everyone to assume that someone who doesn’t share the same knowledge as they do is somehow of lesser intelligence. That isn’t to say that it is always the case with everyone, just that it’s the easy assumption that needs some level of maturity, life experience, or wisdom to overcome. Not all of my scientist ex-roommates were as successful at overcoming the easy assumption all the time.
It isn’t a gross generalization about scientists. It’s a gross generalization about people explained through my anecdotal evidence of living with scientists who, at least initially, thought I was an intellectual lightweight because I couldn’t do Calculus, nor did I have mastery of High School Science, which I barely passed.
Like any anecdotal evidence, your mileage may vary.
October 13, 2009 at 11:22 pm
J M:
OK, it’s clearer now, and I definitely agree with you.
It just stang a bit to see scientists singled out (specially given that it all started at the lit geek side of the fence) because, being a scientist myself (a physicist, worst of all) people in general often expect me to act as if I think they’re stupid, and lit majors in particular tend to think I couldn’t write a paragraph to save my life.