Hey Pinky -- Great reading list, thanks. I loved "Coraline" -- good story, amazing art. (Visual books aren't given enough attention or recognition in the lit-and-publishing press, IMHO.) If I can pounce on your list for a sec, I think it's a good example of exactly what the lit elites and opinion-maker wannabes don't get -- which is how freely most readers read. A bit of this, a bit of that. We're often very open-minded and generous, while they keep trying to establish some kind of hierarchy of importance and worth. Which is a harmless and maybe even helpful activity -- until they start warring with each other, angling for positions, and trying to impose their hierarchies on the rest of us.

Much work yet to be done on how the careerism and ambitions of editors/critics/profs affect what gets reviewed and how it gets reviewed. For instance: I hung out in writing and publishing circles for 15 years, and seldom ran into people who really loved the writing of my pet peeves, Salman Rushdie and Toni Morrison. Yet it's hard to think of two contempo writers who the industry pushes as hard as it pushes those two.

How to explain this? The industry strongly promotes the idea that these two are major, important, wonderful writers. Yet people in the industry, when speaking privately and freely, often confess that they don't like their work. So why Morrison? Why Rushdie?

I have some probably inadequate theories, which I'll try to articulate sometime. For now, I'll just say that my years hanging around publishing left me wanting to shout at people, Don't take them too seriously! They don't even believe in it themselves!

Hey Jimbo, thanks for the fascinating Jane Austen info. I hadn't run into those figures. I do remember an interesting similar figure, though, one that reinforces your point. When we think of books superstores, we think of new books, the stuff that's on display at the front of the store, conglomerates, big contracts, discounted bestsellers, etc, right? In fact, something like 80% of the books a superstore sells are "backlist" books -- ie., books that aren't new this season. In other words, there's a smattering of readers who're swayed by fashion or keen on keeping up, but most people come to to pursue their own interests.

Why all the emphasis on the flashy new books then? It's because those are the only book sales that can be affected by publicity. Jane Austen's going to sell 100,000 copies whether or not you put her in the front of the store or not, whether or not you put ads in the subway. But some new writer or some star writer? Their fortunes can really be affected by flash and p.r. So that's where the p.r. energy goes.

Hi TM, I'll go with you about 80% of the way. Or maybe more, actually. I rather like seeing art as (generally speaking) high-end luxury goods. It makes me feel more sane, seems to help quiet the usual pretentious din, and (for me, anyway) doesn't destroy the spell that good art can sometimes cast. For some people, seeing art that way would destroy its aura. Does it for you?

I'll let Deb and Jon beat each other up over TV. My p-o-v on it is that American TV is awful if you see it as something you unthinkingly turn on and watch, but quite wonderful if you see it as something you consciously use. In other words, there's a lot that's awfully good buried deep in the TV schedule, but it does take some time an energy to unearth it.

As for books, a few infuriatingly contradictory observations: Americans don't read much, and don't on average buy many books. Superstores can be awfully homogeneous, but in most cases are a lot better than what was there before. (My hometown, for instance, used to make do with a couple of pretty lousy indie bookstores. These days, there are at least 8 superstores in the general area, and bookstore lovers there tell me they're in pig heaven.) Given the superstores, and given Amazon, it's can be said that more books are more easily available to more people at better prices than ever before in all human history. Which is a very pleasant thought. Yet at the same time, people seem to be reading less, people who hire for companies tell me that kids with college degrees seem barely able to cobble together a couple of sentences, let alone a paragraph or two, and creative-writing-teacher friends have told me that their students not only haven't heard of Faulkner, they don't read novels generally. Why then do they want to write? Because they read in the newspaper about this author or that one who got a big contract.

Bizarre world. I wonder which direction things will go from here.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on April 7, 2003 2:51 AM

I, too, think that the academic stranglehold on high literary taste is on its way out, but it should be remembered that this is a fairly recent development. Even in my own antediluvian college dauy--in the mid 60s--my English professors didn't think they were whowing us what to value and why. They understood their task--properly, I think--to be to show us how to read more energetically and thoughtfully and critically then we came to them knowing how to do. And they recognized that the syllabus they chose for us to read was not created by professors but by generations of readers and (crucially) by generations of writers who had kept alive the traditions that ran back to Shakespeare or Milton or Dante--or even only as far back as Dickens--that kept those writers alive and in some degree contemporary for us. The mythical canon--in literature, music, art, whatever--is merely conserved by the academy; history creates it.

The academy didnt start to get uppity until the 70s, when it decided to reform the curriculum, to decide for itself--aan with the guidance of its benighted "theory"--which writers SHOULD be alive and contemporary. A fool's errand, but they are still at it--and wonder why no one wants to study literature anymore--or do so only because its study is now a game with easy rules to master and get a good rade for. Thus the web provides an alternative precisely at the time that many young people are looking for one.

Remember, too, that as recently as the interwar years, the great tastemaking critics--Edmund Wilson et al--were not academics. And even these folks didnt make taste on any enduring basis--they just got certain writers the initial attention that gave readers a chance to take them to heart. Malcolm Cowley almost single-handedly saved Faulkner from oblivion in the U.S. Without him, Faulkner would have likely suffered the same fate as Melville, who was virtually unread in the U.S. until the 20s & 30s.

And, finally, the writers who belong in the academic curriculum do appeal to ordinary folks. I have friends--cooks, surveyors, shopkeepers--who read Twain, Melville, Faulkner, and even Homer for pleasure.

I find myself often agreeing with your disdain for the sort of cultural guidance offered by the intellectual classes and your championship of popular taste, but you are responding to a cultural situation that is both anomalous and unnecessary--and should be resisted. Sure, there have always been pompous professors with their head in the clouds (and/or up their ass), but the word "professor" was not always synonymous with this malignancy. And--as importantly--popular culture did not always cede the ground of serious critical discussion to the academy.

And that's the main reason I started visiting your blog regularly. You may or may not know much about art & architecture--I'm in no position to know--but you sure know more than I do, and you make me see it and think about it in more illuminating and engaging ways than I did--and to the extent that you do that, you are rescuing me from doing something foolish like registering to take an academic course from a professor with an agenda (most commonly the agenda of saving me from falling under the spell of the art I want to study by deconstructing it for me.)

Posted by: John Hinchey on April 7, 2003 9:16 PM

Hey John, Thanks for the thoughtful and helpful comments. And gorgeously concise way of characterizing the "canon" and its evolved-over-history quality.

I think you've hit on something really important, too, which is the swerve that academia took in the post-'60s years. The more the profs tried to take over what and how the rest of us ought to be reading, and the more their agenda boiled to the surface, the more people fled from those subjects and activities. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who did stick it out through the post-'60s English departments wound up in publishing and the media, where they continue to try to tell us what's what. You'd think that by now it wouldn't be the case, but there's still (at least in my experience) an amazing amount of child-dictator egocentricity to be found among the professional/academic/media culture classes.

A friend who teaches lit and writing at college tells me that English there is virtually dead these days. So where do the kids who are really interested in reading and writing go? Into the creative-writing department. Unfortunately, another friend who's a creative-writing teacher at a different college, tells me that her students haven't even heard of Faulkner. I'm in no position to attempt a serious evaluation of this, but I sometimes get the impression that the tradition you and I enjoyed taking part in has been broken.

At least in the colleges, anyway -- and unfortunately at all too many media and publishing places too. They're like continuations of college in many ways, with occasional commercial annoyances to contend with.

But, like you, I think that people more generally are interested, do respond, and want to swap thoughts, tips, and reactions. What's great about the web is that it enables such people to bypass the usual bottlenecks. Who cares what Harvard or the NYTimes thinks when you can find real people who seem solid and friendly and are willing to help? It'll be great to see what kinds of culture emerge from that kind of free-ranging meta-conversation, and I'd bet (as I guess you would) that the classic lit books, many of which I love and wish well, will flourish. A lot of what's been praised in the book review sections from the last 20 years? I'm not so sure.

In fact, one of the last stories I looked into before I ditched professional arts coverage was the (very positive) impact the web has had on "the classics" -- ie., Greek and Roman stuff. And the most striking thing about history -book publishing these days is how very many people there are who are hungry for solid, accessibly-told, non-academic history. Many people like art, they like history, god knows they like reading about science, and they like learning. I just don't think their interests are being well-served by academia or by the media. Do you?

Friedrich and I gas on and yak a lot, god knows. But one thing we've both been struck by in our time as bloggers is how much we learn. We'd thought we'd be spending all our time laying our thoughts on passersby, dazzling the world with our fresh take on things. Instead we both feel certain we've gotten a lot more learning out of the experience than any of our visitors have. There's a lot of interactivity and flow. And an amazing number of people are interesting, interested, generous, fresh, informed, and more free-thinking than you'd expect. It's wonderful, and it's humbling. And the humblingness of it is wonderful too.

I've been having a good time thinking about your comment, and hope I haven't wandered too far off track. Many thanks for passing along your observations and thoughts.

How have you found the web as a cultural tool so far? Useful? Promising?

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on April 7, 2003 11:35 PM






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