Sunday, April 20, 2008
Posting
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Thursday, April 17, 2008
clarification
i think i actually agree with almost everything alan says. maybe if i restate my objection another way, it will clear up this soil and tree business a bit. maybe not. i have no real problem with saying literature is art and pornography is not - i bring paglia up for the sake of argument, to point out that there are divergent views on this issue, et cet - nor do i have a problem saying that what leads to the emotional response at the end (or anywhere in the midst) of a story is essential to making literature art. the problem i have is with this idea that the way art and pornography work are exactly the opposite, as though there is a different operating system. this seems to me to be the same type of distinction you talk about between the soil and the tree, only worse, because - while i accept the notion that a pig brain (or a work of pornography) is less complicated than a human brain (or a work of art) - i accept (or i suspect, based on my limited understanding of biology) that they both function via synapses, dopamine, seratonin, et cetera. this is why i won't eat frogs' legs, and why mary gordon's comments make me a little uneasy.
but i don't know. i did say - at the outset - all that stuff about mary gordon's "over complication of art... putting it on a pedestal," so maybe i'm not so much clarifying my opinion as i'm altering it a bit, becoming more moderate in response to alan's comments. food for thought. but i still think there's something a bit prideful about this idea that we do not manipulate our readers in much the same way, and that this is somehow dangerous to the art itself, because it's condescending. artists are smart, i think, and they have to be smart, because art has to be smart, but if you go around writing like you're smart (and i don't mean you should write like a dummy, i mean you shouldn't talk down to the reader), writing with an attitude, like you think you're smarter than, say, regular people, because i worry that the compassion and the generosity will go out the window.
and while it's quite alright for literary artists to be elitists about literary art, it's another thing altogether to be elitist about one's own work; to say "my book changed someone's life, but that person was an ignoramus, who totally misunderstood my work."
which is what happened in gordon's essay.
that said, again, i liked the rest of the essay, and agreed in large part with much of what was said. mary gordon probably has plenty reason to take pride in her work. i'd like to read one of the novels; i read about it, but i didn't read it, so who knows? not me.
i beg forgiveness.
but i don't know. i did say - at the outset - all that stuff about mary gordon's "over complication of art... putting it on a pedestal," so maybe i'm not so much clarifying my opinion as i'm altering it a bit, becoming more moderate in response to alan's comments. food for thought. but i still think there's something a bit prideful about this idea that we do not manipulate our readers in much the same way, and that this is somehow dangerous to the art itself, because it's condescending. artists are smart, i think, and they have to be smart, because art has to be smart, but if you go around writing like you're smart (and i don't mean you should write like a dummy, i mean you shouldn't talk down to the reader), writing with an attitude, like you think you're smarter than, say, regular people, because i worry that the compassion and the generosity will go out the window.
and while it's quite alright for literary artists to be elitists about literary art, it's another thing altogether to be elitist about one's own work; to say "my book changed someone's life, but that person was an ignoramus, who totally misunderstood my work."
which is what happened in gordon's essay.
that said, again, i liked the rest of the essay, and agreed in large part with much of what was said. mary gordon probably has plenty reason to take pride in her work. i'd like to read one of the novels; i read about it, but i didn't read it, so who knows? not me.
i beg forgiveness.
Allow Alan to Retort
Hello. This is Sam again, posting Alan's response to my comments on the Mary Gordon stuff. He sent the response to me, and asked me to post it. My understanding is that he was perhaps having some difficulty using the create/edit post function on the blog. So without further delay, I present his response to my thoughtless remarks.
Alan Says:
Hello sam. This is not a moral argument, but an argument in which I defend Gordon (helpless Gordon) and take a less egalitarian view of things. I am not responding to the Gordon thing, just your thing.
to say that ‘literature’ aims at some particular ‘response’ from the reader is right, but I don’t think most people will get what Beckett’s doing when Molloy’s sucking the sucking stones. Chabon’s argument seems apt here: literature is ‘entertainment.’ But what sort of ‘entertainment’ is it? it’s usually of a fairly intellectual sort, even the stuff that claims not to be. And even though literature in America is written in English, most people seem to think it’s written in a foreign language. Literature, story writing, poem, they’re all elitist things. And I’m not arguing that ‘truckers’ or ‘burger flippers’ can’t understand these things, they can, but most often they don’t care to because they don’t care to learn the language – this is not a problem of whether or not literary art is ‘better’ than porn or commercial fiction or genre fiction (there’s no such thing as ‘better’); it’s about the way these things are accessed and experienced by the ‘reader.’
Porn is a language we all get instinctively, truck driver or poet or both, whether it’s ‘art’ or not. And speaking of whether it’s art or not, it only becomes art or worthy of gender studies or political when one makes it so – but to do so creates a whole different language to view porn with and porn comes ready-made with a language of its own. typically, one can find what one wants to find in anything: searching for zen in this story? it’ll be there. on this, I think we agree.
Mainly, what I don’t like here is the distinction made between the idea of the writer aiming for a ‘response’ as implicitly different from what ‘leads’ to said response (ie, the response is ‘visceral,’ while what leads up may be complex and intellectual, etc). I don’t like this distinction because the move made is overly egalitarian: it allows porn and literature, usually strange bedfellows, to walk hand-in-hand. So that, literature, like porn, is essentially about the ‘response’ the writer aims to evoke. I don’t agree: what ‘leads’ to the ‘response’ is essential to it; the two are inextricably linked and cannot be taken apart. This is a problem with western thinking: that tree is separate and different from the ground and is beautiful by itself. But not really. The tree needs the ground, the soil, the dead stuff in there, the air, the rain, the sun. In fact, it’s not just a tree, though it’s convenient to label it as such; really it’s a manifestation of all this other stuff; each thing interdependent on each; thus, beauty deepens. Like in a story. So, to say that the ‘leading’ up is complicated, but the end ‘response’ is not, doesn’t work. Say you read an Anne Beattie story and read just the last sentence or paragraph. Nice words, but it doesn’t ‘break’ your heart. Then you read the whole thing and it does break your heart even though you know what’s going to happen – it’s about the journey. Genre fiction or porn, on the other hand, can be fast-forwarded (we’re using a VHS porn here) right to the end ‘scene’ and a person can get satisfaction. I don’t think people who want to look at porn accidentally turn it on at the end scene and think, “Damn, this is doing nothing for me – what happened beforehand, I wonder? Oh, he came to fix the cable. Yeah, that’s getting me hot. What else? He actually fixed the cable. Nice. Oh wait, and while he was fixing the cable this girl came out and she was really good lucking. Oh damn, damn. Now I’ve got it.” Again, from my perspective, it seems that people display very little imagination in their daily lives, so I see no reason to believe that most folks would want to put the imagination to work when the point of porn for most is to turn off, to watch; don’t invent except to think, “Yeah, that right there on that screen, that is definitely happening to me right now.” We want to avoid generalizations in our stories because we’re making art; unfortunately, art is usually more surprising, more interesting than ‘life.’ In the story, the honky reads Sartre; in ‘life,’ nah.
So, in my opinion, it’s not the ‘response’ that is important in story (though, it’s fun and tidy and necessary), but the journey through the words on the page (this, also, distinguishes ‘literary’ fiction from genre fiction; it’s about the fabric). Also, I think it difficult to use Faulkner, who wrote The Sound and the Fury, to say nothing of his other very difficult novels, as a writer who aims at an ‘uncomplicated’ ‘response’ from the reader, as though the response comes on the last very last page or something: bam, heart-broken.
Anyway, I’m not terribly interested in the moral implications of literature (I sort of am, but only in a very limited way). And I’m not saying that ‘porn’ doesn’t have a similar ‘journey’ aspect (I wonder if she wants it doggiestyle now? I bet she does.) and can’t be viewed as ‘art’ or ‘postmodern,’ but there are different types of consciousnesses and these consciousnesses get joy from pornography and from ‘serious literature’ in very different ways. And though the groups are not exclusive, it does take work, a little climbing (maybe up that pedestal) to get into one, where the other, well, admittance is free no matter how you want to view it.
Alan Says:
Hello sam. This is not a moral argument, but an argument in which I defend Gordon (helpless Gordon) and take a less egalitarian view of things. I am not responding to the Gordon thing, just your thing.
to say that ‘literature’ aims at some particular ‘response’ from the reader is right, but I don’t think most people will get what Beckett’s doing when Molloy’s sucking the sucking stones. Chabon’s argument seems apt here: literature is ‘entertainment.’ But what sort of ‘entertainment’ is it? it’s usually of a fairly intellectual sort, even the stuff that claims not to be. And even though literature in America is written in English, most people seem to think it’s written in a foreign language. Literature, story writing, poem, they’re all elitist things. And I’m not arguing that ‘truckers’ or ‘burger flippers’ can’t understand these things, they can, but most often they don’t care to because they don’t care to learn the language – this is not a problem of whether or not literary art is ‘better’ than porn or commercial fiction or genre fiction (there’s no such thing as ‘better’); it’s about the way these things are accessed and experienced by the ‘reader.’
Porn is a language we all get instinctively, truck driver or poet or both, whether it’s ‘art’ or not. And speaking of whether it’s art or not, it only becomes art or worthy of gender studies or political when one makes it so – but to do so creates a whole different language to view porn with and porn comes ready-made with a language of its own. typically, one can find what one wants to find in anything: searching for zen in this story? it’ll be there. on this, I think we agree.
Mainly, what I don’t like here is the distinction made between the idea of the writer aiming for a ‘response’ as implicitly different from what ‘leads’ to said response (ie, the response is ‘visceral,’ while what leads up may be complex and intellectual, etc). I don’t like this distinction because the move made is overly egalitarian: it allows porn and literature, usually strange bedfellows, to walk hand-in-hand. So that, literature, like porn, is essentially about the ‘response’ the writer aims to evoke. I don’t agree: what ‘leads’ to the ‘response’ is essential to it; the two are inextricably linked and cannot be taken apart. This is a problem with western thinking: that tree is separate and different from the ground and is beautiful by itself. But not really. The tree needs the ground, the soil, the dead stuff in there, the air, the rain, the sun. In fact, it’s not just a tree, though it’s convenient to label it as such; really it’s a manifestation of all this other stuff; each thing interdependent on each; thus, beauty deepens. Like in a story. So, to say that the ‘leading’ up is complicated, but the end ‘response’ is not, doesn’t work. Say you read an Anne Beattie story and read just the last sentence or paragraph. Nice words, but it doesn’t ‘break’ your heart. Then you read the whole thing and it does break your heart even though you know what’s going to happen – it’s about the journey. Genre fiction or porn, on the other hand, can be fast-forwarded (we’re using a VHS porn here) right to the end ‘scene’ and a person can get satisfaction. I don’t think people who want to look at porn accidentally turn it on at the end scene and think, “Damn, this is doing nothing for me – what happened beforehand, I wonder? Oh, he came to fix the cable. Yeah, that’s getting me hot. What else? He actually fixed the cable. Nice. Oh wait, and while he was fixing the cable this girl came out and she was really good lucking. Oh damn, damn. Now I’ve got it.” Again, from my perspective, it seems that people display very little imagination in their daily lives, so I see no reason to believe that most folks would want to put the imagination to work when the point of porn for most is to turn off, to watch; don’t invent except to think, “Yeah, that right there on that screen, that is definitely happening to me right now.” We want to avoid generalizations in our stories because we’re making art; unfortunately, art is usually more surprising, more interesting than ‘life.’ In the story, the honky reads Sartre; in ‘life,’ nah.
So, in my opinion, it’s not the ‘response’ that is important in story (though, it’s fun and tidy and necessary), but the journey through the words on the page (this, also, distinguishes ‘literary’ fiction from genre fiction; it’s about the fabric). Also, I think it difficult to use Faulkner, who wrote The Sound and the Fury, to say nothing of his other very difficult novels, as a writer who aims at an ‘uncomplicated’ ‘response’ from the reader, as though the response comes on the last very last page or something: bam, heart-broken.
Anyway, I’m not terribly interested in the moral implications of literature (I sort of am, but only in a very limited way). And I’m not saying that ‘porn’ doesn’t have a similar ‘journey’ aspect (I wonder if she wants it doggiestyle now? I bet she does.) and can’t be viewed as ‘art’ or ‘postmodern,’ but there are different types of consciousnesses and these consciousnesses get joy from pornography and from ‘serious literature’ in very different ways. And though the groups are not exclusive, it does take work, a little climbing (maybe up that pedestal) to get into one, where the other, well, admittance is free no matter how you want to view it.
mary gordon says
at the behest of my superiors, i am posting my formerly retracted concerns regarding the following quote from mary gordon's otherwise not-as-terrifyingly (insert adjective here - i'm thinking "papal") essay on moral fiction.
she says:
“Fiction that aspires to the condition of art must work in a way exactly opposite to the way pornography works. Pornography offers images to elicit a very direct and very predictable response: sexual stimulation resulting in orgasm. The pornographer knows his market, and knows to what use his product will be put. Fiction writers have no such luxury."
while i was otherwise quite pleased with the article (particularly as it dealt with moral complexity, role models, and john gardner's perhaps overly rigid stance on moral fiction), this bit of business seems wrong to me. i'm struck by the apparent oversimplification of pornography, the over-complication of literary art. maybe i'm nit-picking for the sake of argument. maybe i've taught too many sections of 102.
BUT:
it seems to me that gordon simplifies the line from viewing the picture in the magazine to having the orgasm by deleting masturbation, which would sort of be the equal of deleting the reader's imagination and participation in creating meaning in the text (visualizing the scenes, hearing the dialogue, et cetera). filling in the blanks. she also acts as if market for pornography is much less complicated and diverse than it probably is. i would imagine that the pornographer - much like gordon, when she had her oddball experience on the beach - runs into some surprises in his or (more often than i imagine we are led to believe) her audience.
does an anecdote of a racist/sexist woman mary gordon met on the beach provide enough compelling evidence to support her argument? by that rationale, would not a cache of pornography under dahmer's bed lead us to believe that a pornographer faces the same dilemma gordon faced in that instance, only on a much greater and more morally complex scale?
i'd like to think i strive to do something more sophisticated and more interesting than pornographers. but it's not exactly the opposite, anymore than writing a resume is exactly the opposite. i put words together in order to achieve an effect. it's just that what i do strives to be "serious literary art," and what they do strives to be pornography.
and the suggestion that this woman on the beach saying "that book changed my life" was something about "putting the book to (an unpredictable) use" (while pornographers know what use their work will be put to) makes me uncomfortable. i'm not sure pornographers count on being held up as examples of misogyny, and i certainly don’t think they count on having their work described as art: camille paglia, although routinely and dismissively labeled a “reactionary nut” by feminist scholars who disagree with her, is one feminist scholar, at least, who has actually described pornography as “art.” in any case, i hope i’m right in assuming that pornographers do not expect men to kill and rape because of their products, and i know i'm right when i say that - if someone does rape and murder after looking at pornography - it's not because of the pornography.
so i'm not sure that when one woman says "that book changed my life," it really means that she "put (gordon's) book to use."
what use, exactly? is gordon being a bit self-important, here? what is meant by "use." we know pornography is often "used" as visual stimuli for masturbation. it is also used to teach classes in gender theory. so as writers we should perhaps be sensitive to what words mean, and what they can mean.
i do not know that i agree with camille's assertion that pornography is art. it seems a bit far fetched, if only because, like gordon, paglia makes too broad a generalization. but i think it's disingenuous to suggest that literary artists are unlike pornographers because they don't try to elicit direct and predictable responses from their readers. they may not always be predictable to the readers, but the artist tries to predict them, at least to one degree or another, yes? to plan, to manipulate, to play puppet master. i mean, maybe not on the first draft, but on revisions, i often try to augment what seems to be there, in the hopes i will be able to "break the reader's heart." perhaps that's why my writing seems a bit stifled and wooden and dull at times. my failing, of course, but i don't think it's like hemingway and faulkner and camus had no idea how they wanted their readers to react. and, come to think of it, the reader does - it seems to me - go into literary work looking for something specific: "heartbreaking... funny and sad... tragic and beautiful... deeply moving..." these are all things that show up in the blurbs on the back of literary novels, especially the ones that win awards and/or sell. granted the response sought - by both reader and writer - may at times be more complicated than the response to pornography (what do the blurbs that advertise pornography say? not "heartbreaking," perhaps, but some equally trite and packaged bit of rhetoric, to be sure).
so, really, the response to literary art is not so much more complicated. especially not if it's successful, right? i mean, faulkner said "the human heart in conflict with itself," and i believe that, so i think that - intellectually and emotionally - there's often a great deal of complicated business that leads to the response we seek as literary artists. but the response itself - "the horror, the horror," - is often quite visceral, and often not much more complicated than orgasm. ideally, it's an almost - or, even better - an actual physical response. laughter, tears, a sinking or swelling of the heart.
and who knows what kind of fantasy a man or - let's be fair – woman is having when he or she is "using" pornography to masturbate? maybe he or she has a rich fantasy world, stocked with dialogue in the laundry room? in the garden? the back of the car? a wedding, a divorce, make up sex in the grass by a dirt road in soso mississippi.
is mary gordon suggesting that all people who look at pronography are truck drivers? that all truck drivers are simpletons? jerking off machines? with simple worlds? what about people who watch the qvc channel? what generalizations can we make about them?
aren't these generalizations that we, as "literary artists," should avoid?
so the audience issue is a troubling one for me. because i think it's safe to say that a tour of the tables at awp can offer us a pretty good view of our own market, as can a look at awp chronicle, or even a glance at the slick mags (new yorker, atlantic, harper's, esquire), and some of the titles on the bestseller list (though perhaps less often), and the prize winners and nominees, the list of new york times notable books, et cetera.
is it a more complicated market? we don’t know, because the market for pornography is WAY further out on the margins (not in terms of the money it makes, but in terms of whether or not the people who buy it want to show their faces in public as buyers of pornography).
finally, it strikes me as odd that gordon begins her essay by pointing out that literary work is "on the margins." it seems a bit contradictory (and perhaps - i don't know - i want to say arrogant, or maybe just "dim") to procede from point a ("we're on the margins") to point b: "we don't have the luxury of knowing our market." it's like saying "my readers are generally the kind of people who read literary work," then saying, "i don't have the luxury of knowing who my readers are." culinary translation would be: "our customers like sauteed chicken with dill, but we can't count on them to eat poultry." fashion equivalent: "our customers shop at banana republic, but we don't really know whether or not they're looking for the type of clothing we sell at banana republic." huh?
she says:
“Fiction that aspires to the condition of art must work in a way exactly opposite to the way pornography works. Pornography offers images to elicit a very direct and very predictable response: sexual stimulation resulting in orgasm. The pornographer knows his market, and knows to what use his product will be put. Fiction writers have no such luxury."
while i was otherwise quite pleased with the article (particularly as it dealt with moral complexity, role models, and john gardner's perhaps overly rigid stance on moral fiction), this bit of business seems wrong to me. i'm struck by the apparent oversimplification of pornography, the over-complication of literary art. maybe i'm nit-picking for the sake of argument. maybe i've taught too many sections of 102.
BUT:
it seems to me that gordon simplifies the line from viewing the picture in the magazine to having the orgasm by deleting masturbation, which would sort of be the equal of deleting the reader's imagination and participation in creating meaning in the text (visualizing the scenes, hearing the dialogue, et cetera). filling in the blanks. she also acts as if market for pornography is much less complicated and diverse than it probably is. i would imagine that the pornographer - much like gordon, when she had her oddball experience on the beach - runs into some surprises in his or (more often than i imagine we are led to believe) her audience.
does an anecdote of a racist/sexist woman mary gordon met on the beach provide enough compelling evidence to support her argument? by that rationale, would not a cache of pornography under dahmer's bed lead us to believe that a pornographer faces the same dilemma gordon faced in that instance, only on a much greater and more morally complex scale?
i'd like to think i strive to do something more sophisticated and more interesting than pornographers. but it's not exactly the opposite, anymore than writing a resume is exactly the opposite. i put words together in order to achieve an effect. it's just that what i do strives to be "serious literary art," and what they do strives to be pornography.
and the suggestion that this woman on the beach saying "that book changed my life" was something about "putting the book to (an unpredictable) use" (while pornographers know what use their work will be put to) makes me uncomfortable. i'm not sure pornographers count on being held up as examples of misogyny, and i certainly don’t think they count on having their work described as art: camille paglia, although routinely and dismissively labeled a “reactionary nut” by feminist scholars who disagree with her, is one feminist scholar, at least, who has actually described pornography as “art.” in any case, i hope i’m right in assuming that pornographers do not expect men to kill and rape because of their products, and i know i'm right when i say that - if someone does rape and murder after looking at pornography - it's not because of the pornography.
so i'm not sure that when one woman says "that book changed my life," it really means that she "put (gordon's) book to use."
what use, exactly? is gordon being a bit self-important, here? what is meant by "use." we know pornography is often "used" as visual stimuli for masturbation. it is also used to teach classes in gender theory. so as writers we should perhaps be sensitive to what words mean, and what they can mean.
i do not know that i agree with camille's assertion that pornography is art. it seems a bit far fetched, if only because, like gordon, paglia makes too broad a generalization. but i think it's disingenuous to suggest that literary artists are unlike pornographers because they don't try to elicit direct and predictable responses from their readers. they may not always be predictable to the readers, but the artist tries to predict them, at least to one degree or another, yes? to plan, to manipulate, to play puppet master. i mean, maybe not on the first draft, but on revisions, i often try to augment what seems to be there, in the hopes i will be able to "break the reader's heart." perhaps that's why my writing seems a bit stifled and wooden and dull at times. my failing, of course, but i don't think it's like hemingway and faulkner and camus had no idea how they wanted their readers to react. and, come to think of it, the reader does - it seems to me - go into literary work looking for something specific: "heartbreaking... funny and sad... tragic and beautiful... deeply moving..." these are all things that show up in the blurbs on the back of literary novels, especially the ones that win awards and/or sell. granted the response sought - by both reader and writer - may at times be more complicated than the response to pornography (what do the blurbs that advertise pornography say? not "heartbreaking," perhaps, but some equally trite and packaged bit of rhetoric, to be sure).
so, really, the response to literary art is not so much more complicated. especially not if it's successful, right? i mean, faulkner said "the human heart in conflict with itself," and i believe that, so i think that - intellectually and emotionally - there's often a great deal of complicated business that leads to the response we seek as literary artists. but the response itself - "the horror, the horror," - is often quite visceral, and often not much more complicated than orgasm. ideally, it's an almost - or, even better - an actual physical response. laughter, tears, a sinking or swelling of the heart.
and who knows what kind of fantasy a man or - let's be fair – woman is having when he or she is "using" pornography to masturbate? maybe he or she has a rich fantasy world, stocked with dialogue in the laundry room? in the garden? the back of the car? a wedding, a divorce, make up sex in the grass by a dirt road in soso mississippi.
is mary gordon suggesting that all people who look at pronography are truck drivers? that all truck drivers are simpletons? jerking off machines? with simple worlds? what about people who watch the qvc channel? what generalizations can we make about them?
aren't these generalizations that we, as "literary artists," should avoid?
so the audience issue is a troubling one for me. because i think it's safe to say that a tour of the tables at awp can offer us a pretty good view of our own market, as can a look at awp chronicle, or even a glance at the slick mags (new yorker, atlantic, harper's, esquire), and some of the titles on the bestseller list (though perhaps less often), and the prize winners and nominees, the list of new york times notable books, et cetera.
is it a more complicated market? we don’t know, because the market for pornography is WAY further out on the margins (not in terms of the money it makes, but in terms of whether or not the people who buy it want to show their faces in public as buyers of pornography).
finally, it strikes me as odd that gordon begins her essay by pointing out that literary work is "on the margins." it seems a bit contradictory (and perhaps - i don't know - i want to say arrogant, or maybe just "dim") to procede from point a ("we're on the margins") to point b: "we don't have the luxury of knowing our market." it's like saying "my readers are generally the kind of people who read literary work," then saying, "i don't have the luxury of knowing who my readers are." culinary translation would be: "our customers like sauteed chicken with dill, but we can't count on them to eat poultry." fashion equivalent: "our customers shop at banana republic, but we don't really know whether or not they're looking for the type of clothing we sell at banana republic." huh?
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