More Rambling on Art and Life
A hypothesis: what’s dividing the two positions represented in this comment stream is a fundamental disagreement about who and what artists are and do. For one side, playing the game of art first and foremost means being an artist; for the other side, it means making art. For the former camp, ethics is an inextricable part of aesthetic judgment, since the artist’s work—if it exists, and it need not—is always only a derivative expression of the artist’s person, the true object of appreciation. For the latter camp, the made thing is what matters; ethics is as irrelevant as the peat is to the diamond it will become. Negative criticism is an insult to human dignity and community for the being crowd; it is a necessary purgative and pedagogue for the makers.
I’m tempted to say that the two sides of the split actually are incommensurable, since I find myself so thoroughly a partisan of the latter group that I can’t see any good reason for endorsing the former. But then I think of a Nietzsche or an O’Hara, figures who danced across back and forth across the line for whole careers, and I wonder.
(For more on this subject see here.)
On first glance that’s a good summary of the disconnect. Tiny refinement: note the Nietszche/O’Hara position as I understand it confirms the need for the artist to make negative judgments while attacking vile ignorance when the critic expresses it.
Ah, but in that I’d say they’re both just being good makers. The ambivalence I’m thinking of has more to do with Nietzsche’s plea for an aestheticization of life vs. his evident concern with the artwork as such. Or with the ambivalence between caring and not caring that Maggie Nelson finds in O’Hara’s reflections on his own art.
Ah. I am falling asleep in advance of the rejection of my argument, but I do see flarf as the pox-on-both-their-houses speech here.
Is “a pox on both their houses” the same as “having it both ways”? If so, I might agree.
Interesting, in a related sense, is Kenny Goldsmith’s take on “poethics” (which I’m nominating for ugliest word of the last 50 years). He wants the freedom afforded by making, but his whole career is built on being.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
(from Bean Spasms)
A subject close to my heart. Need I say how oppressed I feel by the “being” crowd? A dose of Nabokov with a Pessoa chaser is the only remedy.
Gaddis works, if you’re looking to mainline. Stevens, too, but you knew that.
But, all, even tho I am rather too rabidly on the side of the makers, I think it’s a mistake to say “ethics” has nothing to do with aesthetic judgment. Does anyone believe this? I don’t have in mind blah blah Pound fascism, but something like what Wittgenstein meant when he said that ethics just is aesthetics. Well, what did he mean? I think in part he meant that ethics is comprised of a system of judgments about how things work (values, people), judgments for which there is ultimately no higher appeal than that already established by other judgments. And to say that ethics does enter into aesthetic argument is hardly to give ground to people who refuse to desecrate the “hard work” that goes into “being an artist.” (Notice, btw, how the being crowd appropriates the language of making to defend its essentialism.)
(I am on the making side, right?
Yeah, sorry, I traded a little clarity for pith there. I meant “personal ethics” of the kind you were so hilariously attacked with at Harriet; i.e., the notion that the way a person lives has (or should) some determining and lasting effect on the way her art is read. (See, besides Pound, Creeley, R., reputation of, here et passim.)
I’m perfectly content with Wittgenstein’s equation and its reverse. But I’d maintain—and expect you would as well—that while ethics plays a part in aesthetic judgment, we have a different kind of ethical relation to people than we do to words (or actions, etc.). It’s okay to argue seriously that a book should not exist; it is not okay, usually, to make a similar argument about a person. The be-ers want to blur that distinction.
The be-ers want more beers! and for their kingdom to be in heaven as it is on earth. (The makers want more Maker’s.)
Which makes Flarf the boilermakers?
This is too great.
Gaddis? Sure, I’ll give him a try. (Keep in mind paperbacks are about $20 a pop here — and Amazon doesn’t ship to Lebanon.) Naturally, I have Stevens here with me.
MR, dunno. Dunno that I can improve on BB’s reply.
You’d get your money’s worth with The Recognitions or J R. Carpenter’s Gothic is the slimmest of the bunch, but not as good as the others. I’m saving Agape Agape for marriage.
You, my dear man, are a romantic!
Oh yes. Incorrigibly.
Maker agitprop:
And the (inevitable) corollary:
BAD POEM
Put that rock down.
Yes, well no one ever suggested that “BAD POEM” wasn’t included in the definition of “agitprop.”
No, BB’s reply clears up my quibble. It would be absurd to deny ethics has something with aesthetics, if only in the abstract way W. intends. But also in less abstract ways: there is an artist who videotapes the violent slaughter of animals, staged for the camera. The question of disinterested aesthetic judgment does not arise, for the ethical interest is absolute.
*something to do with
On the Ethics/Aesthetics relation, I just posted this at Harriet, under Craig Santos Perez’s post, where the discussion is tributarying (to make up a word) in rather revealing ways, from the Donovan thread. Robbins also has a couple strong interventions there.
*
[Thom Donovan wrote, reponding to comments by me and MR]
>when I wrote those posts, in the context of FB mind you, I was upset at what I saw as an act of violence committed within a communal space I feel very much a part of, namely SEGUE series.
Thom, I applaud your candor. But isn’t SEGUE a public reading series? I can certainly understand that you feel strongly about the organization and that you have developed affinities with people who regularly patronize its events. But isn’t SEGUE trying to draw new people to its events, too, and broaden the audience for innovative writing? If so, then it’s inevitable non-regular attendees will bring different backgrounds, expectations, tastes, levels of sophistication, and so on, into the room. Audiences will be unpredictable, to some extent, and react in varied ways. This will likely include people *laughing* (or clapping, or jeering, or yawning) at different things and at different times! Truly, it’s just plain distressing you would use a phrase like “act of violence” to characterize people’s laughter at a poetry reading.
It should be obvious that an atmosphere where people feel their demeanor is under surveillance for “correctness” is not conducive to the creation of any honest or meaningful “communal space.” I fear that’s what we’re talking about here. That behavioral pressures and controls of all kinds exist in the post-avant field is Sociology 101. But these are almost always (aggressive and onerous as they often are) largely unremarked, sublimated via collective ritual, to some degree, swept under the rug. It’s somewhat extraordinary in that context, perhaps a bit of a learning moment, that such a considerable number of poets, including yourself, have stepped forward to argue that the blatant attitudinal and somatic policing exhibited at the SEGUE event can be–should be–legitimated.
I don’t mean at all to suggest you are acting out of bad faith, Thom, but I’d urge you to further reflect on your two postings here on this topic. And I’d suggest that all of this is another good argument for the necessity of negative criticism…
Your Commoning post today, above this one, is very interesting– good luck with the good project.
I wrote a poem once called “Why I Wouldn’t Call Myself a Poet.”
Harriet threads frequently remind me of why I wouldn’t.
(Is that too mean?)
That said, the being/making distinction is not that interesting. Artists make art, and, once you kiss career-ville good-bye, it’s no more a game than cooking is. Cooking can be an art, as can dressing and combing one’s hair. Aesthetics are everywhere. I understand very little of what my toddler says. Sometimes I suspect he’s saying, “Dude, that hair, I don’t know.”
And anyway, the people you’d put on the “being” side are all about “craft” and “making” too, so . . .
The people you’re putting on the “being” side are actually alluding to something very wise that Wilde said. It’s in a seldom-collected review of a Pater collection, I think, and so I don’t have it at hand and will probably painfully misquote, but it something to the effect that:
Without enthusiasm there can be no love, and without love there can be no understanding.
Now, I don’t agree with that sentiment 100% — but I love it! And think there’s a lot of truth in it.
I like the little performative contradiction there, John. Well played.
Wilde is another interesting case. A propagandist for be-ers like Beau Brummel, he was nevertheless an inveterate maker.
Now I’m really going to out myself as a romantic, but I try often to remind myself of something Ruskin wrote that’s not all that far off from your Wilde quotation: “Fix, then, this in your mind as the guiding principle of all right practical labour…that your art is to be the praise of something that you love.” But hell if I’m going to give that ground up to the artist-as-being crowd; why do you think it’s theirs to claim?
Great Ruskin quote — thanks! — and I’m romantic as all-get-out. My advice is not to worry about the artist-as-being crowd; if they ain’t making art, they ain’t . . .
I originally called my poem “Why I Am Not a Poet,” but the O’Hara allusion did a disservice both to the poem and to O’Hara.
I should have said that John has some excellent remarks on both related threads at Harriet, including one just now under the Perez post, commenting on the tape of the events. Very interesting.
Someone there just asked me, after I posted my last: “What was the last reading you went to, Kent?”
Apparently, he thinks I’m not “experienced.”
I think ethics & aesthetics are both forms of one thing, judgement, with different bases (morality & beauty, respectively), which interpenetrate each other. Ultimately, the ethical is beautiful. What we find in negative critical judgements about art is either 1) the failure of the art work to achieve its own aim (ie. an aesthetic failure of an ethical aim), or 2) an aim which is itself fundamentally unethical, or at least morally flawed (which spoils whatever aesthetic qualities the work possesses).
I’m actually surprised to be making such a dogmatic statement, off the top of my head. & I’m probably wrong. & I have a very nasty cold.
Positive or Negative, ethical or aesthetical, I’ve always wondered why criticism doesn’t flirt more with Fiction.
Wittgenstein folded philosophy into poetry (or poetry into philosophy); why don’t critics of poetry fold criticism into fiction (or fiction into criticism)?
Like Sorrentino’s fake reviews in Mulligan Stew?
I’ve been waiting years for someone to mention this book!
Um.
Seconded.
No, I’m really thinking more of critical writing in context of a short story, say, or a novella, or a murder mystery. Where the reviewer becomes a character, perhaps, along with the poet(s) under review. Where everything is understood *as* fictional, but the criticism is no less serious for that.
I know that Criticism already IS a category of Fiction; I’m wondering why there’s not more stuff that enacts the overlap in determined, self-conscious ways.
I’ve tried to do something along these lines (much of it appeared in the CR, in four installments), and the whole thing is coming out as a critical novella sometime late this year, I think. But so much stuff that could be done in this area, I believe.
Like Gander’s review of Where Shall I Wander in Boston Review? I thought that was a good try, but ultimately not compelling.
>but ultimately not compelling
The gesture, or the execution?
Both.
MR,
Actually, what review by Gander are you talking about? I just heard from him, and he has no idea what you’re referring to.
It’s a review of A Worldly Country, not Where Shall I Wander. But I doubt he has “no idea.” How many reviews of Ashbery’s recent books has he published in Boston Review? Forty-two? Not that hard to figure out.
You’re starting to sound like Matt!
Just kidding.
I’m only one of many many readers to think much of the best writing of the last hundred years is in the form of short reviews written for deadline. I’m pretty sure that when it arrives Eliot’s collected prose will correct anyone who smirks at this judgment.
Why anyone would mess criticism up with fiction… present company excepted of course.
MR wrote:
> am on the making side, right?
To muddle the binary, what if there’s a third term: knower (critic). This would it seems to me account for the difference among makers between combatants and non-.
Speaking of art and life…