The vanishing books section

10 comments on “The vanishing books section”

1. Lannie Brockstein says:
   February 23rd, 2009 at 12:28 pm

   “Ordinary Canadians [and ordinary USA'ers] do not care about the [anti-] arts [or reviews of anti-art works].” – The Honourable Stephen Harper.

2. Matt S. says:
   February 23rd, 2009 at 2:57 pm

   For reals, Lannie? I think it’s safe to say that literature these days is pretty tame, and far from what you refer to as anti-art. Or are you being sarcastic? It’s getting really hard to tell.

3. Amy Dixon says:
   February 23rd, 2009 at 7:24 pm

   I agree that it is sad that book sections are being thrown overboard by newspapers in their attempt to keep from sinking. However, if that is what takes to keep papers such as The Washington Post in business, so be it. Publishers must first devote sufficient resources into investigating and covering hard news stories. If the quality of book reviews is maintained in the papers’ on-line products, we’ll get the material we want, even if it does feel a bit like book readers, writers and publishers have been snubbed.

4. John says:
   February 23rd, 2009 at 9:39 pm

   I read alot, and I stopped reading book sections about 15 years ago. This was just after I graduated university. It was the only way I could get my love of reading back.

   Purely as a reader, the best way to learn about books is word of mouth. Blogs are now excellent for this.

   I don’t think loss of book sections will be much of a problem for readers. For professionals — especially those who depend on prizes, peer support, or literary journalism for their careers — it could be crippling.

   Also, as John Updike said, everything is a genre now. There are a thousand TV channels, same for books. In this environment, the canon-making book review loses its authority and dies.

5. Lannie Brockstein says:
   February 24th, 2009 at 6:09 pm

   Matt S.: One of the ways that anti-art is not-creative, or tame, is through its presentation of everyday objects as objets d’art—what its brainwashed adherents call ‘found objects.’ To them, Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ is a work of art, because it is his ‘found object;’ even though to those that are not morons, it is an ordinary mass-produced urinal that he bought at some hardware store; and not a work of art of his, at all.

   Is there such a thing as the literary version of the ‘found object’? Yes, there is. It is the cliché that is the literary version of the ‘found object.’ Many works of contemporary literature, are actually works of anti-literature, due to their overabundance of clichés, or ‘found objects.’

   Look at Elizabeth Alexander’s ‘poem’ that she presented at President Obama’s inauguration, for the entire world to behold (see link). Too much of what she presented was not in her own words, not that she plagiarized—but when a work contains more anti-art than art, it can be reasonably said that that work, is a work of anti-art, and not a work of art. 80-90% of her ‘Praise Song for the Day’ is nothing more than one cliché after another.

6. Matt S. says:
   February 24th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

   But aren’t you subscribing to a rather odd essentialist definition of art? What every happened to beauty being determined by the beholder?

   The Believer does not, in its book reviews, does not rate a book by how good or bad it is. Instead, the reviewer educes the central question/them/whatever of the book and then discusses how the book goes about addressing and communicating this central element. While I know that many here will disagree with this approach, I think that it’s by far the most intellectually honest. Even under this paradigm, you can feel free to judge and be smug (not every piece of writing accomplishes its goals), but it avoids the essentialist notion of some art being objectively good and other art being objectively bad.

   When I heard Alexander’s poem, the only thing I could say is “Wonderful–it’s the dawn of a new age of Socialist Realism!” Yes, I thought the poem was terrible. But at the same time, it’s fascinating to compare her string of cliches to the work of the Socialist Realists (see link above). If we consider the poem in this context, I think we can have a much more productive discussion about its meaning, its implications, than we could if we just say that it sucks.

7. Paul says:
   February 24th, 2009 at 8:21 pm

   Matt, you’ve really got something there about The Believer’s approach to reviewing. I see a lot of reviews that want to rake an apple over the coals for not being an orange. There’re a lot of critics who see reviewing not so much as an opportunity to evaluate a work, but rather as an opportunity to mythologize their own personal school, mode or aesthetic. Dogmatic neoformalists are decrying free verse for being too formally relaxed while dogmatic avant-gardists are decrying more discursive modes for being too backward-looking. Everywhere the axes of artistic self-interest are being ground. And I would whole-heartedly agree with you that this approach is intellectually dishonest. Better to take a work on its own terms, to determine what it wants to be and then see how well it manages to become itself.

8. Lannie Brockstein says:
   February 24th, 2009 at 11:17 pm

   Matt S.: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” is a sophism. It actually says that beauty is an illusion—that it does not exist in the world. Anti-art does not recognize the existence of beauty either; that is why anti-art works, such as ‘Voice of Fire,’ are intently not-beautiful.

   If beauty is subjective and not objective, then beauty is an illusion—it does not exist in the world anymore than does Santa Claus. But Santa Claus does exist in the world. Santa Claus is an elf that wears a red coat, and says “Ho Ho Ho.” Santa Claus likes to eat cookies and milk. Santa Claus has a big white beard, lives at the North Pole, flies a sled led by reindeer, and makes and delivers toys for good children around the world, with the help of his elf friends.

   You disagree with that? You are of the opinion that Santa Claus does not exist? The next time that you look at a woman, and see that she is beautiful, tell yourself over and over again that she is not beautiful at all because Santa Claus does not exist.

   Not willing to do that? But that is what der Führer anti-art asks of you! It asks you to live in a world where you are not willing and able to recognize that beauty and Santa Claus each exist!

   But that is not what you meant when you said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder?” You meant that beauty does exist but that each person has their own opinion as to what is beautiful? But that in essence means the same thing—if beauty does exist subjectively, but not objectively, then beauty is an illusion because it does not exist in the world; that woman is beautiful only because you are a crazy person and should therefore be put in a mental institution.

   Heil anti-art!

   ~~~

   But Alexander Elizabeth did not recite a poem at President Obama’s inauguration. What she recited had more clichés than it did not; therefore, she recited an anti-poem.

   Since you consider that it is good that The Believer is intellectually honest because its reviewers judge each book that they review on each book’s own terms, then why are you not equally willing and able to judge anti-art on its own terms; namely, that it is against the very existence of art? Why did you not admit that what Elizabeth Alexander recited at President Obama’s inauguration is an anti-poem, and not a poem?

   In case you haven’t noticed, I have been judging anti-art on its own terms. It is you that has not been judging anti-art on its own terms; it is you that has been judging anti-art as if it is art; it is you that has been arguing alongside Paul V. and many others at Bookninja against my posts that each relate that anti-art is not art and that ‘Voice of Fire’ is not-beautiful because it is a work of anti-art (abstract expressionism is anti-expressionism), and that what the Honourable Stephen Harper meant by saying that “Ordinary Canadians do not care about the arts,” is that “Ordinary Canadians do not care about the anti-arts.”

   Now can you and the rest of Canada’s arts community wake up from dreaming in Iran, please?

9. Matt S. says:
   February 25th, 2009 at 12:45 am

   Lannie: Please reread my response. It is clear to me that you haven’t even bothered trying to understand what I wrote. And in the meantime, were you aware that Hitler greatly preferred neoclassical works, and indeed saw much avant garde art as degenerate? Just something you should think about as you throw Nazi references around all willy nilly.

10. George says:
    February 25th, 2009 at 6:44 am

    Stop trying to engage with him, Matt. He’s either what his grammar and opinions suggest, or he’s a joke someone’s playing on us all.

Discuss