The Critical Sphere

Until recently, I was in the habit of posting on Fridays a list of interesting posts from around the blogosphere that I called "Weekend Reading." I mostly stopped assembling this list because blog readership tends to decrease substantially over the weekend, and I was not sure these links were getting noticed much. I am now going to begin posting on Mondays a similar selected list of posts from other blogs, and from online publications more generally, along with perhaps a few comments indicating my interest in the subject under discussion. I hope by doing this to call attention to the kind of critical thinking regularly appearing on blogs that somehow seems never to be cited by those blithely commenting on the litblogsphere without paying much attention to what it actually has to offer.

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Steve Mitchelmore succinctly explains why the continued insistence that biography aids our understanding of an artist's work just misses the point:

"But surely" says Nigel. . ."the 'essence' which makes Shakespeare Shakespeare, Picasso Picasso etc., although obviously important, is something beyond description, or comprehension." Well, yes. But not quite. We comprehend it every time we watch a Shakespeare play, look at painting by Picasso or read novels like Proust's. Everyone can comprehend the essence, just as everyone can frown over the painter's behaviour or gossip about the writer's sexuality. Yet comprehension is also the intoxication of reading. It ends as soon as the encounter is over. From then on, we begin to read backwards, towards the mirage of origin.

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"I don't see how the NBCC helps anything by publishing a list of recommendations that pretty much recommends the authors everyone is already reading," writes Scott Esposito. Neither do I, but it's exactly what we should expect from an organization like the NBCC. By its very nature it gropes toward the lowest common denominator. "The authors everyone is already reading" are inevitably what a group of newspaper book reviewers is going to consider it their job to "recommend," since these are the only authors who get reviewed to begin with.

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Jim H at Wisdom of the West is mostly correct in observing that

If a given novel or story is deemed to be merely the instantiation or embodiment of a philosophical doctrine then it is probably not a fully-realized work. It is hack work; its characters merely counters on a larger gameboard, its themes prefabricated, its "message" inauthentic.

I would disagree only in that I wouldn't necessarily call a "philosophical" novel "hack work." It may well be perfectly sincere and ultimately successful. . .as philosophy. I myself really only object to novels with "ideas" when their authors want to have it both ways: to use fiction as a vehicle for delivering a "message," but also to have their fiction considered first of all as a work of art. By all means write your novel of ideas; just don't tell me that this is a way of making art.

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At One-Way Street, Richard Prouty suggests that although digital technology "has opened a whole new realm of visual experience to photography," photography as an art form is suffering a kind of identity crisis:

If there's a broad trend, it's that digital technologies have allowed photography to assume the monumentality of painting. For instance, the Dutch photographer Bert Teunissen has a series of portraits blown up to the scale of an Ingres or David canvas. Marx once observed that new technologies initially take the form of the technology they replaced, but. . .digital photography seems content to re-enact analogue photography's fascination with painting.

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Jabberwock elegantly captures what separates Akira Kurosawa from other directors of "action" films:

I was wrong to think of “action” in The Seven Samurai purely in terms of the actual battle scenes; Kurosawa’s mastery of shot composition and sweeping camera movements bring a kinetic energy to even the quieter scenes. The film is full of superb setpieces, such as the shot of Kikuchiyo sitting on a rooftop with the samurai banner in his hand, suddenly looking up at the hills and seeing dozens of bandits riding down towards the village. But remarkably, each of these scenes also has a built-in intimacy. Never do you get the sense that the action in this film exists in isolation – it is informed by, and enriched by, what we gradually learn about the characters.

Comments

[maitresse]

Regarding the NBCC-- I see your point, and the Good Reads program thus far does seem a bit tautological. But they are trying to make up for it with this Long Tail thing they're doing on the site right now, having members recommend books that didn't make the list.

What would the NBCC look like, ideally, in your view?

[Dan Green]

I think the NBCC can only be what it is. Which is why readers should take such "recommendations" with a suitable number of grains of salt.

[maitresse]

How many? like 5? 6? 10?
;)