Re: Weekend at Charles Foster's...

Here are a few replies:

> "Is this really egotism, or is it just what we do all the time?"
>
> Both.

Ha. Ok, I can buy that.

> "Isn't this just the type of prioritizing that goes on that determines the type of people we're going to be day in and day out?" -- Jim
 
> No, how we feel about art often has very little to do with the type of people we're going to be. They were reading Goethe and listening to Mozart while they were pushing people into ovens. Just because my students might think CK sucks and WaB is totally funny says little or nothing about how they're going to treat people, really. -- John

My quotation above wasn't directly relevant to art, but about how we
confront the varied morass that makes up our emotional lives on a day to
day basis. "I'm gonna go with these feelings and not go with these
others..." The decisions we make in these confrontations are reflected
back to us in literature -- literature can serve as the objectification
of these decisions, helping us to understand their nature, in other
words.

So I wasn't saying, at all, that our artistic preferences are reflective
of the type of people we are -- at least not in that instance, and not
in the way that seems to be implied in your response to me. I'm saying
there's a parallel between one kind of decision (our decisions about our
own feelings on a daily basis), and another kind of decision (our
decisions about how we react to art and literature and such at different
times).

I think the Nazi example is a bit oversimple. I think you know that
too. They had a pretty specific aesthetic that determined which artists
were "in" and which "out" and how those who were "in" were read. So
they may have been reading Goethe, but maybe not. If they were, it
wasn't with the same goals you or I may have in reading. If National
Socialism had lasted, it would have brought out a new aesthetic
exemplified by its own artists. Goethe would have eventually become
superfluous then condemned. As it was they were striving for a Roman
type, majestic/modernist, austere severity.

If the discussion really ends with the "to me," the discussion seems, to
me, pointless and, really, impossible. If there's no potential for a
"to us" in the "to me" statement, then why bother? How can literature
communicate anything at all, if there's no "to us" between myself and
the author? I think there is, and whatever it is, in whatever form, is
contained in the book both author and reader share.

Jim
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Received on Sat Dec 20 10:24:23 2003