Subject: Re: getting better every day
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 27 2001 - 13:03:17 GMT
You should see Pinocchio again, Scottie :). He wasn't allowed to become
a real boy until he straightened himself out and learned his lessons :)
I agree that much art and literature shouldn't be reduced to morally
edifying lessons -- that's trite. But I disagree that much art and
literature isn't morally edifying on some levels. It quite often works
by creating sympathy for the Different, if nothing else. Books like
Catcher work like mirrors, you know :). You can't sum up their effects
with a pithy phrase or proverb, but they have their effect
nonetheless...
Jim
Scottie Bowman wrote:
>
> It’s quite a while now since I looked at Pinocchio
> – rather more than sixty years I should imagine.
> But what I took from it, even then, was that Conscience
> was no more than a grotesque hopper with an umbrella
> whose precepts could be safely ignored – unless one
> wished to end up as the object of sentimental cooings
> by motherly figures drooling over the darling feather
> in one’s cap. A corrupted view that has remained with me
> ever since.
>
> Mustn't shackle you, though, with the only worst
> practitioners. What moral enlightenment am I
> to draw from the more prestigious ones?
>
> I love Cezanne; is it he informs my living with balance
> & order? And does Picasso do me a similar good?
> I suspect not. Wagner turns me on in a big way; does
> that explain the Nazi regalia hidden in my wardrobe?
> Does Tchiakovsky teach that homosexuality is the way
> of true sensitivity? Maybe, darling. Was it Aeschylus
> finally persuaded me Not To Get Into Bed With Mother?
>
> What do Schubert’s quartets or Hemingway’s stories
> offer other than the simple enjoyment in their existence?
> Must I lumber them with all these drearily edifying
> undertones?
>
> Onward & upward, eh, Jim?
>
> Include me out.
>
> Scotttie B.
>
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