The de-legitimization of art

Sheila Heti argues that this is what's happening in America. Or as she eloquently puts it ...that this activity is privileged, narcissistic and childish; something permitted to those at university, maybe, but even then, a bit far-fetched as an activity of real importance. Certainly to be put away – along with the other “childish things” – once one becomes a man...A funny thing is that much of this criticism came from very smart people in populous American cities, where (it is implied) the more mature, less narcissistic, and less privileged thing to talk about is money. Money is a conversation for adults. Art, for undergrads."

Seems to me that what she's picking up on in this compelling, passionate essay is a pervasive ignorance that exists particularly among the 'educated' and wealthy. I know it sounds strange to call the so-called 'educated' ignorant, but it's true in a society that defines education in narrow terms. There is no doubt that we are the most educated society that has ever existed, at least in terms of producing individuals holding university degrees. But we are also the most blinkered. We stream our children early, and promote specialization because it affords the best potential for translating acquired skills into high-paying careers. "Money is a conversation for adults" because it's the one subject most every adult has the capacity to talk about. It does not require 'specialized' knowledge the way art does. Heti's essay made me think about a time when the wealthiest in society could talk about art, and needed to. In fact, talk of money was considered uncouth. The wealthiest considered being educated in the arts absolutely essential, as a critical component of taste, prestige, status, awareness and intelligence. It was also an important aspect of noblesse oblige, the responsibility of those few who could afford to be patrons of the arts to support this greater good. Today this role is fulfilled by governments and universities. When I think of the chasm that exists between wealth and knowledge (responsibility, awareness), Duck Dynasty comes to mind, a TV show about a millionaire family of yokels who seem to epitomize the ignorance Heti is talking about. The Robertson 'clan' wears the 'yokel' emblem with pride; a backwoods family that drives Cadillac Escalades and lives in mansions, who are rich enough not to care less about life beyond the boundaries of the swamp. They represent an anti-elitist credo that is elitist in its own ironic way ie. they own all the symbols of American success without being affected (read: tainted) by outside cultural influences, thereby supposedly retaining authenticity. The thrust of Heti's main argument is that knowledge of art is essential for knowledge of life in the broadest possible sense, because art speaks for the pockets of our culture and our hearts that the mainstream, commercialized world does not want to hear about; art elbows its way in. It’s about balancing – about justice. It allows our deepest grievances and sorrows to take centre stage. Art is an example of human freedom and striving. It defines and stretches our humanity, it clears the world of convenient lies, it touches the loneliness that plagues us all and replaces it with fellow-feeling. It creates models of possible worlds in opposition to the worlds we live in, which we cannot imagine our way out of without art.

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Vonnegut is always a unique, and undeniably curious read, compelling in ways that defy the standard literary experience. For many, he's an acquired taste, heady as opposed to emotionally rewarding. His concerns in this absurd, satirical, dystopic tale about an author's quest to document the events surrounding the founder of the atom bomb's last day on earth, are as large as they come; the contemporary political, social, cultural and religious landscape. And as a satire he walks a fine line between a narrative that is hard to take seriously (characters are caricature, plot and dialogue carry little veracity) and an underlying message that is deadly serious. You never know whether to laugh or cry and I spent most of my time doing neither. I shook my head instead. As the story shifts to the tiny Carribean island of San Lorenzo, and with the injection of faux-spriritual Bokonist aphorisms, the novel began feeling somewhat dated, recalling a time when Cold War ideology ruled the decisions of regimes and men, the US supported South American dictators in a bid to stave off Soviet expansionism in the Western Hemisphere, and the threat of a world-ending nuclear war peperpetually hung in the air. Then again, the ideological machinations of leaders still appear to hold sway, as the disastrous effect of three decades of neo-conservative fiscal policy in the US has shown. But is this a novel we're talking about? Well, yes and no. That's just the kind of book Cat's Cradle is. When you want to talk about the book it's not actually about the book.




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A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Three and a half stars.

This novel reads as if Moby Dick were written by the staff at Mad magazine or the National Lampoon. The whale in this case is Ignatius Reilly, an obese, slobbering, slovenly, self-centered, uncouth, pretentious, over-indulged, utterly incapable, clueless, ne'er-do-well and unemployable buffoon. A verbose Bluto (from Animal House) with a degree in medieval philosophy, a walking disaster zone who talks like an Oxford Don, if you can imagine that. The action reminded me of the 1972 Barbara Streisand - Ryan O'Neal comedy of errors What's Up Doc? a film in which an initial miscue triggers a series of other mishaps and misunderstandings affecting a variety of characters tangentially connected, including Ignatius, his long-suffering mother, an incompetent police officer, the owner of a pants manufacturer, a strip-bar owner and her black employee. The New Orleans setting is fittingly over-the-top for this kind of social satire of American excess and vain overindulgence, where the crazies are running the insane asylum. Favourite parts were Ignatius's masochistic penchant for rushing to see movies he knows are pure shlock. He relishes chortling at the overdone, trashiest parts and hurling insults at the screen, just as we can't help ourselves from flocking to the theatres to consume the over-hyped substandard cultural garbage that supports the entertainment industry. Although there are plenty of laughs the reader detects a pervasive underlying seriousness and sadness. Where this novel lacked was with Ignatius himself, who is so pathetic as to be unsympathetic, and whose lack of evolution can not be forgiven. The tone of underlying sadness comes from the fact that the author committed suicide over a decade prior to the novel's publication and it's impossible not to read the novel as his helpless plea to be rescued from himself, which is exactly what happens to Ignatius in the end. There is no redemption, only excuses, and the goddess Fortuna driving the bus to hell.




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Money by Martin Amis


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Perhaps the best piece of writing I've ever read on the subject of money is, strangely enough, a poem by the American poet Dana Gioia. You wouldn't think money and poetry could go together, but they do. After all, we say that we 'coin' a new phrase. Poetry and money are both currencies embodying significance within them. Poetry has rhythm and musicality, meaning and feeling. Money, one might observe has similar properties, it's own music, and lifeforce that expresses many fundamental human qualities on a variety of levels depending on who possesses it and how it's used, it expresses what we value, from our highest aspirations and dreams to our basest desires. In his poem Gioia captures our deeply human connection to cash brilliantly and simply through all the words and phrases we have for it, our multifaceted obsession with it, and the mystery that exists at its core. Money doesn't lie. If you want to know the truth just follow the money. This is essentially the stance of Martin Amis's 1984 novel Money, in the guise of degenerate pornography-loving, alcoholic ad-man and aspiring film director John Self, as he flies back and forth from Manhatten to London trying to get his first feature-length motion picture off the ground. This is not a novel that the reader escapes into, and that's intentional. It does not have characters that we can relate to or sympathize with. There is no sense in describing in any detail the characters or plot (both rather thin) in a novel in which these conventions are secondary. This is a novel about money in the same way that Seinfeld was a TV show about nothing, the difference being that Seinfeld's characters were narcissistic but still likable while Amis's are unremittingly egomaniacal and debased. But it doesn't really matter, because as with money itself, this is a novel in which style is substance and content is form. Like someone teetering on the edge of suicide the narrative balances along a precipice, lowlife as high concept. The tone is decidedly ironic and the novel's juices are in its language, a bold, clever, jazzy, riffing, extravagant style as robust and exhilarating as it is disturbing. The novel's self-reflexiveness - the author introduces a novelist character named Martin Amis - was a reason why his famous novelist father Kingsley lost patience and launched the book across the room complaining, "Breaking the rules, buggering about with the reader, drawing attention to himself." Amis (son) does have a point to make, an insight into the way we've allowed markets to be the ultimate arbiter of value, morality and taste. I'm generally not a fan of the approach, and picked this one up because it immediately predated one of my all time favourite novels, his stunning and important Time's Arrow. That novel combines a virtuosity and experimentation in literary technique with a soul, literally and figuratively. It's a book about the Holocaust and probes the darkest recesses of mind and heart in a surprising way that turns the world upside down (actually backwards) and manages to be profoundly moving, even uplifting. Time's Arrow is compressed and restrained, the exact opposite of Money, and for that reason I think a more successful book. Money feels like it gets lost along the meandering way. There are brilliant moments and the writing is compelling (it kept me reading to the end) but it's not moving, which is too bad, because as Gioia's poem shows, money does have its own poetry and because of, not in spite of, how money reveals us at our worst. The experience of reading Amis's Money is the experience of being toyed with. Money is the supreme fiction the narrator remarks, but the reader doesn't always want to be reminded that fiction is all it really is.




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Aruna Papp and Barbara Kay at the JPL

I have the pleasure of introducing Barbara Kay at the Jewish Public Library for what will certainly be a fascinating evening. Join us! Here are the details.

JPL Presents: Lecture and Book Launch

with authors Aruna Papp and Barbara Kay

Please join us for a special evening with authors Aruna Papp and Barbara Kay as they speak about their new memoir Unworthy Creature: A Punjabi Daughter's Memoir of Honour, Shame and Love on Thursday, Sepember 20, 2012 at 7:30 p.m. at the Jewish Public Library, 5151 Côte Ste-Catherine Road, Montreal. Admission: $7 JPL members/students, $12 general. To reserve tickets call (514) 345-6416, or for information call (514) 345-2627 ext. 3017, or visit www.jewishpubliclibrary.org

The memoir of a South Asian immigrant to Canada, this book traces the author's lonely, poignant struggle to free herself from the oppressive code of her former land. The book chronicles her courageous battle to help other South Asian girls and women in Canada step out of their kinsmen's ancient patriarchal cycle and claim their gender rights as fully equal Canadian citizens.

Aruna Papp was born and raised in India. After immigrating to Canada, Aruna acquired two graduate degrees, a second, loving and mutually respectful marriage, and a pioneering career in counselling.

Barbara Kay, award-winning columnist with The National Post, helps tell Aruna’s story.

Books and autographs available.

Reception following sponsored by Barbara and Ronny Kay.

Sponsored by the Rebecca & Jacob Grossman Foundation of the JPL

A Jewish Winnipeg view of Halbman (Richler, and Montreal fiction)

...“Halbman Steals Home” is a thoroughly enjoyable read for the most part. The author is a master at describing so much of what makes Montreal such a compelling city in which to set a story... anyone who enjoys seeing much of the hypocrisy in Jewish life made clever – and usually gentle fun, of, should get a kick out of this book.

Mixed review but blurbworthy nonetheless. Enjoyable with reservations seems to be the consensus. Read more.

Rabbit Redux by John Updike


My rating: 2 of 5 stars


At the beginning of the summer I set myself the goal of polishing off the first four of John Updike's five Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom novels. As I near the end of book #2, Rabbit Redux, I might have to admit defeat. I don't think I'll make it past this one, for now. I wasn't expecting light summer fare, but these novels drag. They are virtually plotless, completely character and relationship driven. The aspect that rankles most is the uncanniness of the main character, by which I mean that he is both there and not there at the same time. Two novels in and I still don't have much of a sense about what makes the guy tick. Turbulent relationships swirl all around him as in a storm, and he appears to be like the empty vortex in the centre. I want to hate, or love, or feel something for Rabbit, even pity, but ultimately all I feel is indifference. If he can't commit emotionally to what's happening to him how is the reader supposed to? Rabbit spends most of his time evading, which is Updike's point of course. But he can't go on running forever. At some point he has to face up to his problems, and two novels in, he still hasn't and it's as frustrating to the reader as to him. But Updike's ultimate goal was less to chronicle the trials and tribulations of an American man then to write a novel that pronounces on the zeitgeist of the decade in which he lives, in this case the 1960s. The central character is actually America herself and Updike wants to describe how she's being ravaged by social upheaval. So characters become representations instead of real people. Harry is the befuddled and bewildered American middle-class white suburbanite male who supports the war in Vietnam (more for patriotic reasons than for political ones) and carries around some of the lingering racial prejudice and misogyny that characterized white America prior to the civil rights revolution. Contrast Harry as emblem to: Jill, a Porsche-driving spoiled little rich kid junkie who uses sex to gain acceptance, and her dealer, a black Vietnam vet with a messianic complex on the lam named Skeeter. The war, check. Sexual revolution, check. The dissolution of traditional bourgeois family values and the American dream, check. Updike has lined up all his ducks in order to take aim at the social and political issues he wants to address. The novel has that deliberate contrived feel to it, with lots of dialogue, frequently monologue (rants), especially from the oratorically-flamboyant Skeeter. The other relationships of importance to Harry are with his 12 year old son Nelson, his parents, and his estranged wife Janice, who ran off with a car salesman work colleague. Tellingly, the closest Harry comes to making a genuine emotional connection is with his dad (his mom is suffering from Parkinson's and for most of the novel Harry can't muster up the courage to visit her.) The domestic vacuum left by Janice's departure is filled by Jill and Skeeter, which is to say, that it's not filled at all except to add further instability and a sense of impending disaster. Everyone seems to be using everyone else, Jill trades on sex with Harry to gain a roof over her head and the approval of a father figure, and uses Skeeter to get drugs and allay her white bourgeois guilt. Harry uses Jill for sexual pleasure and comfort. Skeeter uses Harry for refuge and as an audience to mouth-off about the injustices done to black Americans from slavery onward. Harry uses Skeeter to allay his guilty feelings for supporting the war. It's a pathetically dysfunctional square-dance; partners coming together to trade-off their guilt, shame, victimization, self-righteousness, bigotry, misogyny, immaturity and irresponsibility which is how Updike seems to see the way the 'new' America works (or rather doesn't work). Not much genuine tenderness is in evidence, except in the relationship between Jill and Nelson, which is its own special recipe for disaster, he seeing a sister/mother-figure in a lost, self-destructive, immature girl not much older than him. As social commentary - and given Updike's own objectives, I believe it's the only way to see this novel - it doesn't offer much hope, let alone balance. As a novel, well, let's just say I'm tired of seeing Rabbit run.




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