David Foster Wallace, in an interview with Larry McCaffery, 1993:
I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of “generalization” of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple. But now realize that TV and popular film and most kinds of “low” art—which just means art whose primary aim is to make money—is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas “serious” art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. So it’s hard for an art audience, especially a young one that’s been raised to expect art to be 100 percent pleasurable and to make that pleasure effortless, to read and appreciate serious fiction. That’s not good. The problem isn’t that today’s readership is “dumb,” I don’t think. Just that TV and the commercial-art culture’s trained it to be sort of lazy and childish in its expectations. But it makes trying to engage today’s readers both imaginatively and intellectually unprecedentedly hard.
Discuss.
… I have Thoughts on this, but would like to see where this goes without me sticking my oar in.
I am still digesting this quote but overall I agree.
One point though –
‘Serious’ art has often been created with money in mind although I tend to be refering mostly to sculpture & paintings etc. Think of how many pieces of art that sit in the Louvre that were commissioned by rich families and the church for instance. Most of our great writers in the past wrote for a living – if they didn’t they probably would have went hungry. I don’t think that creating art for money diminishes it’s value or meaning or the influence it has over an individual either but I can see why people would think that the thought of it was less romantic.
Unless DFW meant through the use of ‘primarily’ that ‘serious art’ is not ALL about money and I simply read it wrong because I’m tired.
My head hurts.
He certainly didn’t hold the opinion that Art Must Not Make Money, and would not at all begrudge an artist their income. (His own income was derived entirely from writing and teaching literature.) The distinction he’s making is that what he refers to as “low” art is created purely as a commodity, something that ticks just enough boxes to be a viable product, and doesn’t attempt to be anything more.
(It’s worth noting that he puts “low” and “serious” in quotation marks. He came from a hardcore philosophy background, particularly in relation to language and how we classify things, and throughout his work he’s careful to avoid the false idea that you can conclusively nail down concepts this abstract. So he’s generalising to make a point, while being aware that there’s no easy boundary between “low” art and “serious” art.)
“My name is Colm and this is my life partner David. He’s AMAZING. We’re planning on adopting a child from Korea. David is so handsome…isn’t he handsome?”
I jest in your general direction only because I haven’t woken up yet and this is all I can think of to say at the moment. I will be a lot more intelligent later methinks…
ಠ_ಠ
While I do agree with him on some points (about the expectations of quick fulfilment, etc), I’m always wary about anyone who blames the audience for his own troubles.
I know he’s not necessarily doing so, but there’s hints of it.
Besides, there’s huge amounts of ‘high art’ works out there that were unappreciated in their own time; I wouldn’t say that the failure of audiences to read and enjoy high lit is damning of our generation specifically.
We do have shorter attention spans though, and did you see that thing on E4+1 last night about the fat kids going to circus camp?
ಠ_ಠ << Ahh I love that guy!
Landigan – Shorter attention spans is right! Our generation seems to want everything quick and fast and now and the thought of reading something like War & Peace seems like something herculean.
Oh man that was awesome, did you see the bit where – WAIT, NO.
One thing I’d like to sound people out on, and you touched on it there, is how much of a generational thing is this? This interview (and a long DFW essay about TV called “E Unum Pluribus”) date from the start of the 90s, which was kind of the early days of full-on TV saturation and MTV’s dominance and whatnot. But nowadays you have for instance these very smart HBO dramas (and David Simon has explicitly said he wants the audience to have to work to enjoy his shows), and stuff like Lost and Doctor Who which are popcorny as all get-out while still standing up well to literary scrutiny, and so on and so on… and on the other hand you have even MORE saturation, and endless reality shows, and the tabloidisation of pretty much everything, and relentless (effective) hyping of trash… so where are we now?
(There’s a book that argues the case that pop culture has been getting smarter in the past decades, called Everything Bad is Good For You, but I ain’t read it… anyone?)
I tend to agree. It’s particularly evident when applied to to the music industry, the publishing industry and the film industry. Commercial corporate investment is made not in artists but in product to be sold to a mass market. This product is often market-tested before release (or filtered past focus groups) so that it is released to the consumer in a less challenging / more pleasureable form. The commercial process firstly, and logically, protects the investment and it has the frequent effect of subduing the ‘voice’ of the artist who is, nominally, the author of the product.
Short attention spans is an interesting one as well. I mean, how true is it? At least part of the reason books were longer back in the day is because they were harder to get hold of, so they needed to last longer, and plus people just had less options for filling their spare time.
Consider the astonishing amount of reading you’ll do if you spend a couple of hours per day on the internet. Consider, WR, that your blog features long posts and lots of em, and plenty of people are still willing to engage with you. Consider the volume and detail of articles on Wikipedia. What I find interesting about the DFW quote is the idea that people aren’t being rendered incapable of paying attention (which is the angle much of the criticism of internet culture seems to take), but rather that it’s just the human tendency to take the path of least resistance.
Conan, music is a whole ‘nother barrel of monkeys. It’s interesting how much the artist or group actually becomes the product, above their actual output – and how much is “alternative music” culture responsible for that, with its contempt for musicians who don’t write their own material? I cringe when I think of how rabidly anti-pop (“pop” meaning “stuff people like”) I was in my teenage years.
What’s further interesting is how much musicians embrace the idea of being the product. The likes of Bowie were always at it, and the poster-child today is probably Lady Gaga. Who knows full well what she’s doing, and is arguably wrapping a whole bunch of “serious” stuff about gender and fashion and self-commidifying in about as “low” a shell as you can get. Again with the shaky boundaries.
I’m not sure that the commercialisation of art is specific to this generation, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to a dumbing down of art. I mean, Dickens was one of the most commercial writers of his day.
What I think is significant though is that the most prevalent art forms today, cinema and television, are extremely expensive to make, making their commercialisation more essential, and meaning that they have to be produced to appeal to the widest audience possible.
I don’t know if this makes sense. I’m rather tired…
It’s not the commercialisation that’s notable, it’s the sheer volume and easy availability (to the point of it being nigh-unavoidable) of commodified art these days (or in 1993, as the case may be).
TV and film are getting cheaper to make, and it seems to me like there’s a rising acceptance of low(ish)-budget styles, i.e. ones not consisting entirely of explosions.
You’re leaving out computer games, another very expensive, very prevalent form, and one which tends (for a variety of reasons) to be mind-blowingly dumb.
“(There’s a book that argues the case that pop culture has been getting smarter in the past decades, called Everything Bad is Good For You, but I ain’t read it… anyone?)”
No. Someone said it was good, so I figured it was bad. Let’s take a look at the “pop culture” of past eras… Shakespeare, Byron, Dickens (as was mentioned), what do we have that is as appealing to masses of people today? I believe it’s more fractured and factioned. Shakespeare and Dickens appealed to all aspects, classes, and levels of society. What do we have today that’s even close, that will stand the test of time?
I see DFW’s point, and to a certain extent I agree, but this is also the argument of third-class artists and unpublished writers everywhere, isn’t it? “They’re not cultured enough, they don’t understand me!” etc. Still, if I hadn’t explained the context (cultural and otherwise) of Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and Dickens to the Fledgling Sparrow, she wouldn’t have the basic appreciation of them that she now has. Then again, if I hadn’t explained to her how crap “Twilight” was, she’d still be happily lapping it up. Maybe my kid’s just dumb. It’s possible. People use that “context” thing far too often to justify bad “art,” if some white guy has to lecture for 30 minutes to explain how his painting that looks like a bunch of blotches actually represents the oppression of the Hmong people by blahblahblah, consider me bored and uncultured, I don’t care, just let me get my free finger food and use the bog, and let me out.
And while “good art” makes me think, I still can’t get past the “done because we are too many” part in “Jude the Obscure.” Three times, no go.
Hopefully this makes some amount of sense, the Spouse Sparrow and the Nestling are battling Pokemon right next to me.
I’m no historian, so I don’t know how broad the appeal of those authors was, nor to what degree they were analogous to modern pop culture. I do know that they weren’t the equivalent of Twilight or I’m A Celebrity or Stieg Larssen or what have you. I also know that by and large the literature of their times hasn’t engaged me nearly as much as that of the 20th and 21st centuries, in terms of how “serious” art is described above.
In terms of mass appeal, well, the late 20th c. invented mass appeal. Even a moderate bestseller shifts more copies than a writer in previous centuries could have dreamed of. Let’s not even mention film and TV. Plus, globalisation means there’s markets for niche product that simply didn’t exist before. And I would submit that far more artists in all fields will “pass the test of time” thanks to the internet. We just do not forget anymore.
Thirdly, the argument isn’t “They’re not cultured enough, they don’t understand me!” It’s about what’s worth writing, and how you write it in such a way that people will relate to it. In other words, “How do I do my job properly?”
… which leads on to your last point: that guy who has to explain everything he produces isn’t doing his job. He’s not even trying to engage his audience on an imaginative level. And I will speculate that he ain’t losing sleep over it neither.
Incidentally, thanks most kindly for all the comments. I was kind of worried this would just drop out of sight.
This has been an interesting read actually.
Just to go back to people refusing to read long books — I’m reading ‘My Life In Advertising’ by David Ogilvy at the moment, and in the first couple of chapters he makes the same point that you made, Colm.
People might read fewer books these days, but they read much more in general — online, newspapers, etc. The amount of words a person reads per day is much higher than in previous generations.
We might have shorter attention spans, but that’s because there’s just too much information. Our ‘satisfy me NOW’ attitude is our way of filtering the shit. Yes, we probably do sometimes miss rewarding challenges, but taking the path of least resistance is what the evolution of life on this planet is based on. That kinda hangover is way harder to shake off than your grandparents’ embarrassing racist attitudes.
On another point: context, as Sparrow pointed out. I think modern culture is hugely contextual, possibly moreso than the likes of Dickens, Shakespeare, etc. I know we’re getting past post-modernism now, but I wonder how texts that are hugely founded on pop culture references will stand up when the boundaries between decade gaps fades into the century gaps of long-term history.
Also, let’s not forget that Shakespeare liked a good dick joke as much as the next man.