Art vs. the Artist

Mephisto Mori/ October 23, 2015/ Video Games/ 2 comments

This post belongs under the “other” category for site metatags. It’s full-blown lit-nerd, artsy lameness. If you came here for video game reviews or commentary on the geek peripherals, feel free to click one of the links in the bar above or scroll past this one. I won’t be offended. I will, however, be flattered if you like my style or appreciate my opinions enough to keep reading (and maybe add some comments of your own).  

I was reading an article from The Economist this morning. Man Booker Prize Winner (basically the Pulitzer-light of writing), Marlon James has trouble reconciling his love of Charles Dickens with the fact that Dickens is a racist prick. It’s an issue I’ve personally struggled with. Not in the case of Dickens, I hate that guy, but other authors/artists. James ultimately goes one way with his assessment but allow me to expound. I think the most important thing is that you weigh the art versus the artist. There are times I can separate the two and times I cannot. It’s a bit of a conundrum that I don’t have the solution to but hopefully by writing this – maybe discussing it – I can elucidate matters to help us all make decisions for ourselves.

Even as an English-Lit Major, I’ve never been particularly fond of Dickens. It makes it easier for me to dislike him and his works. The man was paid by the word and wrote the equivalent of soap operas in news papers for his time. Think about that laborious intro to Tale of Two Cities. It is the exact opposite of all the rules of writing anyone will ever teach you. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…” It goes on for more than a full paragraph along the same horrible pattern. Repetition. Run-ons. Comma usage. Predictability. Violation of the ‘rule of three.’ Obvious comparisons (cliches). Etc. Etc. And he got paid for every single word of it which is why I suspect he wrote it that way in the first place rather than some artistic drive. I’m a bit of a voice of dissent amongst the literary community. It’s something I struggled with all of college. I hate Dickens, think sci-fi and other genre fiction can be literature, respect Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and David Mitchell above their contemporaries that fall more concretely beneath the “Lit-Fic” genre, believe Ursala K. Le Guin should’ve won the Pulitzer in 1997, and refer to video games as the next evolution of storytelling. All of the above pretty much makes me crazy in the eyes of the literary community. It’s easy for me to dislike Dickens since studying him. I can’t un-see his xenophobia and racism and I just don’t like the man, the artist, or the art (with the exception of one book). I’m not saying this to discourage anyone from liking or reading Dickens. Quite the contrary, you should read him and make the decision for yourself. I’m merely building off of Marlon James’s example.

It would be easy for me to say my dislike of Dickens is an extension of my initial childhood resentment toward being forced to read him but I know it’s more than that. Steinbeck and Hemingway both fell under similar categories of hatred but as I aged, read, and studied the works, I came around to them in a way that I just never did Dickens. Then I consider that I still love Mark Twain and he was pretty on the nose with his beliefs and language – but a helluva lot more entertaining. My teachers always told me he wrote the way he did because “it was the times” but it never softened certain word usage for me. I was just able to see the other things he did. His social commentary. His quotes outside of fiction. His biography. It helped me see him more like the crazy uncle that said some bonkers things mixed in with wisdom and other more enriching things.

What I’m really saying is that Art vs. Artist is a conundrum and it perplexes me too. When an author writes a book, it’s all different versions of the artist’s self on paper. The id and the ego and the conflict between them are on display under different filters. The skill of the artist is in the ability to alter those personas and change them into distinct characters – that the the characters are unique individuals and not just the author dialoguing with the voices in their head. Sometimes as readers we can glimpse the artist in the art and depending on the intensity it can ruin or enhance the art itself. This is part of the reason I don’t like Kevin Smith movies the way my peers seem to. When I watch them, all I hear are the voices of Kevin Smith having conversations with himself and setting up his own punchlines. Personal knowledge, experiences, education, and vested interests in the subject material alter our perceptions of the art. When I say you have to weigh it, that’s what I mean.

As a writer and English major I try damn hard to dilute myself within my own work (the paradox being I want to preserve a my own voice and tone). Some things I write have intended (allegorical) meaning but I know that readers will find meaning where I’ve attempted none. That’s the beauty of art. It can be personal and mean many things to many people. On the other hand, I can recognize the conflict of other authors when I read – it’s not always just about the pure entertainment for me. Sometimes outside factors can poison the art. Recently Orson Scott Card came out using his books as an opportunity to preach his personal bias toward the LGBT community. I LOVED Ender’s Game growing up but watching Card use attention from the movies to spew his ignorance rendered me incapable of enjoying the books anymore. I have my memories and those are still intact but I am no longer able to recommend others read them or go back and read them myself – I see the propaganda even where it may not have existed before. I’m genuinely happy for those that can still read the books without Card’s personal douchebaggery tainting them.

Like anything, education is key in solving the conundrum. Reading a plethora of books across different time periods and several genres falls under the category of education. You don’t have to read biographies and histories about the authors to form an opinion on their books. Reading different authors within a similar time period can help you distill a more informed opinion. There are no tabloids dedicated to witnessing the personas of the long dead writers in any direct manner. They must instead be measure by their peers. In general, I give all the old dead guys the benefit of the doubt – including Dickens. Their art pushed back against a dominant culture in some way and withstood the test of time for a reason. Maybe Dickens wasn’t as much of a racist as his contemporaries. Maybe his focus on poverty was more substantial than the occasional jab at how stupid he thought other countries were. You’ll have to decide those things for yourself – part of art being art.

The takeaway point? Art and artist both matter. Someone can be both a good writer and a real sonovabitch. Sometimes they’re a worse sonovabitch than they are a good writer. Other times the reverse is true. The most important part though is that you, the reader, the consumer of art keep reading. Think about what you’ve read. Measure it against your experiences and other art and let it enrich your life. But most importantly remember, Dickens WAS a piece of shit and his books are overrated.

Of course, I don’t have a Man Booker Prize yet so weigh everything I’ve just said accordingly.

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2 Comments

  1. In high school, I could never finish a book for English class. The ONLY book I read all the way thru was Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and it was because of the feminist undertones (overtones?). I never liked Dickens; I thought his writing long-winded. Even now, I prefer contemporary literature over literary classics: Scalzi over Fitzgerald and Gaiman over Hemingway. Though Hemingway was also a racist sonuvabitch with a dose of mysoginy. Yet my dislike from Hemingway came from my own experience with his short stories, which people lauded as “minimalist” but I lauded as “boring and confusing.” Yet, in the words of the bard, to each their own.

    I read Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game before the movie hullabaloo. A friend and I were talking once and she asked about Ender’s Game since she saw it on my shelf. I recommended it to her and she said “Actually, no, he’s a prick and I refuse.” This confused me because the underlying message in Ender’s Game was peace and humanity, and there was an incident in the books you could potentially read as gay if you don’t mind shipping twelve year olds with each other. But she did not want to contribute money towards Card and that I can understand. Though at the time I had trouble reconciling not reading something because of a dislike of the author.

    I don’t read something because the story is boring or poorly written. She did not read something because she refused to support the author by reading their work.

    You could say that you SHOULD read works from authors you don’t support to give yourself a wider view of the world. And yet . . . and yet . . . our world is run by numbers, not opinions. By reading an article on a news source you hate, you are still supporting the news source by reading the article. They don’t track opinions, they track page views. Publishers and authors look at numbers too—how many people purchased this book? How many times was it checked out of a library? How many times was it downloaded? This is a world where consumption is support. It took me a while to learn that, but it has since become one of my deciding factors for purchases, at least with books and art.

    I don’t know how this all works in the world of video games, but I assume it is similar. I doubt Ubisoft cards if people buy Assassin’s Creed to hate-play it. I would totally throw money at Square-Enix though even though it has been a few years since I played anything after Final Fantasy X-2.

    I hope your readers don’t mind my own pontification on this subject. >^.^<

  2. First of all, thanks a bunch for humoring me, Morike and reading the article/commenting. I miss pseudo-intellectual conversation about Literature. That’s the thing I miss the most about B&N apart from, you know, my sweet coworkers.

    Second of all, I condone all pontification, ranting, grandiloquence, and jibber-jabbering.

    Like you, I had trouble reading any assigned reading with very few exception. All the way up through college. I did like the Great Gatsby in High School but only because it was succinct by comparison to all other books – and I’m a sucker for convoluted love stories.

    Liking Hemingway is a very recent development. I hate the braggart soldier thing and rampant misogyny but I read him differently now. I’m fascinated by the man and the time period that made him. I read Hemingway like a scientist would watch a rat in a lab test – analyzing the person. Then I read the words like one would chew a steak dinner – slowly and carefully.

    But again – we have a lot in common. The problem I have with most classical literature or a lot of modern lit-fic (which I do consider to be genre fiction) for that matter is it’s tedious as hell. It sacrificing plot, often narrative too, to tell a boring fucking story and show off diction alone. I find it quite insulting considering that I’ve read genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, and horror) that’s was well written but isn’t fucking boring. Gaiman for instance. The man is a paragon. He’s the reason comics aren’t allowed to win the Man Booker or PEN awards. What did he do after getting snubbed? Went out a wrote a fiction book and won them instead. He’s even won awards for journalism, children’s books, and screenplays. And he does it all without being fucking boring.

    Hell, I even agree with you that reading “the bads” (classics written by those of questionable moral character) of literature you’re just a number. Your analogue about Ubisoft is perfect. Every game/book purchased, whether you hate it after the fact or not, is a vote cast in favor of more of the same. (You might be actually reading the occasional article on this site to pick Ubisoft specifically as I think they are currently the worst offenders).

    That being said, if you read it and hate it and can articulate why you hate it and others shouldn’t read it and then take that platform and convince more others to not read it in a eloquent and educated manner then you’re doing good. I’ve given up on purchasing Ubisoft games even to review for my site by this point. But I’ll still buy Activision and EA games to help filter the good and the bad for people. I figure every time I buy a bad game but stop at least two people from buying the same bad game. I’ve done more good than harm.

    I view art consumption as an aggregate score – again absolutely agree 100%. I also believe that it is my duty to expand my horizons as much as possible. I will never judge someone for not reading Dickens. In casual conversation if it came up I’d say something like, “Eh, he sucks anyway.” In intellectual debate though – I’m going to read it; probably library. I’ve long come out against piracy but I’m beginning to think, since we’re all numbers maybe it’s not the worst thing. Maybe the streaming, downloading things is a power-check system for an increasingly “by the numbers” world. I mean it’s theft. But constantly releasing the same boring tripe (game or book or movie) is theft of time, money and culture.

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