I see. Well, I'm glad we sorted that out. I'm just really exhausted, and I'm kind of plodding along a train of thought.
I'm not really saying it right, I don't think. Especially because it's not criticism, per se. Like I said, I still think criticism can be good/useful, on the one hand, and on the other, not everything I'm trying to encapsulate really fits the descriptor 'criticism.' It's neither necessary nor sufficient. :P Really, I'm just copying DFW subconsciously. And Nietzsche. Unrelatedly. And they were both quite good critics, right, but they also say stuff like this that I posted about before:
"It's actually not true that our literary culture is nihilistic, at least not in the radical sense of Turgenev's Bazarov. For there are certain tendencies we believe are bad, qualities we hate and fear. Among these are sentimentality, naïveté, archaism, fanaticism. It would probably be better to call our own art's culture now one of congenital skepticism. Our intelligentsia30 distrust strong belief, open conviction. Material passion is one thing, but ideological passion disgusts us on some deep level."
...
"So he--we, fiction writers--won't (can't) dare try to use serious art to advance ideologies.^31 The project would be like Menard's Quixote. People would either laugh or be embarrassed for us. Given this (and it is a given), who is to blame for the unseriousness of our serious fiction? The culture, the laughers?"
...
"31 We will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies--but this is very different."
I guess I'm picking at the criticizing ideologies part, when what's at issue is the deep skepticism an apathy part? Something like that.
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Date: 2011-05-23 05:16 am (UTC)I'm not really saying it right, I don't think. Especially because it's not criticism, per se. Like I said, I still think criticism can be good/useful, on the one hand, and on the other, not everything I'm trying to encapsulate really fits the descriptor 'criticism.' It's neither necessary nor sufficient. :P Really, I'm just copying DFW subconsciously. And Nietzsche. Unrelatedly. And they were both quite good critics, right, but they also say stuff like this that I posted about before:
"It's actually not true that our literary culture is nihilistic, at least not in the radical sense of Turgenev's Bazarov. For there are certain tendencies we believe are bad, qualities we hate and fear. Among these are sentimentality, naïveté, archaism, fanaticism. It would probably be better to call our own art's culture now one of congenital skepticism. Our intelligentsia30 distrust strong belief, open conviction. Material passion is one thing, but ideological passion disgusts us on some deep level."
...
"So he--we, fiction writers--won't (can't) dare try to use serious art to advance ideologies.^31 The project would be like Menard's Quixote. People would either laugh or be embarrassed for us. Given this (and it is a given), who is to blame for the unseriousness of our serious fiction? The culture, the laughers?"
...
"31 We will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies--but this is very different."
I guess I'm picking at the criticizing ideologies part, when what's at issue is the deep skepticism an apathy part? Something like that.