![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatAh, I finished Chapter 22 - finally. Frigging hard chapter to write. Now, I get to peck away at chapter 23. Yay. Book is now 179 pages and 65,670 words. Nifty.
Two more interesting selections from Milan Kundera's New Yorker essay on What is A Novelist, published in the Oct 9, 2006 vol of the New Yorker.
1. Fame
"A man becomes famous when the number of people who know him is markedly greater than the number he knows. The recognition enjoyed by a great surgeon is not fame: he is admired not by a public but by his patients, by his colleagues. He lives in equilibrium. Fame is a disequilibrium. There are professions that drag it along behind them necessarily, unavoidably: politicians, supermodels, athelets, artists.
Artists' fame is the most monsterous of all, for it implies the idea of immortality. And that is a diabolical snare, because the grotesquely megalomaniac ambition to survive one's death is inseparably bound to the artist's probity. Every novel created with real passion aspires quite naturally to a lasting asethetic value, meaning to a value capable of surviving its author. To write without having that ambition is cynicism: a mediocre plumber may be useful to people, but a mediocre novelist who consciously produces books that are ephemeral, commonplace, conventional - thus not useful, thus burdensome, thus noxious - is contemptible. This is the novelist's curse: his honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania."
What an interesting view. Not sure I agree or disagree. Oh I agree about Fame - it is a disequilibrium and it does haunt those professions that tend to entertain or present, without necessarily connecting on an one to one level - the professions that engender a type of fanatical worship from admirers who they can never meet, who see or experience the work without the necessity of the physical presence of the creator of the work. In a way, anyone who has written fanfic, television essays and achieved some sense of popularity via that creation - has experienced "fame". Even if it's just for fifteen minutes. And it can be a heady experience, even addictive, having complete strangers come up to you and state how they love your work and feel they know you through that work - when you know nothing about them - have never met them and find it odd they can know you.
Was discussing this with two acquaintances I'd met last night after a concert. We'd wondered if celebrity worship was purely an American thing - first off, discovered, no, it's not (although from being online - I'd more or less figured that out for myself) - a Chinese woman said in some ways it's even worse in China. People are more hyper about celebrities there. Taking the whole thing to the extreme. The other woman I was with proceeded to tell a story about catering a party for Kathie Lee Gifford - a C list celebrity, who used to host a TV talk show and is married to a former athelet. She said that her boss, the chief caterer, acted as if she was Kathie Lee's best friend, that she knew the kids, and had visited the home on numerous occassions - when in reality she'd only been there once or twice and only as a caterer. Because the woman watched Kathie Lee on TV and had read about her - she assumed she knew her, they were "friends".
A while back, George Clooney was quoted as stating that "Fame" is the cancer of "Success". He'd stated it after having one too many cameras thrust in his face and one too many negative stories posted in the National Enquirer - the thorn in the side of many celebrities. Last night, I wondered, not for the first time, what is it about our society or human nature in general that we treat fame the way we do?
You see it with political icons - such as Princess Diana - who had lines of mourners, angry mourners, outside Buckingham Palace after her untimely death. None of these people had actually met Diana. She did not know their names. She had not met them. She did not know they existed. Yet, they considered her a close friend and mourned her as one.
And you see it with smaller, less well known celebrities such as James Marsters - whose only claim to fame is appearing on two cult tv shows. People act as if the man knows them. They give him gifts much as they might a boyfriend or a close friend. They take photographs with him. They want to kiss and hug him. They send him letters of support. They host charities in his name. And when they meet him in person - they act as if they are reuniting with a close friend.
While talking to the two people last night - I said I was not comfortable talking to celebrities. And in the few situations I've been in with them, often shrank back to a corner, unable to come up with a way of conversing, just watching people.
One of the women responded, the gal from China, "but what would you say to them? How would you even start such a conversation? I've seen your films? I love your work?"
"Yes," I said, "that's just it, it is so awkward. You, as the admirer of their work, have the advantage. It's almost like meeting someone's husband or best friend - who that person has told you all about, spoken of repeatedly, yet in return they've told the husband or best friend nothing about you - you have the advantage. You know who they are, but they don't know you."
Imagine if you will someone coming into your life - telling you how they've loved everything you've done, being able to repeat what you've said verbatim, knowing your public humilations, and your failures - how do you feel when you meet them? What is your first response? For me, it is to back away. Somewhat shyly. Protesting. You do not know me. You know what I've chosen to present to the world, the lies I've told to protect myself. The truth's I chosen to relate. But not me! How dare you make that presumption.
Fame is I think a disequilibrium. It throws the artist off-balance. And once it happens, the artist feels a bit like they are under a microscope, as if every nuance every tick is being torn and pulled at it. Criticized. Until the criticism may worm its way into the artist's own skull dictating what they create - ensuring they maintain the level of applause they've grown accostumed to.
2. Art and the World or The Little Boy and His Grandmother.
Also with Fame, people - the fans, tend to at times become bullies. They become presumptious. They have power over the artist, because they are the artist's cheering section - the means to his/her immortality. If they are not pleased, they will go elsewhere. Lose interest. Find a new artist to patronize or adore. Forgetting the last one with the ease a child may discard or forget a toy that no longer thrills him or her. And they will often tell the artist what to do with his/her art - how to make it better - how to change it to meet with their satisfaction. Then, too, society might get involved - certain watch-dog groups, insisting that the artist or novelist or creator be socially responsible - that his or her message meet societial norms and further the message that society as a whole wishes to promote.
Kundera talks about this interference in another passage, entitled aptly, "The Little Boy and His Grandmother":
"I was nineteen when, in my hometown, a young academic gave a public lecture; it was during the first months of the Communist revolution, and, bowing to the spirit of the time, he talked about the social responsibility of art. After the conference, there was a discussion; what I remember is the poet, Josef Kainar ( a man of Blatny's generation, also long dead now), who, in response to the scholar's talk, told this anecdote:
A little boy takes his blind grandmother for a walk. They are strolling down a street, and from time to time the little boy says, 'Grandma, watch out - a root!' Thinking she is on a forest trail, the old woman keeps jumping. Passerby scold the little boy:'Son, you're treating your grandmother so badly!' And the boy says, ' She's my grandma! I'll treat her any way I want!' And Kainar finishes, 'That's me, that's how I am about my poetry.'"
I 'd state that's me, that's how I am about my creative writing, be it in my live journal or my novel. Tell me what or how to write at your own risk. It's mine. And I will do with it what I want. There are so few things in this life we can really say that about, I think. But the creation of art is to a degree one of them - it comes from us, once it is out there we have no control over how others perceive it, interact with it, inhale it, or enjoy it. But it remains ours in the creation.
Or as Kundera states: " Because what an author creates doesn't belong to his papa, his mama, his nation, or to mankind; it belongs to no one but himself; he can publish it when he wants and if he wants; he can change it, revise it, lengthen it, shorten it, throw it in the toilet and flush it down without the slightest obligation to explain himself to anybody at all."
I'm not sure this is true with all works of art. If it is collaborative - ownership becomes complicated. And if it is interactive? Even more so. Novels like poems can be more personal, more controlled. Yet, even then, once they are placed out there in the world, we lose control. We lose control over how we ourselves are perceived through them. Which is why it is courageous to share what we have created, to throw it out into the world, but not necessarily courageous to create it.
The simple act of sending the child we've created with words or the stroke of a paint-brush outside the boundaries of our home or imagination into another's is not, I think, unlike a parent sending a flesh and blood child off to school or to a friend's house to play. The same trepidation and fears, I suspect, accompany both acts on some level. Both require a trust not only in the child that we've created, but in the universe we've sent it out to. And the thing about trust is it is more often than not an unknown, an act of faith if you will. We have no way of knowing how our child will be greeted, we can only trust that it will survive and be greeted with good will. And if it is not, pray we have the strength to handle it.
Two more interesting selections from Milan Kundera's New Yorker essay on What is A Novelist, published in the Oct 9, 2006 vol of the New Yorker.
1. Fame
"A man becomes famous when the number of people who know him is markedly greater than the number he knows. The recognition enjoyed by a great surgeon is not fame: he is admired not by a public but by his patients, by his colleagues. He lives in equilibrium. Fame is a disequilibrium. There are professions that drag it along behind them necessarily, unavoidably: politicians, supermodels, athelets, artists.
Artists' fame is the most monsterous of all, for it implies the idea of immortality. And that is a diabolical snare, because the grotesquely megalomaniac ambition to survive one's death is inseparably bound to the artist's probity. Every novel created with real passion aspires quite naturally to a lasting asethetic value, meaning to a value capable of surviving its author. To write without having that ambition is cynicism: a mediocre plumber may be useful to people, but a mediocre novelist who consciously produces books that are ephemeral, commonplace, conventional - thus not useful, thus burdensome, thus noxious - is contemptible. This is the novelist's curse: his honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania."
What an interesting view. Not sure I agree or disagree. Oh I agree about Fame - it is a disequilibrium and it does haunt those professions that tend to entertain or present, without necessarily connecting on an one to one level - the professions that engender a type of fanatical worship from admirers who they can never meet, who see or experience the work without the necessity of the physical presence of the creator of the work. In a way, anyone who has written fanfic, television essays and achieved some sense of popularity via that creation - has experienced "fame". Even if it's just for fifteen minutes. And it can be a heady experience, even addictive, having complete strangers come up to you and state how they love your work and feel they know you through that work - when you know nothing about them - have never met them and find it odd they can know you.
Was discussing this with two acquaintances I'd met last night after a concert. We'd wondered if celebrity worship was purely an American thing - first off, discovered, no, it's not (although from being online - I'd more or less figured that out for myself) - a Chinese woman said in some ways it's even worse in China. People are more hyper about celebrities there. Taking the whole thing to the extreme. The other woman I was with proceeded to tell a story about catering a party for Kathie Lee Gifford - a C list celebrity, who used to host a TV talk show and is married to a former athelet. She said that her boss, the chief caterer, acted as if she was Kathie Lee's best friend, that she knew the kids, and had visited the home on numerous occassions - when in reality she'd only been there once or twice and only as a caterer. Because the woman watched Kathie Lee on TV and had read about her - she assumed she knew her, they were "friends".
A while back, George Clooney was quoted as stating that "Fame" is the cancer of "Success". He'd stated it after having one too many cameras thrust in his face and one too many negative stories posted in the National Enquirer - the thorn in the side of many celebrities. Last night, I wondered, not for the first time, what is it about our society or human nature in general that we treat fame the way we do?
You see it with political icons - such as Princess Diana - who had lines of mourners, angry mourners, outside Buckingham Palace after her untimely death. None of these people had actually met Diana. She did not know their names. She had not met them. She did not know they existed. Yet, they considered her a close friend and mourned her as one.
And you see it with smaller, less well known celebrities such as James Marsters - whose only claim to fame is appearing on two cult tv shows. People act as if the man knows them. They give him gifts much as they might a boyfriend or a close friend. They take photographs with him. They want to kiss and hug him. They send him letters of support. They host charities in his name. And when they meet him in person - they act as if they are reuniting with a close friend.
While talking to the two people last night - I said I was not comfortable talking to celebrities. And in the few situations I've been in with them, often shrank back to a corner, unable to come up with a way of conversing, just watching people.
One of the women responded, the gal from China, "but what would you say to them? How would you even start such a conversation? I've seen your films? I love your work?"
"Yes," I said, "that's just it, it is so awkward. You, as the admirer of their work, have the advantage. It's almost like meeting someone's husband or best friend - who that person has told you all about, spoken of repeatedly, yet in return they've told the husband or best friend nothing about you - you have the advantage. You know who they are, but they don't know you."
Imagine if you will someone coming into your life - telling you how they've loved everything you've done, being able to repeat what you've said verbatim, knowing your public humilations, and your failures - how do you feel when you meet them? What is your first response? For me, it is to back away. Somewhat shyly. Protesting. You do not know me. You know what I've chosen to present to the world, the lies I've told to protect myself. The truth's I chosen to relate. But not me! How dare you make that presumption.
Fame is I think a disequilibrium. It throws the artist off-balance. And once it happens, the artist feels a bit like they are under a microscope, as if every nuance every tick is being torn and pulled at it. Criticized. Until the criticism may worm its way into the artist's own skull dictating what they create - ensuring they maintain the level of applause they've grown accostumed to.
2. Art and the World or The Little Boy and His Grandmother.
Also with Fame, people - the fans, tend to at times become bullies. They become presumptious. They have power over the artist, because they are the artist's cheering section - the means to his/her immortality. If they are not pleased, they will go elsewhere. Lose interest. Find a new artist to patronize or adore. Forgetting the last one with the ease a child may discard or forget a toy that no longer thrills him or her. And they will often tell the artist what to do with his/her art - how to make it better - how to change it to meet with their satisfaction. Then, too, society might get involved - certain watch-dog groups, insisting that the artist or novelist or creator be socially responsible - that his or her message meet societial norms and further the message that society as a whole wishes to promote.
Kundera talks about this interference in another passage, entitled aptly, "The Little Boy and His Grandmother":
"I was nineteen when, in my hometown, a young academic gave a public lecture; it was during the first months of the Communist revolution, and, bowing to the spirit of the time, he talked about the social responsibility of art. After the conference, there was a discussion; what I remember is the poet, Josef Kainar ( a man of Blatny's generation, also long dead now), who, in response to the scholar's talk, told this anecdote:
A little boy takes his blind grandmother for a walk. They are strolling down a street, and from time to time the little boy says, 'Grandma, watch out - a root!' Thinking she is on a forest trail, the old woman keeps jumping. Passerby scold the little boy:'Son, you're treating your grandmother so badly!' And the boy says, ' She's my grandma! I'll treat her any way I want!' And Kainar finishes, 'That's me, that's how I am about my poetry.'"
I 'd state that's me, that's how I am about my creative writing, be it in my live journal or my novel. Tell me what or how to write at your own risk. It's mine. And I will do with it what I want. There are so few things in this life we can really say that about, I think. But the creation of art is to a degree one of them - it comes from us, once it is out there we have no control over how others perceive it, interact with it, inhale it, or enjoy it. But it remains ours in the creation.
Or as Kundera states: " Because what an author creates doesn't belong to his papa, his mama, his nation, or to mankind; it belongs to no one but himself; he can publish it when he wants and if he wants; he can change it, revise it, lengthen it, shorten it, throw it in the toilet and flush it down without the slightest obligation to explain himself to anybody at all."
I'm not sure this is true with all works of art. If it is collaborative - ownership becomes complicated. And if it is interactive? Even more so. Novels like poems can be more personal, more controlled. Yet, even then, once they are placed out there in the world, we lose control. We lose control over how we ourselves are perceived through them. Which is why it is courageous to share what we have created, to throw it out into the world, but not necessarily courageous to create it.
The simple act of sending the child we've created with words or the stroke of a paint-brush outside the boundaries of our home or imagination into another's is not, I think, unlike a parent sending a flesh and blood child off to school or to a friend's house to play. The same trepidation and fears, I suspect, accompany both acts on some level. Both require a trust not only in the child that we've created, but in the universe we've sent it out to. And the thing about trust is it is more often than not an unknown, an act of faith if you will. We have no way of knowing how our child will be greeted, we can only trust that it will survive and be greeted with good will. And if it is not, pray we have the strength to handle it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-10-08 08:29 pm (UTC)I think of the child stars whose lives are evidently damaged when the public is no longer interested in them.
I think of George Lucas going back and altering his films that were released decades ago (actually I objected to Stephen Spielberg altering 'ET' too), how much 'right' a director/creator has over work that was already released to the public.
And I think of my own work, how much it annoys me when anyone makes any kind of suggestion about how to resolve problems with my work (making me want to resolve it in a different way just to maintain my 'ownership' of the piece).
Of course, as I said, there are dozens of other issues connected with this topic. The fascination comes, in part, because we've all seen people affected by fame.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-08 11:23 pm (UTC)Let's throw the blog out there. Do we have the right to do what we want with our own blogs even though we've permitted others to comment? I'd say yes - since they are still ours. They may be broadcast to the world and commented on by it, but they remain about us. Much like a letter writer has the right to burn the letters they receive from a friend. Online - we can self-edit what we wrote even delete. Is it wrong to do so? Or more to the point does it matter? Really? It is ours. It is not like a movie that we have asked people to purchase. There is no fee. The reader is not buying it. We are merely granting them permission to connect, to respond - and by doing so, we retain the right to change what we wish them to see - much like a person might leave a cocktail party they are hosting to change clothes because they've spilled wine down the front.
What Speilberg and Lucas did was different, I think. They changed something people had bought as a means to make more money off the same work. And it was a Collaborative Work of Art. One that they had control over. The changes they made to it - they made because special effects got better or they felt it wasn't good enough. Did they have the right? Sure. But in doing so, I'm not certain they realized all they did by tinkering long after the fact was create in effect a new version, separate from the original. Also - by doing so, they failed to acknowledge the work of others - forgetting it is not their work alone.
Stephen King who did the same thing with his novel "The Stand" a few years back, is somewhat different since his work is not collaborative. So the changes to it - reflect only on him not all the other participants. It's not the same as changing Harrison Ford's performance with CGI so that what appears on screen is not what Ford created but what the filmmaker via a computer generates using Ford as a template, possibly without Ford's permission - much like advertisers insert Audrey Hepburn's dancing image from Funny Face into a Gap commericial. Taking someone else's work and manipulating it for your own use, revising it as opposed to merely revising your own.
We all do it - when we create icons, vids - take bits and peices and twist them. Making it clear that sending our work or even our own idea out into the world is a risky gambit - we know not what someone else will decide to do with it. And making judgements regarding how our audience or those viewing our work chooses to respond, can ironically lead to us questioning our own responses and seeing our responses as somewhat hypocritical. It's a topic that like you state does not provide any easy answers, just more questions.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-09 12:35 am (UTC)In fact I feel that any writer/artist can alter anything they like, but then readers can have their opinons on the topic.
Like I think that Stephen Speilberg is a PC-idiot for editing the guns out of ET and replacing them with cell phones (way to take the edge out of a brilliant work and leave a politically correct child-proof shell!).
And I think that George Lucas had originally had the intelligence to get a great writer of snappy dialoge (in Lawrence Kasden) to help with the original Star Wars (episodes IV through VI) and now I think GL is a swollen headed hack who thinks he can do it all himself, while (IMO) he destroyed his own work.
The question is always, how many people end up thinking that writer/creator is an idiot, and how much do they care?
I can't imagine the blogger cares at all, because none of us seriously expect any lasting fame or anything to result from our online musings. But I would think that SS and GL might care a lot if they find they have lost the respect of movie goers (and I think Ridely Scott was right to get his director's cut of Blade Runner released, personally I think he inhanced his reputation, even though I had liked the original).
So in a way I'm getting back to your original idea of 'fame'...has the artist made their work more immortal or less? One of the things my sister did before she died was to destroy all old drawings and paintings that she considered to be 2nd rate, she wasn't interested in anyone else's opinion, but she firmly believed that many artists have had the disservice of having their mediocre work hung in museums and galleries. Now obviously she didn't know whether any of her work would survive her at all, but she was making sure the worst of it wouldn't.
Thanks for this...
Date: 2006-10-09 01:36 pm (UTC)Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas are excellent examples. And I'd agree with your assessment - they have the right to tinker away, but in doing so they hurt their work and reputation. Lucas may or may not care - I'm not sure, I know he's re-released the original versions of the Star Wars films on DVD now, to much applause and consternation. Some fans are annoyed that they have to spend money yet again for the same film and are wondering how much cash Lucas plans on milking out of just three films. Other's are gleeful - because now they can get rid of those scratchy tapes (or in my case tapes they can no longer watch) and replace them with sparkling DVD's - because they refused to ever see or buy the revised versions. What he changed that annoyed most fans was Han Solo shooting Gekko first. In the revised version, Gekko pulls a gun on Solo and it is self-defense, in the original, Solo kills Gekko outright. The original version is the one Whedon based the Mal character on and most of us prefer. My take on Lucas - is he only had two or three stories in him and keeps revisiting those stories to make money to finance his true love - special effects. He's not the director or storyteller that Ridely Scott, Peter Jackson, Kasadan and others are, he's a F/X guy who likes to manipulate and create digitial images.
Speilberg exchanged guns for cell phones in ET??? LOL! OMG. I did not know that. How odd. Really odd after seeing Munich - which is possibly the most violent film the man has done. I guess he wanted to make the story more ambiguous?? Very odd move. Not a huge fan of Speilberg - he is a bit of a megalomanic - fame did help the guy. I enjoy his movies - but most of them go too far, he's forgotten the art of subtlety - not that he ever knew it, I think we see it in the earlier films because he did not have the budget to do the things he wanted to do. In Jaws for example the mechanical shark was not working - and in commentaries, Spielberg has admitted that the fact it did not work may have saved the film or made it better. It forced him to focus on the personal stories, the characters, and less on the monster.
I've heard of writers who've burnt or gotten rid of earlier work for the same reasons your sister burned her paintings. Can see why too - people can allow sentiment to get in the way of judgement.
Look at Hemingway, Capote, Louisa May Alcott - all authors who had less than stellar works published after their deaths. Works someone located. Jane Austen's Sandition - was completed by another writer. And I shudder to think of someone publishing my early work - stories and novels I wrote at the age of 17. My parents still have it in a box in their attic.
Yes, I very much agree with what you state above. Thank you for it.