Archives for January 26, 2004

A reader writes, apropos of my posting
on crowds at the Art Institute of Chicago’s “Manet and the Sea”:

An ex-student of mine is now a senior staffer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I ran into
him at the catastrophically crowded Da Vinci drawing show of last spring,
having just come from the much better crowd-managed blockbuster at MOMA
Queens. I none-too-gently asked him how the Met could have done such a
ruinous job of anticipating and managing the Leonardo mania. His theory:
Philippe [i.e., Philippe de Montebello, director of the Met] wanted it that way.

According to this gentleman, Philippe thought
it looked bad for the museum that the Jackie O fashion display should be
the
most crowded show of recent times, much more popular than the epic Vermeer
show alongside at the same time. It was thus in the Director’s interest
that an exhibit of “fine” art should also give the Met that appearance of
all the world wanting to see what it had to show. Crowds, publicity,
buzz,
all this for a hundred tiny pieces of paper from a long-dead Italian (when
was the last blockbuster drawing show?) – this at least was his theory.
Had
it been more managed, the appearance of popular frenzy would have been
much
less dramatic, his thinking went.

Whether true or not, the fact is the Leonardo show was the most egregious
example in my experience of body count burying art. The Met made it even
worse by encouraging the use of magnifying glasses, thus ensuring even
more
battles for the one favored viewing position that would end up blocking
everyone else. As you know, the Met hasn’t ticketed a blockbuster in
years,
and whatever we might think of the phenomenon itself, a ticketed
blockbuster
(assuming a reasonable allotment of tickets per hour) sure beats a
free-for-all.

That’s why I blog. How can I top a letter like this? The Italians have a saying: Si non e vero, e ben trovato (roughly, “If it’s not true, it ought to be”). Whether or not de Montebello really had such considerations in mind, consciously or otherwise, who can doubt that the Blockbuster Mentality permeates and contaminates the thinking of all similarly placed museum executives?

Once again, I’m not saying that All Blockbusters Are Bad. I am, however, saying something less clear-cut but more important: Bigger Isn’t Better. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, and the difference matters–a lot.

A reader writes:

I’ve been thinking about how you describe blogging and the Internet as the future of arts journalism. As a neophyte arts journalist who wants to make more money, I’m wondering: if what you say is true, how will arts journalists earn a living?

Short, easy, theoretically funny answer: don’t ask.

Serious answer:

(1) Most committed bloggers hope they’ll eventually find a way to make money off their blogs, whether by advertising or tip jars or fund-raising drives or premium-content subscription models or…whatever. That’s not quite as na

“Important! Fearful contemporary word, smacking of the textbook, the lecture-hall, the ‘balanced appraisal.’ So-and-so may be readable, interesting, entertaining, but is he important? Ezra Pound may be pretentious and dull, but you’ve got to admit that he’s ever so important. What? You haven’t read Primo Levi (in translation, of course)? But he’s important. As the philosopher J. L. Austin remarked in another context, importance isn’t important. Good writing is.”

Kingsley Amis, Memoirs

A reader writes:

I’ve been thinking about
your recent posts on the future of adult films and wanteed to ask you a
follow-up question. Sorry if I’m beating a dead horse, but as an
aspiring screenwriter (yes, I’m a masochist) I have an above-average
interest in these topics.

My question is this–when you say (and I agree with you, by the way)
that the indie films of today will become the novels of tomorrow, are
you really saying that indie films will become even less important to
the culture than they are today? Let’s face it, the overwhelming
majority of novels make zero impact on the culture, and even a mediocre
Hollywood film has greater reach than a Nobel-prize-winning novel. And
it’s not that indies have such an impact today. The intenstity with
which indie filmmakers fought against the proposed Oscar screener ban
only highlights the sad fact that even critics won’t watch the majority
of these films unless they get a freebie in the mail.

If you don’t mind a followup question, assuming this scenario plays out,
what does that mean for mainstream films? It’s hard to believe that
they’ll get any worse (and this is from someone who absolutely loves
mainstream films when they work, which they rarely do).

Just curious for your opinion. I may be a masochist, but I don’t have to
be a fool, and if I’m going into this business I want to know what I’ll
be facing.

This letter, which I received last month but am only just getting around to answering (sorry!), has acquired a new resonance in light of the recent whirlwind of lit-blog traffic triggered by OGIC’s recent posting about the state of the New York Times Book Review. I don’t really have good answers to any of my correspondent’s questions, either, just a couple of observations.

To begin with, it’s true that novels have become increasingly peripheral to the cultural conversation (such as it is). But it also seems to me–as I’ve said before in this space–that arts blogs might possibly be changing that state of affairs for the better. I don’t mean the whole world is suddenly going to start reading literary novels next week, all because of Our Girl and Maud and Bookslut. What I do mean is that the blogosphere makes it easier for people who care about serious fiction to communicate with one another, and that these people appear to be coalescing into a cybercommunity which over time could start to have a significant affect on book sales. Could, I say: the blogosphere is still very young. But it’s already stirring up conversation and controversy all out of proportion to its actual size, and that’s a good sign, an indication that we’re not fad-snuffling eccentrics but “early adopters” who comprise the leading edge of a full-fledged cultural shift.

As for independent film, well, I think my correspondent actually has it backwards. Outside of major cities, most Americans don’t have anything remotely approaching easy access to independent films until they finally make their way to DVD (if then). Hence it would be an improvement were such films to be released via Web-based new-media channels. As we city folk have a tendency to forget, America is a big country, and the smart people don’t all live in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles. In fact, most of them don’t. From my art-oriented point of view, the most valuable thing about the new media is their ability to distribute high culture (a phrase I don’t define narrowly, by the way) to smart people who don’t live in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, I hasten to remind my correspondent that those who want to make serious art must take it for granted that they won’t make serious money doing so. If that’s what you’re in it for, don’t even think about writing indie screenplays or literary novels or symphonies–go work for Donald Trump. Making art is its own reward, or ought to be. George Balanchine (about whom you’ll be reading a lot more on this blog in the course of the next few weeks) was once asked why the members of New York City Ballet’s pit orchestra were paid less than New York City’s garbagemen. His answer? “Because garbage stinks.”

Says Thomas Friedman:

I was at Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley a few days
ago, and they have this really amazing electronic global
map that shows, with lights, how many people are using
Google to search for knowledge. The region stretching from
Morocco to the border of India had almost no lights.

Read the whole thing here.

Dear TT,

You asked here what books I turn to for comfort reading. My list overlaps with yours by one essential item, the Westlake/Stark double threat. Speaking of which, I loved your Dortmundrian almanac entry last week.

John D. Macdonald does very well for me too–although, since I find it hard to stop after just one or two, even getting started can mean courting some really catastrophic distraction from actual life. Series really fit this bill, don’t they? Several of your choices are series, strictly or loosely defined. There’s serious comfort in knowing that more of the same flavor is available for the asking, and imagining that the comfort zone can be indefinitely extended.

Elaine Dundy’s circa-1960 novels The Dud Avocado (based on her involvement with Kenneth Tynan) and The Old Man and Me (alas, almost impossible to find) are major stalwarts for me. I’ve read them each ten times at least, and have given away half a dozen copies of the former (most recently to cinetrix, so we’ll see what she thinks). Nobody I give it to ever likes it as much as I do, by the way–a source of ongoing amazement to me, but no damper on my proselytizing.

Jane Austen does the trick, as does M.F.K. Fisher. On the pricklier side, Mary McCarthy and Lorrie Moore–despite being more like a sharp stick in the eye than a warm blanket, the both of them. That big old David Thomson Biographical Dictionary of Film, of course. Robert Benchley. Joan Didion. Walter Scott. Robert Louis Stevenson.

Just thinking about this question makes me want to take a sick day. Sadly, that’s the last thing I can do anytime in the near future, and I won’t be blogging much in the next week either. The Friday deadline I’m facing is scary enough that I’m going to have to play the Luddite this week and shun the computer as far as possible. No comfort reading, no newfangled technology. Just me, a fistful of sharpened blue pencils, and a stack of defenseless manuscripts.

That’s the goal, anyway. I may weaken and poke my head in and out once or twice. If not, I’ll miss you and see you next week. We can talk some more about Freaks and Geeks and scenes from old movies (did I tell you I broke down and joined Netflix? So far, making the queue has been the best part. Well, it’s been the only part. But it was pure pleasure.)

XO, OGIC