Copy What You Like (2006)

I mean, take this argument and apply it to something like theology. "Are you really going to say that an entire tradition, one which has produced innumerable great thinkers and has proceeded on a logical progression towards truth, is entirely mistaken in its most fundamental assumptions?" It turns out that, yeah, I would say that. Sometimes people make mistake. Sometimes lots of people make lots of mistakes and the mistakes go on for thousands of years.

>For instance, you say you have never heard a convincing argument as to why Pynchon would be considered worthy of canon status--well, I'm not going to be so absurd as to claim he'll still be there in 200 years, but if you have knowledge of literary craft the reasons why he's there now are pretty clear--his maximalism is both well crafted and unique and his style is a turn away from the still dominant style of american literature (Hemmingway based minimalism) which is positively refreshing

But this is exactly the issue. What does it mean for writing to be "well crafted", what does it mean for writing to be "positively refreshing"? If we can't give rigorous, verifiable definitions for these concepts, then we're just saying "he's good because he's good".

>It's because he utilizes traditional structures and devices in a unique way

Originality has at least the hope of being a more objective metric, although originality is clearly a very slippery concept. If I take a famous novel and change one word, the result may be a work that has never existed before, but that's not originality. If I use a computer to generate a completely random image, then again, that image may have never existed before, but that's not originality. So it's very hard to define. But I at least see the hope of a project there.

>I can understand where his pieces fit into the narrative of painting history, what they challenge, what they change, and ultimately how unique his forms are and what they communicate within this context. If I dislike it, if I find it shouldn't be considered art--well I have to argue it from this perspective, from within the game of homo sapiens art history.

I can certainly appreciate and enjoy playing games, since some games are very beautiful. But this "game", the game of "make an original contribution to art history and get academics to talk about it", seems to have no rules! What good is a game if no one can tell you the rules? The judges of the game can gesture towards criteria like "originality" that might conceivably give you some guidelines on how to play, but no one can definitively prove that one person deserved to win and another didn't.

>artistic forms exist because there are elements of these traditions a large number of people can generally agree they appreciate

Yes, I agree. But if we tried to submit the works of the canon to an analysis of this kind, to see how many of them contain "artistic forms that people agree they can appreciate", how many of them would survive? Some would, I'm sure. I think Shakespeare and Homer, for example, are still legitimately appealing to people today, if they can work past the archaic language. But exactly how many works of the canon would survive this analysis? Does Schoenburg's music have "forms that people agree they can appreciate"? If not, then what does that say about the validity of Schoenburg's status as a great canonical composer? (I happen to enjoy a lot of Schoenburg's music, but I don't think someone is stupid if they don't).

>Thus the cannon isn't a good judge of anything other than what your precursors believed should be appreciated.

All that effort, and this is the conclusion we're left with!

>It's essentially the historical development of a shared value judgement, or a shared human prejudice. So of course you can repudiate the whole thing. But at that point you are no longer even engaging in that art form--or at best you are engaging with blinders on, and any aesthetic mastery you manage to pull off is largely lucky and unconscious. You are starting from a different base. you are playing your own game. Thus you shouldn't be too upset when other people don't appreciate what you do, or your work isn't considered interesting. You're not even speaking their language.

Ok, this is a really interesting paragraph. You say it's the development of a "shared value judgement", but who, exactly, shares this value judgement? We have, on the one hand, a comparatively small community of academics who share the value judgement that Proust and Melville are wonderfully nourishing authors who deserve to be read again and again by new generations, and on the other hand, we have hundreds of millions of people who would just as soon throw Proust and Melville in the trash so they could go watch the latest Marvel movie or listen to the newest Justin Bieber song. Taking your comment about the "historical development of value judgement" seriously, what can we say by looking at this concrete historical moment? What can we say about what that value judgement has become? What authority can the university canon possibly have in the face of this sheer numerical onslaught? You say that "you shouldn't be too upset when other people don't appreciate what you do, or your work isn't considered interesting. You're not even speaking their language," but who exactly are the artists who are being appreciated these days? Who is speaking the language that most people find congenial? It's certainly not the academics or the purveyors of "high culture", the defenders of the "artistic tradition". MoMA exhibits of great theoretical sophistication are laughed at while Jay-Z packs stadiums. Your warning applies much more to all those who would play that slippery, ephemeral game known as "art history", rather than those who would simply "copy what they like".

All that being said, I do think the notion of a "canon" could be saved, but it has to be grounded in genuine, verifiable scholarship. With Shakespeare, for example, we could do research on his influence on the English language, his influence on other artists, his continuing popular appeal, etc, and come to the conclusion that his plays constitute a major accomplishment. But this game of "aesthetic criticism", or declaring this or that work to be beautiful or enlightening or whatever, that doesn't need to be done in universities. People can do that on their own time. Like I said above, a game where you can't even know the rules can't hold your attention for very long. You're better off playing Go or doing math. At least there you can know that you're winning.

At the very best, grosssly incomplete and misleading.

After rejecting what other people like, the best pg can come up with is ... to follow what you like. That's an equally fraught heuristic, though it may be more avaialble for observation and examination.

Realise that what works does so regardless of appeal. But that there's a great deal which has (near-term) appeal which doesn't work (long-term). Sometimes it's a false start, sometimes it's a fad, sometimes it's cargo-culting, sometimes it's an establishment of common ground which facilitates communication or understanding but not effectiveness.

I'd suggest instead:

Look at what is being practiced, and ask why?

In the case of the short story: the history of literacy, amusement, entertainment, postal delivery, publishing and printing technology, advertising, bundling concepts, and the lack of subsequent alternatives (radio, television), increased literacy, and free time, made the short story a popular format. Different dynamics brought forth the radio serial, soap operas (first on radio, then television, now the White House), sit-coms, movie serials, blockbuster movies, space operas, and comic-book franchise preboot requels.

Funding environments can create entire classes of research or application -- surveillance capitalism, AI, national security, moon shots, abstract art COINTELPRO.

I'm the last space alien cat to ask what you should do that leads to success, though my own heuristic has been to look for fundamental questions, ask a lot of why, and question premises. Going back to roots and history can make a lot of foundations look far less firm. There may or may not be opportunity there.

I'd also focus very hard on being lucky.

It would be old hat if someone wrote like Joyce today.