[lit-ideas] Re: Another Question
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 11:15:35 -0800
Why does no one want to discuss literature? Is it too much work? A bus driver's holiday?
Louis Menand's essay in the current New Yorker is very funny. He's writing about literary
prizes. James English just published a book on this topic. English points out that an art
work has no inherent value (it's just ink on paper) (in contrast to, say, a kilo of gold).
The artistic prize "assigns" social value to the art work. The ink-spots-on-paper now
becomes the Booker Prize winner.
Literature has been warped by political correctness and politics. Trivial local writers
churn out sloppy work, but if one gets a prize, she suddenly becomes "The Example of Maori
Literature" and appears in anthologies worldwide and is taught in endless university
classes.
A few writers and artists rejected their Nobel prizes, and they were right; the prize is
worthless. But now, it's become chic to reject prizes, so that doesn't mean anything
anymore.
The funniest part of Menand's essay is his capsule description of The Modern Novel. "It
should be a hybrid of postmodernist heteroglossia (multiple and high-low discursive
registers, mixed genres, stories within stories), and pre-modernist narrative (conventional
morality, the simulation of an oral story-telling tradition.) (...) the features of the
world-literature prototype: a trauma-and-recovery story, with magic-realist elements,
involving abuse and family dysfunction, that arrives at resolution by the invocation of
spiritual or holistic verities. If you add in a high level of technical and intellectual
sophistication, this is a pretty accurate generic description of a novel by Toni Morrison."
Toni Morrison has both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize.
This is the problem with discussing literature. Or film. Or any of the other arts. Much of
it is fake. There are over 9,000 movie prizes now, which far outstrips the annual production
number of movies (about 1,000). Many items win multiple prizes. Even Borders and
Barnes&Nobles now award prizes to their own products. What's next? The Big Mac, winner of
the McDonalds Quality Award? Don't laugh. The joke is too serious. Michael Jackson has won
over 240 prizes.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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