Donal: haven't we been here before?
And does not this view - that the problems to be
solved in creating a work
are "specific to that work" - lead to a kind of
essentialism? (Eg. an
essentialism as to the perfect matching of form
and content). And is this a)
tenable b)even if tenable, explanatory?
Eric: Guess I'm in the position of someone who has
a political point or statistic refuted, and yet
continues to use it as though it were valid. I
return to this essentialist point because I see it
directly in my own work, and the experience in my
work seems more vivid to me than the more abstract
counterarguments of others.
Donal: There is a sense in which every work of art
may be "unique" (if it is not
identical a copy of another, for example) but this
sense is surely too weak
to disallow that there is much that certain works
of art may have in common...
Eric: Continuing from above, we could discuss this
in two perspectives--the aesthetics perspective
and the perspective of someone cobbling together a
story or novel. From the first view it seems
obvious that there are many handles we could use
to study a work; probably too many, and each of
these would provide a vocabulary of analysis based
on similarity.
From the second perspective there are also
similarities that create an artistic vocabulary,
but these are too general to disallow uniqueness.
For example, literary structure and tone are often
important considerations to someone cobbling a
fiction. But these arise from the material, as
part of the solution to the problem of
plot/characters and intended effect.
Let me narrow and personalize it further. I was
about 150 pages into something I had been writing,
trying to figure out how to organize the material
in the last 100 pages to come. Really stuck. Then
I realized I had actually solved the
problem--without knowing it--back on page 70. My
unconscious (or whatever) had solved the problem
and it was only up to me to discover the solution
I had planted there. This hidden solution then
required me to change the structure and
organization of the plot. The result was much
better than my "intended" outline of the story.
Now as it relates to our discussion, I feel this
solution is unique to the work I was trying to
create. The problem was unique and the solution,
unknowingly hidden much earlier, not something I
shall ever have to find again.
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