(July 15, 1977)
All art is fantasy. Art is the detailing of things that didn’t happen, people who didn’t exist, for a purpose. The aim in mind is important. Anyone can lie. If all art is a lie, then the criterion of quality is the effect. Artists with us are judged on how well they achieve an effect.
There is well-done writing; that is when the artist achieves a powerful effect. There is good writing; that is when we happen to enjoy the effect this artist is creating. Great writing is both good and well-done.
Never forget therefore, that when a critic says something is great, half of that judgment is simply: I like it.
No one enjoys what he doesn’t understand. If you don’t understand it, it isn’t great – for you.
‘Great’ is different from ‘important.’ Important is an objective judgment on the place of a work in the historical evolution of art or society.
Fantasy cannot be all art. Fantasy has a more limited meeting: Art about that which could not be. The phrase is in the impossible but it really means just the very improbable. Therefore for fantasy in the statement at the beginning, substitute: ‘the dream.’
Art revolves around the dream. The dream is central to all art.
Fantasy also has another meaning: to fantasize is to dream.
It would seem, then, that fantasy is the purest form of art.
Fantasy has an age-old formula: from the mundane to the exotic (and generally back). ‘There and Back Again’ is timid fantasy. Desperate fantasy is held within the words, ‘Him, Her, There.’
The other self. The other sex. The other world.
The captain. The Princess. The lost Empire.
But we can reverse this process. Take all genres that employ the formula. They are fantasy genres. Pornography for example is fantasy art. What else?
