Some short essays from youth and long ago
Art and Misery
If people’s lives are sad, why should they turn to art to find more grief? And if they are happy, why should they turn to art at all?
Art is the solace for misery. It has a long future, since it creates the misery it gives solace to.
‘Pornography tends to increase the very anxiety it solves.’ But so does all art.
‘Write What You Know’
One of the clichés that must be exploded: write about what you know. Never do that. Write about what you’d like to know. Without the mystery there is no excitement. Boredom is the antithesis of art.
Writing Burns the Filament
The imagination is the filament. Writing burns the filament. It was no accident that the light bulb was chosen as the symbol of invention.
Edison’s achievement was not the invention of the light bulb. Light bulbs had existed before. What Edison did was devise a filament that didn’t burn out in less than ten seconds.
A long-lasting filament is also the goal of all writers.
Writing and Concentration
Writing occupies all your concentration. It holds you; it burns you. It is not a pleasurable experience. No one undertakes it out of desire. Not for long. They burn out fastest of all.
You do it because you have to. It is a need more compelling than the pain of the fire. When you are fat and smug, snug and smiling, is not the time to write.
The need to go elsewhere, what is it but the need to escape?
No one runs to; he just runs from.
Hence the best conditioning of the artist prior to working, is to do something disgusting. Then you can escape yourself. You can endure the crucible, because to rise up out of it, back into yourself, would be worse.
Do something dirty, then escape it in art.
This is also known as psychological self-destruction.
But the man with no soul makes the greatest of artists. ### No Art Says Anything
(July 15, 1977)
No Art says anything.
But don’t we admire and esteem artists whose work does say something more than those whose work does not?
Reconciliation: yes we do, but that doesn’t alter the point – art is not a medium of anything but the Dream.
We eat food for nourishment. Food’s purpose is to provide the chemicals and energy we need to maintain existence. If the food tastes delicious and is well prepared, we enjoy it more; but if it fulfills the basic nourishment no better, then our added appreciation is directed to other things than that thing we eat for.
This is still a retreat from my earlier thoughts. Then I would have stated it: Art is entertainment and all else is superfluous. Now I would say: There are many things that we enjoy in art, but the basic raison d’être of art is entertainment. This is not so radical and for all I might talk, the basic reaction would be: so what?
I have redefined the reaction to art but not redirected it.
The great artist, then, would be one who did his art well. Therefore we have three categories:
- The great artist. One who communicates the Dream well.
- The great craftsman. One who controls words and their relationships (or the corresponding details in another art) so that they serve his will.
- The great thinker. One who’s inside his superb in such matters as psychology, ethics, philosophy, etc.
It is clear that of these three, the first has hardly been acknowledged; the second is in disrepute (without being the third); the third is lauded above all else today.
But a thinker is not an artist.
All Art Is Fantasy
(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?
The Higher Form of Fantasy
What is the purer/higher form of fantasy – that in which the hero from here/now goes there; or that which takes place totally there?
There is also the fantasy in which we think the fantasist is suffering from a delusion, but then the world turns out to vindicate his dream.
