For artists, success is an illusion

After she published her first novel, a friend of mine went back to the summer writer's conference where she'd workshopped a part of it a couple years before. Formerly a mere attendee, she was now a published "alumnus" who got to give a reading from her published work and hang out with the writing program teachers and other published writers who make up the event's faculty. So she got to talk to several other women who were about her age or a little older, women who had published not just one novel but four or five.

And what she found was that no one was satisfied; no one considered herself a success. The woman who'd published five novels was dissatisfied because the publisher had been decreasing her advances and print runs for the last three books in a row. The woman who'd published two novels was dissatisfied because her publisher wouldn't spend any money to promote her next book. And so on. That's not even counting the universal bitching from writers about the strains and indignities of book tours. (You flew to 14 cities, stayed in fancy hotels, and were chauffeured from event to event? Really breaks my heart.)

In that light, I draw your attention to this article on Salon.com, No Sympathy for the Creative Class. It has the usual comparisons with European countries where artists are "appreciated" and receive state support. Excerpt:

Europeans, says (painter Peter) Plagens, have a very different relationship to the arts because of a high culture going back to the Renaissance and before. "Over here, America is more tied to pragmatism -- clearing the land, putting the railroad through... And artists don't really help with that, so we're suspect."

Novelist Jonathan Lethem, whose father was what the writer describes as "a non-famous artist," sees the American artist as living in internal exile. American history is stamped with "a distrust of the urban, the historical, the bookish in favor of a fantasy of frontier libertarian purity. And the Protestant work ethic has a distrust of what's perceived as decadence." ... "Cultural elite," says Lethem, is "a code word for people who are getting away with something for far too long. It's a term of distrust -- you can almost hear a plan for vengeance in it. Republican politics hardened these impulses and made them more virulent and paranoid."

All true as far as it goes. But nowhere does it describe the cooptation that state-supported artists have to deal with. Suppose the state gives you an artist-in-residence gig in Rainbow City, including an apartment and a studio, and all you have to do is agree to show your work in a gallery at the end of the period. Awesome -- except when you feel pressure, either overt or covert, to create art that will make your sponsors happy. And even when there's no pressure as such -- and I believe there usually is -- wouldn't living in Rainbow City on their dime make you identify with its residents and the locale, so that the artist's crucial role as a cultural critic is weakened? Wouldn't you be likely to turn out art that celebrates Rainbow City? If that's too abstract for you, imagine being the artist-in-residence in Damascus right now. No, I think I'll just struggle along, thanks.

The thing is, any success is an illusion. You think Stephen King thinks he's successful? No, he chafes against the universal conception of him as a hack. Jonathan Franzen is is almost the same boat; he was appalled at Oprah's designation of his work as acceptably bourgeois, and then slammed for being ungrateful. Philip Roth? He wouldn't be still turning out novels almost annually unless he thinks he has left some things unexpressed. David Foster Wallace? The unhappiest man on earth, until he killed himself.

Being an artist is a prescription for misery. A real artist is never truly satisfied with her work; anyone who is satisfied is probably either finished creatively or delusional. State support won't help that problem; it will only provide a different illusion, that one is a real artist because one is certified by the state. Commercial success won't help either; it will only make one doubt oneself. Or it will make you happy for a day; and then the work begins again.

To conspiracy theorists, it all fits together

Despite the fact that the messy pro-democracy upheaval in the Middle East will actually make the world safer by ridding the region of the dictators driving the hoi polloi into the arms of Al Qaeda, to right-wing conspiracy nuts It's All Part of the New World Order's Master (and they do mean master) Plan -- so says the latest post from the Shit Hits The Fan blog, Turning Off the Tap: Population Reduction Through Designed Economic Collapse.

According to their conspiracy theory, the rebellions in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and other lands are all part of a plan by "banksters [sic], the oil cartel and ... Wall Street" to "(drive) up prices for essentials like food and energy to the breaking point, ... shaking every nation on earth to its core. The effect of such manipulation seems destined to lead toward a severe reduction in numbers of the human population, and a tightening of control over those who remain."

Yes, depopulation! That's all part of it! Of course, this prophecy depends on the vast majority of the population losing its mind and reducing itself through riots and unrest to a fragment. Or as they put it:

The oil and Wall Street powers seem satisfied to allow the civil unrest to spread in order to feed their greed for higher oil prices and resulting control. Surely they recognize that higher oil prices will suck the remaining wealth out of the poor and middle classes around the world. This scenario will obviously cause starvation, illness, and other life-shortening effects, as increasing numbers join the ranks of the poor... and the poor have no where [sic] else to go.

Obviously. Of course, there's no evidence that the events of the last couple of months are the result of outside influence from anyone other than democracy-minded people themselves. Secondly, it seems odd for a cabal of "banksters" and other members of a shadowy financial oligarchy -- of course "Wall Street" is simply modern crypto-fascist code for "the Jews" -- to launch a global takeover by means of increased democracy. Thirdly, if there are "Jews" behind countless democratic Arab movements, that would be very strange. And finally, there is no evidence that anyone is losing their minds as a result of the turmoil, except maybe Moammar Gadhafi. In fact, newly-freed zones seem to be taking up the challenge of self-governance with optimism and a reasonable amount of decorum.

But an essential part of the conspiracy theorist's practice is to ignore everything that doesn't fit the theory's template. For them, the conspiracy is constantly in the process of proving itself true.

Sins of silence

Daniel Ellsberg interviewed in the L.A. Times, reflecting on his role in history:

Although he was attacked by political opponents for betraying his country, Ellsberg's regret is rather that he didn't leak documents earlier -- in 1964 when the conflict was still escalating.

"I'm one of a few dozen people who could have prevented the Vietnam War," he says, drumming his finger on his wooden table with every syllable. A Democratic Congress would have turned on Johnson, he thinks, if they had seen how bogus his war justifications were. "But I was very inhibited -- I felt like I was breaking my promise."

It's human nature that troubles him the most.

"Humans are herd animals," he says. "They depend very much on being part of the group, and to remain part of the group, they'll do anything. And a much larger number will go along with anything. And the broadest form of that is keeping your mouth shut."

San Francisco: dirty, credulous, overcrowded?

I had to giggle when I read this guy's blog post about San Francisco being dirty, credulous, and overcrowded (cross-linked using ShareThis). It's not that he's wrong, it's that he's so afraid that someone will disagree with him and -- shudder -- email him, and then -- horrors -- he'll be forced to ignore the email.

Then you read his bio and see: Aha, he's in his late-mid-20s. Just the time when illusions are popped, including the illusion that just because one is really smart (see his bio, where the bragging is perfectly pitched to be just more than humble, just less than arrogant: "I've been working at Twitter since the beginning of 2007, several months before the service began to grow in popularity. It's been an education ...") one somehow deserves to be relieved of the bother of living in a real environment with "generally poor urban/civic planning" and "unreliable and inadequate public transit."

I must have missed the part where he's announcing that he's devoting his dead Saturday afternoons ("I've found precious little to do here") to organizing the citizenry for the repeal of Proposition 13 and other neo-con initiatives that have limited the scope and reach of what government can do to address such problems. In the meantime, I strongly suggest taking up kayaking or crack.

Liberty: stupid sometimes

A court in California ruled yesterday that parents may home-school their children without any qualifications at all. While 30 other states disagree, in California you can raise your children to be just as ignorant and benighted as you are, and no one can argue.

Liberty is stupid sometimes, but I guess this is the kind of thing you have to accept in a free society. I'd like the other free parts to stay free, however -- like being able to walk down the street or cross a bridge without being surveilled, or being able to consume what I want without fearing that my preferences are being uploaded to some huge database.

technorati: homeschooling, democracy

Why should the devil have all the good music?

Brilliant writer Janice Erlbaum posted an amusing tale about combatting an annoying subway preacher by singing as loudly as he was ranting. Her selections included "Let's Do It," "You Do Something To Me," "When They Begin the Beguine," and "It's All Right With Me." It didn't stop the guy's ranting but did raise her spirits.

The title of this post refers to a song by a Jesus rocker, Larry Norman.

technorati: Bad Behavior, subway+preachers,Janice Erlbaum

The medium is the mass age

Asks this provocative essay in the British Guardian: Has the masterful narrative sweep and sheer brilliance of "The Sopranos" killed the American novel?

(The success of "The Sopranos") wouldn't be troubling were Americans reading other, actual novels. But they're not - at least not in the numbers they once did. An alarming study released in 2004 by the National Endowment for the Arts noted that in the last two decades the US has experienced a 10% drop-off in the reading of literature -- which they define as just one novel, story or play per year -- and a 28% drop in the key 18-24 age group.

In truth, the novel has been whacked by a number of things, starting with the decline of public education, where standardised tests stand in for cultural (and actual) literacy.

Emphasis mine. Regardless of the merits of the comparison between the best television series ever made and the entire corpus of the American novel, I was struck by the writer mentioning the decline of public education. Isn't that also at the base of the decline in shared American democratic values?

technorati: The Sopranos