Critical Mass

There has recently been a firestorm–as there so often is in these Internet-fed, cable television-stoked days–concerning the comments that a young woman, a self published novelist, made on a book review blog that gave her tome a mildly unflattering review.  The attendant hoo-hah is not my concern.  Others have covered that territory as thoroughly and even-handedly as can be done.  My concern is something other:  Should writers or any artists read reviews?

I doubt it.  Despite the well-worn notion that criticism should be taken with a tugged forelock and a mumbled “Thank’ee, Mrs,” I think it is a mistake for artists to read criticism of their own works.  (Even when the criticisms, as in the cited case, involve proofreading errors and rhetorical disasters.)  There are a couple of assumptions I hold, fundamentally, that lead me to this conclusion.  First, I think that a review of anything is essentially a conversation between consumers (sorry about calling readers and movie watchers and everyone else who takes in some work of art a “consumer,” but it was convenient shorthand) of that particular art.  It is the reader’s hope to find out whether a given work is worth the time they would need to commit to it, and it is the reviewer’s job to give them the best hints they can on whether it is or not.  The artist is not part of that conversation; the artist is no more than an artifact in such a discussion.

Second, I think that such criticism–from a reviewer and not from an editor, a colleague, a director, a loved one–is irrelevant to the work of the artist.  For one thing, reviewers can only review the work that is the most recent, not the next in line.  Therefore, from the artist’s point-of-view, reviewers are talking about something that is dead and in the past.  There comes a point in every project in which the artist must let go of it and move on.  Otherwise, all any artist would ever do is worry over a work endlessly and compulsively, for every work is flawed, especially in the eyes of the poor sap who created it.  And you can’t go back, only forward.  All of an artist’s focus has to be on the next project, the next work, the next thing to which that person must commit his or her imagination, attention, and energy.  As with Lot’s wife, looking back is disastrous and paralyzing.

And what can be gained by an artist from reading a review anyway?  Let’s say that there are two reviews and they conflict, as is generally the case.  Which review is the correct one?  Should the artist make the corrections demanded by one critic and remove them at the behest of the other?  Is one more correct than the other, and, if so, how is such a judgment to be made?  No.  As I see it, there are only two things that can happen when artists read their reviews, and both of them are bad.  On the one hand, if the review is negative at all, the artist’s feelings will get hurt and confidence undermined, and there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll end up with the sort of brouhaha that I linked to above.

The second possibility is even worse.  The reviews could be good and the artist can start to believe them.

Creating a decent work of art is difficult enough without one’s head being filled with notions.  From what I know from my meager experience and what I can glean from the comments of my betters, creating a work of art–even a mediocre or bad one–is an arduous task, won with sweat and molded with craft.  And once one is convinced that one is a genius, a magician who creates timeless masterpieces with a mere wave of the hand, how is one supposed motivate oneself to do the dirty work that is needed?

I know that in this age of workshops and focus groups, critique groups and MFA programs that the idea that the artist should walk alone without correction, suggestion, and “support” is a kind of blasphemy, but there you are.  That’s how I feel.  It is a lonely trail the artist wanders, filled with brambles and sinkholes.  I think of something that Joseph Campbell talked about, an image presented in the Arthurian legends.  In one version of the tales, the Knights of the Round Table approach a thicket and agree to each hack his way through the tangle on his own path.  And each one who crosses another’s path and starts to go down it follows it to his own peril.  It is a hard and lonely and perilous journey that the artist embarks on, but the glory of it is that, whatever that journey may turn out to be, it is that person’s own.

John the Baptist or the Parish Priest

(The below is a rewritten version of a comment I left on a post on a blog called Stock Photography Museum.  The post was discussing a book review written by a young woman whose work I am suddenly seeing everywhere I look called Elif Batuman.   [After reading the piece on the London Review of Books website yesterday, I started in on her piece on the existential dilemma faced by some of Franz Kafka's papers on the website of The New York Times.]  The discussion on hand had to do with the effect on literature made by MFA programs in Creative Writing as discussed in a book called The Program (or, in the UK, The Programme) Era by one Mark McGurl.  As of this moment, there has been no response to my comment.  Perhaps my argument and logic are unassailable.  Perhaps by admitting that I neither have nor want an MFA I was considered to be one of the Unclean, and, therefore, not worthy of response.  Or perhaps nobody gave a rat’s ass.  Other explanations are also possible.)

It seems to me that the main problem with the MFA concept is that it takes a calling and reduces it to the level of a mere profession, and the same approach is taken to artistry as is to accounting or plumbing. Certification can be attained by mere persistence and a willingness to meet the expectations of teachers rather than through talent or achievement. And, as these people with certification fan out through the literary world as editors and teachers (rarely, it seems, as self-sustaining writers), they demand the same talisman, the MFA, from others. And while those from outside the MFA world may not be completely disregarded, they will be looked at as being suspect in the eyes of the initiated. (And, yes, I am one of those outsiders, although I am one who works in an English Department that has a Creative Writing program.)

Creative writing programs (and since they are all built on the model of The Iowa School for Famous Writers, we can assume some level of uniformity, at least in terms of underlying assumptions) place a greater emphasis on groupthink through the social pressures of roundtable critiques than they do on attainment of a personal artistic vision won through experience and suffering. Being located exclusively in academic settings, students work in a special and specialized environment, one that, for all of its rewards and pressures, is very different from that of the rough-and-tumble world outside it. Writing then becomes increasingly abstract and less connected to life as it is lived by the vast majority of people in the society. As a result, short stories, which were once the single most popular literary form, have become denizens almost exclusively of specialist publications. (Publication in trade journals is a signifier of writing’s new-found status as profession rather than art form.  Professionals always publish in select specialist publications that are read only by their fellow professionals as a way of plumping up one’s CV.)  Short stories are no longer written as a means of discussing the human condition with a general readership; they now constitute a rather dull technical conversation between professionals.

I tend to distrust the academic approach to any of the creative (as opposed to interpretive) arts.  Critiques by groups of teachers and students are, I think, deleterious to an artist’s development and are, simply due to the dynamics of group psychology, going to enforce conformity to the group rather than encourage the discovery of one’s own unique outlook.  Writers in these programs can only learn how to please others rather than please themselves.  And while it is not impossible that an artist could develop in such circumstances, I think that the odds are against it.

It seems to me that writers are more valuable to a society as artists than they are as academic professionals. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps it is easier to become a true visionary artist in an ivory tower than it is if you’re one of the penny groundlings below. But if you were asking me–which you weren’t–I’d say that the ground is the place to be.

Gamy Art

Recently, Roger Ebert, who has lately been trying to flesh out his film critic’s resume with social criticism and political commentary, found himself at the center of a firestorm when he wrote a blog post in which he dared to opine that video games are not Art.  Things got to the point (something short of picketers patrolling the sidewalk outside his townhouse, I’m sure) that he posted something of a limited retraction yesterday.  Now, I’m not sure whether any video games are or can be Art, but such a controversy cannot help but produce a variety of thoughts in the typical blogging blowhard, such as your truly.  So, here goes.

Now, one of the gimmicks that Mr Ebert used in trying to bolster his argument was to use his Twitter account to get people to participate in an online survey:  Which of these would you value more, a great video game or Huckleberry Finn.  Now the problems with the survey, as Ebert himself has noted, are legion.  First, he is pitting something generic and theoretical (“a great video game”) against something specific and capable of being assessed as the thing it is.  Second, his sample was unscientific and not likely to be representative of the population at large.  Third, what does it mean to “value” something?  And does valuing something “more” mean not valuing the other thing at all?  People who know the mechanics of surveying and sampling could take this apart in a dozen ways, I’m sure.  In fact, it would be interesting to see what Nate Silver would make of it.

In terms of results, the first wave went decidedly Huck Finn’s way, but a decisive wave in the last 5000 of 12,000 votes made the seesaw tilt in just the opposite direction.  But what information can we truly extrapolate from this?  That a “great video game” is artistically superior to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?  Not really.  What it says to me is that gamers, who, in order to properly pursue their hobby, must cultivate a desire to win, simply flooded the survey site once word got around that they were losing.  Which brings me to the first difficulty that video games designers would encounter in trying to make a work of art.  A game, by definition, is a thing that the participants try to win.  Winning and losing are alien concepts to the appreciation of art.

Whatever art is or isn’t, it certainly doesn’t involve accumulating points or reaching ever-higher levels of play.  Art is, I think, a sorting through of the experience of life, a comparison of notes concerning what this trip is that we are all separately and together embarked on.  The questions posed and examined by art are myriad and are not capable of easy summation.  But art does not involve the attainment of a goal.  It, like life, just is.  Now, in theory, I can imagine that there could be a game that just is, but it would be a pretty Zen game.  And would most people who play these games be interested in a Zen game?  Would it be up there with Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft?  I find that to be unlikely.

Marshall McLuhan talked about bits of technology being extensions of earlier or other things.  A hammer is the extension of a fist.  An automobile is an extension of legs and feet and walking.  A blog is, ultimately, an extension of speech.  What then is a video game an extension of?  Most directly, typically, it is an extension of games played in literal arcades that were and are part of midways and fairs and carnivals.  And all games are, ultimately, extensions of the natural play of children.  Art, however, is rooted in the impulse to religion.  Play is a way of practicing skills.  Art is a way of pondering that which is difficult to ponder.

One thing I can’t understand is why gamers want their games to be considered Art (the capital A signifying the significant significance of it).  Of course, we do live in a culture that tends to equate Art with all that is good and uplifting and noble.  But it’s not.  There is a huge amount of shit art in the world, far more than there is good stuff.  And a lot of the shit becomes famous and admired and gets fawned over by experts who can only justify their expertise by raving about useless crap and thereby proving the perspicacity of their taste.  Were gamers to understand art as being something that can be good or bad, would they be so insistent on video games being defined as Art?  Probably not.  And, frankly, it is better for a game to be a good game than it is to be crappy art.

Several of Roger Ebert’s respondents in this controversy stated that they experienced every emotion imaginable while playing various games.  Fair enough, but is that really true?  There is a painting by Renoir that I once had the privilege of seeing in person at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts called Dance at Bougival.

The man leans his face hungrily toward the woman’s, and she looks away in a manner that suggests, to me, both regret and resignation.  It is an extraordinary thing to see, very powerful, very moving.  Is it possible, while playing a video game, to come across and experience, through compassion, this sort of complex emotion?  Do gamers truly feel wistfulness, nostalgia, bemusement, and schadenfreude?  Do video games persuade the player to have compassion–that is, to participate actively in the sufferings of another–for the characters portrayed in them?  Aren’t most of the characters involved merely objects meant to be either overcome or destroyed?    Aren’t most of the major characters separated into the sentimentalized binary categories of Good or Evil?  Is there truly roundness or complexity to the characters?  And aren’t the dominant emotions involved a sense of accomplishment when things are going well and frustration when they are not?

I’ve mostly played sporting video games myself, although I have tried other kinds a few times over the years.  Not really my cup of tea.  Most of my experience with them comes from observation.  I’ve watched my son, in recent years, play a variety of games without ever once observing him have a moment sublime or caring.  Years ago, I had a coworker who liked to play a rather vicious game called Wolfenstein when he was supposed to be working.  He had me stand behind his shoulder to watch once, and I couldn’t have been more mortified.  He, however, did not pick up on that because he was too fixated on murdering as many nameless, faceless, human-shaped objects as he could before they finally got him.  I don’t know what effect games like that had on Harris and Klebold when they decided to shoot up Columbine High School, but they certainly did nothing to encourage the compassionate sort of worldview that might have kept them from committing the attack.  Would it have mattered had they been as immersed in various art forms as they were in the video game culture?  It’s impossible to say, of course, but I don’t remember anyone going berserk because of their obsession with the music of Bach or Citizen Kane or the paintings of Camille Pissarro.

Video games certainly make use of artistic techniques, and there are, apparently, on some games images of great beauty.  And what is the Venus de Milo about if not only its own extraordinary beauty?  And yet, the images, the music, the dialogue in the introductory scenes of video games do not constitute the whole thing.  They are ancillary to the purpose of the game itself, a kind of video game filigree.  Games exist to be played, not to be appreciated as artistic inventions.

One final point.  In his book Das Glasperlenspiel (also known as Magister Ludi), Hermann Hesse used what he called The Glass Bead Game as a symbol for all that was knowable by humans throughout the history of art, science, and philosophy.  There is no way when he was writing the book in the 1930s that he could have imagined such a thing as the modern video game.  But is it not possible that the video game could evolve into just such a thing?  I’m not sure.  I don’t think that it is entirely out of the question.  However, I suspect that the game that would truly and unarguably accomplish that would no longer be a game.  I think that the experience of the player as a participant obviates his or her ability to experience the thing as a piece of art.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps it is possible for video games to veer away from melodrama and manufactured emotions.  But would a person have the same experience of Oedipus or Hamlet or Willy Loman if he had to enact them in a game atmosphere?  Doesn’t the power of art come from it being observed rather than enacted?  I used to be an actor, and I never had the kind of experience onstage that I could get from the audience.  It wasn’t my job to.

I think, at the end of the day, that gamers should simply enjoy the games for what they are.  They are certainly entertainments, and valid as entertainments.  I don’t think that they need to be justified as Art any more than baseball does or mumblety peg or Monopoly or Hungry Hungry Hippos.  Gamers should just play them for what they are and enjoy them, and not engage in a pretentious exercise, based in a sense of inferiority, of trying to get them classified as “Art.”