Monday, April 28, 2014

Making Modernism Work

How many writers have read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald? Many thousands. Maybe millions. Yet not one of these writers knows artistically what’s going on in it. They don’t understand what Fitzgerald as an artist is doing with the tale.

Oh, there have been professors who’ve broken down Fitzgerald’s use of time in the novel, showing its complexity. (Fitzgerald carefully studied Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.”) The profs discovered Fitzgerald’s use of modernist technique. They had part of the picture, but not all of it.

As I’ve explained previously on my “Pop” blog, in The Great Gatsby Scott Fitzgerald became a pop writer—or at least half a pop writer. The elements of a genre tale are there. A gangster. A mysterious past. Money. Murder. Speeding cars. Quick violence. The protagonist possesses a dual identity: Jay Gatsby and James Gatz. Self-creation—which Fitzgerald took from the greatest and most influential pop novel, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

I advocate for the fusion of pop and literary writing. It’s been done. F. Scott Fitzgerald achieved it in his greatest work. Modernism fused with pop.

Curiously enough, his buddy Ernest Hemingway at times seemed to be on the same path. “The Killers” is close to pop. His in our time (the primitive version) with its fragments of experience is very modernist, yet Hemingway’s genre sensibility of action and violence is present at the same time.

Both writers were able to write basic prose of simple sentences to keep the narrative moving. For a modernist this is essential. It’s the only way literary modernism can work without losing its audience.

What happened to American literature? Why were these trails not followed?

Instead of combining its strands, American writing divided—until today we have opposite poles. The literary and popular inhabit different worlds.

There’s no incentive from either big publishing or academia to bridge the gap. The genre novel is expected to be as simple and formulaic as possible. The same thin product stamped out over and over with minute variations.

With the literary, we see the ideology of the well-written sentence, as perpetuated by presumed authorities like Heidi Pitlor or The New Yorker editors. Writers who follow this path create Xerox art—copies of copies of copies, no one trying to find a way out.

Meanwhile, modernism morphed into postmodernism. Extreme solipsism as practiced by the form’s presumed god, David Foster Wallace. In his fiction, Wallace escaped into his head and wouldn’t come out, describing experience in an acutely self-conscious manner. Describing his feelings instead of objectively examining the world. Self-consciousness and self-indulgence; run-on sentences representing run-on thought.

The trick for the writer, the artist, is to reverse the process. Instead of bringing the world into the mind, project the mind onto the world. Make plot and settings representations of the subconscious. This was done with the novel She by H. Rider Haggard a couple centuries ago. It’s what “Batman” in its various forms is about. It’s the essence of “pop.”

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In my coming ebooks I plan to leap ahead to where American literature should be artistically if it hadn’t been sidetracked by mediocrity and nonsense. The question is whether or not the literary world is too culturally regressed to recognize what I’m doing. We’ll see, I guess.

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In my spare time I’ve also been examining movies for clues about the nature of art. My latest study is “Body and Soul,” a 1947 boxing movie starring John Garfield, which is formulaic and fast moving, gritty and tough, yet at the same time amazingly complex. Clues, tricks, techniques, layers: meaning everyplace. Stay tuned for my thoughts.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Depth and Dimensions

My readings tell me that fifty years ago, artists in a variety of fields were striving for what some called “depthlessness.” Those creating or promoting such artworks included John Cage, Mark Rothko, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. The idea was to eliminate the human element (!) and present only “the actual.”

What I want is the opposite of this. As a writer and reader (or moviegoer) I look for depth and dimensions to the maximum extent possible. To plunge into the mind, but also to extend outward into the broader world, or even the universe. To find meaning human and metaphysical.

It’s what I’ll aim for in my next ebook, due possibly in a month or two.

Monday, April 21, 2014

The Other Choice Part II

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

In the intellectual realm and the arts, commentators and critics are pushed by intellectual consensus into well-trod paths, with narrow parameters, set choices, no one thinking outside the box.

An example: A list of “Greatest Westerns” by the people at Wonders in the Dark.

http://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/category/genre-countdown-westerns/

The list is acceptable from an academic perspective. “Auteurs” are well represented. The list is properly diverse and politically correct. The only problem with the list is that these are not the greatest Westerns, for the most part. Not when you actually watch them.

“Rio Bravo” at #2? It’s a nice, leisurely movie. Not deep. Not profound. I have it at #19 on my own list (see my ebook, About Western Movies). I thought I was being generous. Director Howard Hawks is considered a pantheon auteur. Though the movie isn’t in any way “great,” it’s a safe choice.

My own #2 Western, “The Magnificent Seven,” isn’t anywhere on the Wonders in the Dark top 50 Westerns list.

Which film is better?

WATCH them and see for yourself. “Seven” is more impressive visually. It’s better paced. It has the unity and completeness of great art—when it’s over, the aesthetic kick of the perfection of art. It has better form. It’s better scripted and better acted. It’s vastly more exciting. Heretical as it is to say this, Yul Brynner, in this film, makes a better model of an ideal leader of men than John Wayne. “Seven” has more emotion and greater heart. Also, of course, it has the magnificent Elmer Bernstein score. As fine a Western movie composer as Dimitri Tiomkin is, his music for “Rio Bravo” can’t match it.

Another example: John Ford’s “Wagonmaster” (1950) is on the list. A very good film. “Westward the Women” (1951) isn’t on the list, though it’s even better.

Ford’s film falls short of being epic, because it subordinates the wagon journey to a plot complication involving a stereotyped gang of lawless psychos. The movie’s characters, good and bad, are flat types.

In “Westward the Women,” not only is the journey epic; not only are the subsidiary characters (like Ito and Patience) more impressive and mythic ; but the two leads, played by Robert Taylor and Denise Darcel, have surprising emotional depth. Their relationship has depth. The arc of their finding each other as mates matches the epic journey, and the theme of community which undergirds the film.

At the end, when the two come together, it’s a profoundly satisfying moment—the sense of unity and completeness. The “kick” of great art.

Frank Capra, a near-pantheon director, constructed the scenario for “Westward the Women.” William Wellman directed the actual movie. I don’t know if this proves or disproves “auteur” theory. I don’t think it matters. What matters is the result.

The trick for a new thinker is to not be trapped in the mental corridors of status quo. For an artist, received wisdom exists to be demolished.

Friday, April 18, 2014

An Easter Movie Review

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For Easter, I’ve posted an analysis of the 1959 movie classic BEN-HUR at another blog.

http://americanpoplit.blogspot.com/2014/04/understanding-ben-hur.html

Is the film underrated by critics? If so, why? I attempt an answer.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

New Wave Writing?

New fiction needs to look radically different from what came before. It needs to be radically more exciting. Think of drastic change in other media-- music, movies, painting. New art broke rules, cut ties to the past, did the unthinkable. In art there are no rules. The art object is demolished, then recreated.

A revolution in fiction may be occasioned by a difference in technique, which creates a difference in style. Pace, structure, viewpoint-- everything subject to change.

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What are examples of sudden drastic artistic change?

You tell me.

Punk rock?

Picasso?

Jean Luc Godard's "Breathless" movie?

In fiction, Ernest Hemingway?

Anyone in the poetry scene?

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One can make countless arguments about the need for literary change. At some point the art itself needs to be that argument.

How? In what way?

I'll be presenting some of my own ideas.

Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Eleven Questions

The writer Ann Sterzinger included me in a group of bloggers she’s thrown eleven questions at, part of a chain letter or Ponzi scheme of some kind. (http://fineillstartagoddamnblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/someone-liebsters-you.html

I don’t do chain letters, but the eleven questions are interesting enough to try answering.

1.) WHY ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?

Don’t know. Lucky, I guess. I’m surprised myself.

2.) WHY ARE YOU STILL TRYING TO WRITE A BLOG?

(The cynicism of these questions is palpable.)  I hate to go positive, but this is an exciting time to be a writer. The possibility is there to reinvent literature. Specifically, narrative fiction, though poetry could be upgraded as well. The writer should never stop thinking about ways to improve the art. What’s the best mix of elements—of description, dialogue, pace, plot? Can one play with time and keep the tale moving, the reader hooked?

Fiction will be reinvented. By someone. Now, or in the future. I can imagine what the new story will look like. I’m not yet able to create or perfect that new product myself.

I still write a blog because I like keeping my options open—to be able to jump back into the fray in a big way if an opening presents itself.

3.) JUST WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, ANYWAY?

I’m a guy who thinks he has answers.

4.) WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU HAVE INSOMNIA?

I ponder dilemmas of time and space. I consider historical examples of individuals who’ve jumped through “holes” in time and space, and changed history as a result.

5.) WHICH ARE YOUR TEN LEAST FAVORITE WAYS TO DIE?

This is the kind of question twelve year-olds debate. Up there with who’s the toughest monster: Frankenstein; Dracula; the Wolf Man; or the Mummy? (We won’t get into Marvel superheroes.)

Whichever way I die, I hope I’m brave enough to face it. (Someone once told me dying is easy. Living is tough.)

6.) DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD? IF SO, HOW CAN YOU TOLERATE HIS APPARENT INDIFFERENCE, EVEN HOSTILITY, TO YOUR HAPPINESS AND WELL-BEING? IF NOT, HOW CAN YOU TOLERATE THE VOID OF YOUR MEANINGLESS UNIVERSE?

I didn’t know it was God’s job to make us happy. We have to figure that out ourselves. But yes, I do believe in God. Science is discovering that the universe is vastly more complex and intelligent than once thought. It’s difficult to believe there’s not a mind of some kind behind it.

As to God’s apparent indifference—the greatest works of literature wrestle with that question: King Lear and The Brothers Karamazov. They were written by two men far more intelligent and wise than any of us. Worth a look.

As the Bard said in another play, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than in all your philosophy.”

7.) GO BACK TO QUESTION 6. IMAGINE THAT YOU BELIEVED THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU DO, AND ANSWER THE SECOND HALF OF THE QUESTION ACCORDINGLY.

40% of the time I disbelieve; i.e., fight with my belief. But the void is unsettling. Hell is the world without God.

8.) ARE THERE ANY REALLY AMAZING NEW BANDS YOU THINK I SHOULD KNOW ABOUT?

The Detroit Cobras come to mind, but they’re not new.

9.) IS PAINTING A DEAD ART? HOW ABOUT THE NOVEL?

Dead. Rotting. Corpse-like—at least compared to where they’ve been. They’re at seeming dead ends artistically, and marginalized in the greater culture. But this means opportunity for those willing to reinvent an art. For those brave enough to break with the present and overturn the same-old ways of thinking, creating, and operating.

10.) COME UP WITH A WORLD VIEW WHICH IS COMPLETELY RATIONAL. . . . YOU HAVE 200 WORDS.

The universe is rational. Humans aren’t.

11.) HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE ONE OF SEVEN BILLION HUMAN BEINGS?

Not all bad, when I consider the immensity of the universe and the idea that we may be the only (semi)intelligent beings in it, as many physicists now believe. (Fine-Tuned Universe Theory.) Anyway, seven billion is an anomaly, part of the age of antibiotics, which are lately losing their effectiveness. We fragile creatures could once again be open to a host of plagues. Besides, birth rates worldwide already are plummeting. Some nations—Japan; Russia—are in demographic free fall. You’re far more optimistic about the survival of the human race than I am!

I currently live in a once-vibrant city (Detroit), now depopulated, so I’m more aware than some of how quickly things can reverse themselves. There’s more terror at being alone in the universe than being surrounded by people with all their many failings. :-)