"But this is an illusion. The ideas are not already good. They need to be thickened."
1000% yes.
In my own experience of art-making (fiction and music), the initiating ideas in and of themselves are not only insufficient until I've done the work of constructing and communicating them, but they aren't even really all that clearly "mine." The best things I've made started with ideas that just sort of popped into my mind while I was falling asleep or something like that. The whole process of execution is the part that I really have organized conscious agency over. That process is where I figure out how to make it compelling and rewarding for others, but it's also where I figure out for myself just what the "idea" really is. It's a remarkable process, simultaneously self-discovering and connective. Basically every other creative person I know feels the same way. The pitch that we could outsource that part of the work is simply not tempting at all.
I loved this — one of your best pieces yet! Great analysis on the Garden of Earthly Delights, loved the humor on butts and farts and body parts in general. Hahahah.
Don't get me wrong here because this is another great post from one of my favorite current writers... And I'm sure Adam knows what I'm about to say it just maybe didn't fit into his narrative.
There is no way to prepare adolescence for thickness or art. Appreciation of art is an acquired taste, and it doesn't come from looking at art, it comes from living through the ups and downs of life, which kids at the starting line have no awareness of...
This is why so many of us feel just like Adam does about art when we're young. We assume it's all pretentious snobbery because that is an aspect of life many of us have come to understand even when we're still young.
And some of us, even after we are old, still think half of of the noise made about art is nothing but pretentious snobbery...
I'm not sure to what extent it was snobbery that ruined the reading of literature or if it was simply the need to find something to set examination papers on.
You say, "If you allow for the existence of secret treasures that can only be accessed with effort and analysis,..." But why the effort and analysis? What are the effort and analysis for, except to create exam questions? It certainly isn't to enhance the joy of reading the work. For most people, it sucks the joy out of the experience completely.
Consider a walk in the woods. A walk in the woods is a thick experience. It abounds with life, sound, air, and light. But the pleasure of walking in the woods, the thickness of the experience, does not consist in cataloging every leaf and tree, every flying, creeping, or slithering thing. It consists in the thickness of the experience as a whole. To analyze it is to take that thickness, slice it up, and spread it thin. That may be a fascinating exercise in its own right, but there are a thousand people who would rather just enjoy the thickness of a walk in the woods without the analysis.
The same is true for books. You can't teach the thickness of the experience of a book, or, at least, you cannot write an exam question about it. And so you cannot teach a book without turning the experience from one kind, the thick kind, to another kind, the thin kind. It is the difference between playing with a kitten and dissecting one.
And that is perhaps why people today seem to prefer thin books. They have been taught that the thick books that they might have enjoyed as a thick experience must, instead, be analyzed into a tortuously long thin experience, and one stripped of all the ordinary joys of story. Again, it is like trying to teach people to love animals by taking them to an abattoir.
There are many things in this world that you cannot study without destroying them. Literature is one of them. Which is not an argument against studying literature for those who delight in it. But it is a caution against ruining the experience of literature for ordinary people, ordinary children in particular, by forcing that esoteric study down their throats at an impressionable age.
Thanks for this piece, it speaks to me (masters degree holder in Russian literature turned software engineer). I read Les Miserables this summer (all 1,400 pages of it) and have been thinking a lot about how its sheer volume let me just ... live in that world for a while. It was great.
"But this is an illusion. The ideas are not already good. They need to be thickened."
1000% yes.
In my own experience of art-making (fiction and music), the initiating ideas in and of themselves are not only insufficient until I've done the work of constructing and communicating them, but they aren't even really all that clearly "mine." The best things I've made started with ideas that just sort of popped into my mind while I was falling asleep or something like that. The whole process of execution is the part that I really have organized conscious agency over. That process is where I figure out how to make it compelling and rewarding for others, but it's also where I figure out for myself just what the "idea" really is. It's a remarkable process, simultaneously self-discovering and connective. Basically every other creative person I know feels the same way. The pitch that we could outsource that part of the work is simply not tempting at all.
I loved this — one of your best pieces yet! Great analysis on the Garden of Earthly Delights, loved the humor on butts and farts and body parts in general. Hahahah.
Reading this felt like watching the episode of Prisoners of Gravity that went into a deep dive on Dave Gibbons art in Watchmen.
Stop flirting Adam
Don't get me wrong here because this is another great post from one of my favorite current writers... And I'm sure Adam knows what I'm about to say it just maybe didn't fit into his narrative.
There is no way to prepare adolescence for thickness or art. Appreciation of art is an acquired taste, and it doesn't come from looking at art, it comes from living through the ups and downs of life, which kids at the starting line have no awareness of...
This is why so many of us feel just like Adam does about art when we're young. We assume it's all pretentious snobbery because that is an aspect of life many of us have come to understand even when we're still young.
And some of us, even after we are old, still think half of of the noise made about art is nothing but pretentious snobbery...
Even Bosch’s stance on music may be thicker than it seems at first pass.
I wonder if there’s a thickest book.
Oh my god an awesome kicker
Fantastic stuff. Love the bit about “under your nose the whole time” because in storytelling we’re told to avoid being “on the nose”.
I'm not sure to what extent it was snobbery that ruined the reading of literature or if it was simply the need to find something to set examination papers on.
You say, "If you allow for the existence of secret treasures that can only be accessed with effort and analysis,..." But why the effort and analysis? What are the effort and analysis for, except to create exam questions? It certainly isn't to enhance the joy of reading the work. For most people, it sucks the joy out of the experience completely.
Consider a walk in the woods. A walk in the woods is a thick experience. It abounds with life, sound, air, and light. But the pleasure of walking in the woods, the thickness of the experience, does not consist in cataloging every leaf and tree, every flying, creeping, or slithering thing. It consists in the thickness of the experience as a whole. To analyze it is to take that thickness, slice it up, and spread it thin. That may be a fascinating exercise in its own right, but there are a thousand people who would rather just enjoy the thickness of a walk in the woods without the analysis.
The same is true for books. You can't teach the thickness of the experience of a book, or, at least, you cannot write an exam question about it. And so you cannot teach a book without turning the experience from one kind, the thick kind, to another kind, the thin kind. It is the difference between playing with a kitten and dissecting one.
And that is perhaps why people today seem to prefer thin books. They have been taught that the thick books that they might have enjoyed as a thick experience must, instead, be analyzed into a tortuously long thin experience, and one stripped of all the ordinary joys of story. Again, it is like trying to teach people to love animals by taking them to an abattoir.
There are many things in this world that you cannot study without destroying them. Literature is one of them. Which is not an argument against studying literature for those who delight in it. But it is a caution against ruining the experience of literature for ordinary people, ordinary children in particular, by forcing that esoteric study down their throats at an impressionable age.
Thanks for this piece, it speaks to me (masters degree holder in Russian literature turned software engineer). I read Les Miserables this summer (all 1,400 pages of it) and have been thinking a lot about how its sheer volume let me just ... live in that world for a while. It was great.
> We’re not still brewing Bronze Age beer
Well, aside from https://www.dogfish.com/drink/beer/midas-touch