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Oh dear, it seems I can’t stay away.

I’ve just popped back again to flag up this article because I thought it most interesting. I hated her style and might be inclined to disagree for that reason. However, I thought she made some good points (and a few bizarre ones). I especially liked her observations about the difference between literature and art. My attitude to the whole ‘quality’ thing is quite different when I consider art, most likely because I’m aware I know nothing about it, for the reasons she states. I also agreed about us not neing able to label quality. It’s just ‘there’ and the subject matter, pace and form really offer us no guide.

Her use of ‘parochial’ and the concept of ‘dumbing down’ also interested me. I’m certainly a believer that things are dumbing down but I don’t think that’s because of the sheer volume and variety of things out there. Most are good so I’m not complaining. I think the dumbing down is because of ’empty’ ’insubstantial’ things being foisted on us because sometimes people try to be too clever and too pretentious, possibly because there’s so much out there and they need to get noticed. I have a hunch that’s what VS Naipaul was doing. And also, one might add, Zoe Williams.

I am a tad sick of people coming up with some random view like ‘actually, Shakespeare was rubbish’ or ‘if a book hasn’t got gay sex in it it says nothing about modern society’, or, as VS Naipaul seems to be saying ‘fiction is generally crap and those books you’ve always revered are utterly pointless’.  I wouldn’t mind if these were genuinely their views but mostly they say these things to be controversial and get noticed. It usually works.

It’s another reason why I enjoyed Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’ so much. I may be completely misinterpreting it here but I got the impression that we are supposed to be critical of those such as Irwin who are only after clever spin, a new way to look at historical events, while the old way was good enough in the first place. Bennett’s attitude to literature too was basically ‘literature is here for us all and is to get us through our lives and I’m going to set you up with a lot of poetry before I send you out into the nasty world’. I felt a bit like he was claiming it back for us, saying that it’s not just the property of a bunch of intellectuals, it’s for anyone who’s prepared to listen (unfortunately, many people aren’t).

The comments at the bottom of the article are what make it though. They’re hilarious and just prove to me why getting out of literary analysis altogether might be a good idea! There are certainly some good points in there but people really know how to go off on tangents and push their own agendas. In case you hadn’t noticed, I am finding the world of online commentary and analysis a tad scary.

Anyway… I have started reading quite a few political memoirs and biographies lately and am really getting back into it. I think maybe politics and history are more my thing than art and literature. I really wish, for many reasons, that I hadn’t wasted my dissertation on such a stupid, intangible, and utterly pointless question as ‘the roles of quality and enjoyment in literature’ and had stuck to my original plan which was to look at the information relationship between parliament and public. Ah well. Maybe my Phd…

Just listened to a podcast of Simon Blackburn talking about moral relativism. He started well but dissolved into mush. I was going along with the quasi-realist perspective but have a hunch I may turn out to be a moral realist. Oh dear. Why do I always seem to go for the least fashionable option?

Hmmm. An interesting thought just hit me. Recently on the radio I heard someone* read out a Spike Milligan poem. It goes like this:

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
“I’ll do a sketch of thee.
What kind of pencil shall I use,
2B or not 2B?”

Is very, very funny.

The person presenting the program said it was fun because it was poking fun at the literary elite or something like that. This makes no sense. To find it funny you need to have knowledge of Hamlet (and pencils). I think because it’s funny she thought that’s why it was poking fun at the ‘literary elite’ …because if we like Hamlet we don’t have a sense of humour (although it’s a very witty play, so I don’t understand that).  

I just don’t happen to believe ‘Hamlet’ is the preserve of a humourless elite. It has something in it of relevance to everyone. And fortunately due to Shakespeare’s high place in our shared culture everyone will get the joke…

Oh dear. I think the world makes less and less sense. The more I think, the less certain I am.

*The incomparable Samuel West, actually.

I have recently had sent to me a link to this comic. It really is rather good and as a ’Crime and Punishment’ fan I admit I rather enjoyed it. I had a suspicion, though (and I apologise if I’m wrong), that it was sent to me to challenge my perceived snobbery and that I was supposed to look at the comments at the bottom as much as the comic strip.

Yet again I feel compelled to clear a few things up. I fear I must have a communication problem because whatever I say on this subject people always seem to assume I mean something else.

So, here goes. I really liked the comic. It was clever, nicely done, perceptive, witty and great fun. It was in great sympathy with the book and I thought very neatly got the philosophy across. It could not have been created by someone who did not understand and appreciate the novel. The guy commenting that it was dumbing it down therefore missed the point. I think maybe that he perceived comics to be too lowbrow or something, I just don’t know. I don’t have a problem with playing around with works of art and interpreting them in interesting ways and this kind of intelligent game playing is great. It’s why I like the guys who do the ‘Reduced Shakespeare Company’ shows. They show great knowledge and appreciation of their subject matter and don’t patronise the audience, they assume you’re in on it too. And it’s just a good laugh.

I guess the mistake people make is to assume that different genres have different claims to the allusive ‘quality’ (or whatever we’re going to call it). I still can’t get over this notion that some things do ‘work’ and others don’t, that some things are ‘good’ and others not so much and I really don’t see how it can be subjective. Just because I believe this doesn’t mean that I support the assertion that  all opera =good and all rap music =bad. I believe that some opera reigns supreme and that operettas are meant to be a bit of fun. I know absolutely bugger all about rap music and would defer to someone who did know until I had listened to it myself enough to be able to form a valid opinion of my own.

Other than being ‘good’ I think a work of art does need ’substance’, that element of universality I have mentioned before. I think people misunderstand what I mean by this because I find it so difficult to explain. Some things have it and some don’t. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a comic, a thriller, a pop song. It can still have that quality (or not), irrespective of the medium the artist chooses to use. It just means that they can speak across centuries and across continents and I think the words of Shakespeare and the music of Beethoven do that whereas lesser writers and lesser composers don’t. These are just made for the here and now and a specific commercial audience. I think that in 150 years time someone who had read ‘Crime and Punishment’ (which will, as a great novel, still mean something to people in 150 years time) would look at that comic and find it funny.

I guess what I’m saying is that an art form is not good or bad, worthless or great, because of its genre, format, or style, it’s good because it connects with us as humans beings. It’s the painting that makes you stop or the piece of music that makes you want to cry, even if you can’t analyse it or say why, as opposed to the pleasant enough musak you have in an airport lounge or the nice, unchallenging picture you hang on your living room wall.

That is probably inadequate and muddled as usual but I am just getting a bit tired of people missing the point and thinking I have one opinion where actually I don’t. It just hurts to have people criticise me for a view that is not my own.

So, thank you, I enjoyed the Dostoevsky comic very much. And now I have burnt my supper.

Hmmm… knew I’d heard of Roger Scruton. I actually think I used one of his books as an undergraduate in what now feels like a lifetime ago. I liked him then. I have just had a little peek at his website and his blog and it looks far from promising. He used the phrase “evangelical secularists” which is not a good start.However, his latest book sounds fascinating and I have a hunch he’ll turn out to be one of these people who raises some very valid objections to the predominant philosophy of relativism and then proceeds to come up with totally stupid reasons for it and even stupider solutions.

I look at the title “Culture Counts” and I sit up straight, feel happy and think “this is my kind of guy” and then I read the subtitle “Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged” and I slump back down again in disappointment.

It seems more important than ever to me now that I read this book so I know which reaction is correct.

A book has just arrived on my desk. This is not unusual. Books arrive on my desk every day. However, this one is simply addressed to the ‘Book Review Editor’ and I can as yet find no home for it and no-one who is expecting it.Looking at the book I have discovered it is by Roger Scruton and is called ‘Culture Counts’. It says on the back “Boldly standing up to today’s nihilisms and debasements of taste, Culture Counts offers a noble and compelling defense of high culture and the centrality of rich aesthetic experience for a full human life”.

Sounds marvellous. Even though I’ll have to find a home for this copy I’m going to make sure I get one of my own.

I think I’m actually starting to believe in fate.

I do rather feel like screaming today. You know when you can’t make your mind up about stuff. It’s really lots of interconnected things I worry about. Well, I obsess about them more likely.  Until the age of about 20 I believed there is no such thing as a quality judgement in art and it’s all relative. I then completely changed my mind because I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with this assertion. I wanted to believe it but it just didn’t tally with the reality surrounding me. Recently a couple of people have separately been chipping away at my theories and I have certainly reconsidered some of them but I can’t accept the totally subjective ‘anything goes’ attitude (I can’t in anything, to be honest). It’s too easy, too insubstantial, too like inadequate wishful-thinking and it leaves so much ignored that I know to be there. So I’m desperately trying to untangle all the thoughts in my head and put them back together in some sensible way but this is when I find that I can’t sleep properly anymore and that I’m at work with lots to do but can concentrate only on what’s in my head and not what’s in front of me.

There are other things too that are actually troubling me more because they’re fundamental to what I consider my life and my profession to be all about. But conclusions are so hard to come by and I can’t build my life on uncertainty.

OK, so this is what I (kind of) believe:

That most, if not all, people are ‘intelligent’. To use an example, I reckon everyone over the age of 17 and quite a few
people younger than that are capable of reading ‘War and Peace’, understanding it, analysing it, and getting something from it. For ‘War and Peace’ you could substitute ‘economic theory’, ‘political philosophy’, ‘Shakespeare’, ‘Japanese Opera’, and as many more examples as you want. Politically, I believe in making things as democratic as possible, in giving everyone a say. I’m quite attracted to ideas like Demarchy and Deliberative Democracy. Trouble is, opponents of these ideas can shoot them down easily because, put frankly, lots of people aren’t up to the job. In my opinion this is not because they’re not intelligent enough, it’s because they either can’t be bothered to learn any more than the bare minumum or because they haven’t had the opportunity or a combination of both. I want to make my life about defeating this and
about making people fit to take part in a proper democracy (as opposed to one where we let other people think for us).  This means informing people about the political system and the culture in which they take part and encouraging them to think and debate. In taking this attitude I am being very anti-Libertarian, quite Paternalistic, rather unfashionable, and (allegedly) patronising.  But I can’t help it. It’s just the way things seem to be when I look at it honestly.

The criticisms I’ve come across of this view seem to be:

1) Actually most people aren’t particularly intelligent. Myself and my well-educated thinking friends are so because we were born to be so and not because we were educated as such. The ‘mass’ of people will always be self-serving and ignorant and to try to ‘educate’ them in misguided.

2) Often the manifestation of my beliefs is pretty horrible. I remember being part of a ‘reader development’ project in a public library where an elderly lady had ploughed her way through some family-saga type thing and the colleague leading the ‘group discussion’ pressured her into saying something deep about it when perhaps there was little more to say than that she had enjoyed it and it had reminded her of her wartime experiences. We were made to applaud her for saying this and my colleague patted her on the back as if to say ‘well done dear, you’ve read a book and had a thought about it, you really are progressing’. It was excruciating. I felt angered on the woman’s behalf but she herself seemed unaware and was perfectly chuffed at the attention. So I then in turn became troubled by the idea that I was being patronising in assuming I could take up her cause when she was not aware she had one.  

… OK, now I’m losing the thread of what I was saying. The sky has gone totally black, I can smell smoke and it’s thundering. All most strange and disconcerting. I think I need some food. And to ring Andrew back again. I keep getting all obsessive and then I speak to him and I calm down and decide that none of it really matters …

…ooh lightning…