Writers: A Room of Our Own

Let’s look at this question from the point of view of the consumer. Forget all those who stand behind the work of art. Or just “the work.” Forget the choreographer, forget the sculptor, forget the author. What is left, then, is the aesthetic response of the consumer. If that response is “this is beauty,” then isn’t that the ultimate word?

I like your last adjective best. I’m not sure what “complete” means in this context. I suppose to me it means there was a goal and the poet reached it, for himself and for the reader. Or, perhaps it means there’s nothing extraneous and nothing left out. Or maybe it means that the poet “earned” the final line — there is no god in the machine who steps out to finish the action; the poet’s arrangement of his elements needs no outside help.
Ah. Maybe that’s it. When the job is done, all the bills are paid, the contract is fulfilled, the books are balanced. We can turn out the lights and go to sleep. Maybe with nightmares, but asleep still.

Then, David, I suppose it would be in order for me to ask for your definition of “Beauty.”

Yes. And yes.
If you can’t laugh at yourself and your own pretensions, you cannot understand yourself, your effect on others, or the problems and agonies of the mass of people living in warzones like poverty and drugs and constant gunfire, etc.
David, I’ve been thinking. You have, often, a dark view of the world. Yet I don’t come away from your posts depressed or angry. Oftentimes, after reading your posts, I come away with a smile. Does that mean I can laugh at YOU?

I feel much the same as you do about reading in translation. And, your coinage “plot without the poetry stopped me in my tracks. What a precise rendering of the problems of the translators, bless their presence.

What I know for sure is that the NEW YORKER arrives faithfully each week in my mailbox and then sits on my kitchen counter for three weeks until I throw it out, unread. The wretched stories, it seems to me, were built upon a model the writers have seen before — in the NEW YORKER.
But, I’ll admit: I’d got nuts if the NEW YORKER printed one of my short stories.
So, there it is: the NEW YORKER still has vast prestige and a targeted audience who will buy your other works.
I’m afraid I’m a hypocrite.

What you say also applies to a loosely grouped bunch of poets:

New Yorker poems are a breed apart. They are very “precious” and “sleek” and “usually about the great outdoors,” odd in a magazine called THE NEW YORKER.

I know what you mean, but there are some screenwriters with enough clout and talent that they can actually, in a very real sense, lay claim to finishing the project and enjoy “creative ownership” of the film. Example: Dalton Trumbo and EXODUS.

Is that a good thing? That change in the magazine?

Oh, David! I think we have to look at the final product (not the artist or artists) to determine if any work of art, including film, is truly creative. MEMENTO, for example, is a flawless film, a lasting work of art, one that bears revisiting — unlike the Mona Lisa, which is a freak show that can only support one viewing. You get there, you see the painting is small and dark, you’re disappointed, and you leave. I’ve seen basketball games so close to beauty that I regard them as works of art, masterpieces. I feel strongly that our ideas about art and creativity should be inclusive. We can trash specific works, but not, I think, whole genres.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by  Polly Whitney.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by  Polly Whitney.

I read LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA in translation (English). I’m not fluent in Spanish; I’ve only just enough understanding to get by on the streets of Taxco.