I've begun to realize, as I start to encounter reviews of Memory Sickness, that I appreciate reader analysis much more than praise. Complimentary adjectives make for good newspaper copy ("Powerful..."; "Extraordinary..."), but they leave one wondering whether the reader has paid close enough attention. It is when I see a reader really wrestle with the content of a story that I feel most gratified. It is validating when, for example, one reviewer notices that "The Ballad of John Gray," the final story in the collection, "thematically and even plotwise manages to unite the disparate threads of this collection," or when another reviewer notices that the book is fundamentally about the "brittle connections" between people who live in the same city, who sometimes even inhabit the same homes.
If there is one thing that Facebook proves, it's that "liking" anything is cheap and easy. What a shamefully dull response to all the phenomena of the world! Thumbs up, high-five, affirmation, affirmation! One of my friends who is a hold-out from Facebook said that he would join us in the social networking scene when they introduce a "need" button.
Sarah wrote a paper over the summer that deals with the confusing nomenclature of contemporary fine art, specifically when it deals with beauty. "Beautiful" is a sort of insult in the fine arts, as it implies that what one is aspiring to is the merely ornamental, and that it strives for nothing but to pleasantly adorn the wall of a museum. As she points out, though, any serious artist always attends to the harmonies of form, color, and composition that exemplify beauty, even when the subject is meant to evoke an intellectual response (or a disturbing one).
I wouldn't go so far as to call it an insult, but I must admit that "beautiful" to me does fit into a category of thing that I will call "praise that is not really praise." Especially as I find myself writing more and more about things that are painful to contemplate, such as the Cambodian holocaust, to hear my work described as "beautiful" fills me with the anxiety of an artist who could be accused of beautifying the misery of others. I have to admit that I do not think of Memory Sickness as beautiful. I think of it as painful but necessary, the itch and tingle that comes from a healing wound. Strange pleasure from an unpredictable place, but welcome.
Praise that is not really praise:
(1) "I usually hate short stories... but I really liked your collection."
Translation: "I was so surprised to actually enjoy this book that you spent three years crafting, despite the fact that I have no love or respect for the art-form to which you've dedicated your whole creative life."
(2) "This character was so believable. Was it based upon a real person?"
Translation: "I don't believe you are capable of writing convincing characters unless you just wrote down what you saw and heard others do and say."
(3) "I really like how it isn't all plot-driven, that these are just glimpses into the everyday lives of these characters."
Translation: "I entirely missed how the internal conflict of the character manifested in an action within the story, but I convinced myself that I understood it anyway."
(4) "As I was reading, I kept thinking what a good writer you are!"
Translation: "I was not paying attention to the story, because I was continually distracted by my own unfamiliarity with literary fiction."
Haha. Those last four examples cracked me up.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I don't think "beautiful" SHOULD feel like praise that isn't praise, but I understand why it has become so. I think the problem is (and I think you're kind of getting at this with your FB "liking") is that these words are so overused that they've become cheapened. Weighty words used by people for whom, perhaps, words don't mean nearly enough.
The thing I thought about was how, when I was in college, I'd never yet been called "beautiful" by a man, and I thought, how wonderful it would be if a man I loved would call me beautiful. Today, actually, I had a conversation with a girl friend of mine, and we laughed over how icky it feels when a man on the street calls you beautiful. There's something decidedly sleazy about that, we said. But then we thought how in contrast, when a man you love calls you beautiful, how it almost feels like that words is the best thing you could ever be called.
Where I'm going with this, is, I think sometimes people use words because they can't think of any other way to say what they really mean, or people use words flippantly. I think the way you described your book, "as painful but necessary, the itch and tingle that comes from a healing wound. Strange pleasure from an unpredictable place, but welcome" _is__ actually a form of beauty. Not a kind of sacchrine beauty, but a more authentic kind of beauty. Ugly things are very often beautiful, taken in the right light, actually.
Eep, I've gone on too long! I just thought it was interesting, what you were saying (btw, "interesting" is another one of those vague words devoid of meaning).
Btw, welcome to the blogworld! It's Karissa, btw (no idea if my name will show up).
Yeah, it boils down to the fact that I don't know how to take a compliment. Thanks for the dose of common sense.
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