[The post below uses the words author and artist more or less interchangeably. Apologies to those in either camp who might dispute the lumping-together.]
A long-time friend and I have kidded each other for years about being disingenuous. This started, as I recall, when I once teased her in terms like, “You’re even more disingenuous than you think you are” or maybe, contrariwise, “Don’t look at me like that. You’re not all that disingenuous.”
(Oh, stop. Like you don’t have any weird in-jokes with your friends.)
Exactly how it all started doesn’t really matter. The point of the running joke is that the word disingenuous seems (at least to my friend and me) to mean, sounds like it means, sort of the opposite of what it actually does mean.
(Embedding it in some kind of complicated syntax, as in either of the two possible statements above, makes the meaning even more slippery.)
The word gratuitous is like disingenuous: it seems to mean something convenient, so people grab for it even when it’s not really the right word… or when it’s the right word, but for the wrong reasons.
All of which (whew) has been triggered by a post over at the writing in the water blog, where the pseudonymous “mapelba” (who is both an artist and a writer) has asked some unnerving questions. Questions like these:
Can art or story be too pretty to be any good?… What are your expectations when you walk into a museum or open a new book? What expectations do you have for your own work?
Well, they unnerved me, anyhow. I tried twice to answer them in a comment but both times broke down and deleted what I’d typed. Part of my difficulty (as I’ve said before) is that I tend to focus on “writing pretty” first, and worry about “writing story” later.
And part of my difficulty lies in that word “expectations.” There’s a big rub there, no? To wit: The expectations of the work’s creator and those of its audience cannot be assumed to match.
If you’re an author, you really have no idea what your audience expects of you. Even if you’re Stephen King or Nora Roberts or Andy Warhol (or his ghost), one of those artists who mine a particular vein time after time (no matter how fresh the “approach” — to the characters, the plot, the media)… even if you’re such an artist, it’s still a crapshoot. Your best work in your own eyes might be the work which everyone else hates — for no reason other than that they just didn’t get what you were up to (this time, or ever).
On the other side of the transaction, likewise, you have no idea what the work’s creator wants from you (other than, presumably, your money and/or general approval). You don’t know what the artist intended. You may think you know. You may even have very good reasons for thinking you do — including the words of the artist himself. But for all you really know, he could just be making up his “intention” to mask his own confusion (the disingenuous bastard).
So what about gratuitous?
You know how critics of a given work, or of a given artist, often use the word gratuitous? People talk about things like “gratuitous violence” or “gratuitous gore” — or shock, slapstick, profanity, whatever. But when they say such things, they don’t usually mean gratuitous to mean what it really means. They mean too ______ for my taste.
So what’s gratuitous really mean? It has two senses:
- “Freely given,” i.e., it costs nothing to the receiver. This is rarely how we see the word used anymore; if anything, people are complaining because the “gratuitous [whatever]” has cost them more than they think it’s worth.
- “Uncalled for by the circumstances” — not just, “I never asked for this!” but, “I know all the circumstances involved, and none of them call for this this!”
Number 2 is the meaning which comes closer to what people seem to be getting at. But it’s an impossible claim, because there’s no way to know “all the circumstances involved” — particularly the artist’s intentions.
And that’s why I had such a hard time answering “mapelba’s” questions, I think. I never have any idea what an author intended. And, as an author, I have no idea how to live up to the expectations of more than one reader: myself.
So what do I expect of my own work? It’s got to interest me, entertain me. (I hate being bored. I’d rather hate a book, song, etc., than be bored by it.) The best I can hope for in other readers is that they’ll expect — want — the same things. Other than that, I’m just driving myself crazy.
The song below isn’t a classic in the sense that it’s complex. But I couldn’t help thinking of it a few minutes ago, so it’s included here. (Lyrics below.)
[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:46 long.]
Lyrics:
Garden Party
(words, music, and performance by Rick Nelson)I went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories and play our songs again
When I got to the garden party, they all knew my name
No one recognized me, I didn’t look the sameCHORUS
But it’s all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourselfPeople came from miles around, everyone was there
Yoko brought her walrus, there was magic in the air
‘n’ over in the corner, much to my surprise
Mr. Hughes hid in Dylan’s shoes wearing his disguiseCHORUS
lott-in-dah-dah-dah, lot-in-dah-dah-dah
Played them all the old songs, thought that’s why they came
No one heard the music, we didn’t look the same
I said hello to “Mary Lou,” she belongs to me
When I sang a song about a honky-tonk, it was time to leaveCHORUS
lot-dah-dah-dah (lot-dah-dah-dah)
lot-in-dah-dah-dahSomeone opened up a closet door and out stepped Johnny B. Goode
Playing guitar like a-ringin’ a bell and lookin’ like he should
If you gotta play at garden parties, I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang, I rather drive a truckCHORUS
lot-dah-dah-dah (lot-dah-dah-dah)
lot-in-dah-dah-dah‘n’ it’s all right now, learned my lesson well
You see, ya can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself
______________________
P.S. No, “Garden Party” is not a particularly complex song — musically or lyrically. But it does have an interesting history, including some multi-layered meanings. See The Straight Dope and Wikipedia for more info.
Jules says
I love how you take questions posed at others’ blogs and respond in entire posts. Really, that’s—-arguably—the best thing about this blog.
Miriam says
“Can art or story be too pretty to be any good?”
That’s kind of a silly question, isn’t it? Some people are uplifted and comforted by corny kitten posters, some prefer a novel like “The Great Gatsby”
It’s the effect on the readers that counts, isn’t it?
DarcKnyt says
Challenging questions indeed. I can see I don’t spend anywhere near enough time thinking about art and writing. No wonder I’m in a dry spot.
marta says
Well, to address Miriam’s question, I’d say that prettiness does have an effect on the audience. Oh, I just can’t articulate what I mean. Some writer. It is totally valid to be uplifted by corny cat posters. I’ve got no problem with that. And I don’t want to make corny posters or write The Great Gatsby (though I do like the novel).
This just leads me down to the what-is-good question? Does liking something make it good? Does being accepted by the establishment make something good? blah, blah…
I shall make myself crazy.
Anyway, hijack away. It is a great compliment. I like your thoughts on the matter.
John says
Jules: Thanks. But I’m always nervous about siphoning off a discussion over here, instead of honoring the original blogger with an extended comment on the original post…
Can just never figure out if commenting at this sort of length constitutes an “honor.” :)
Miriam: I think it may be the old style-vs.-substance question. Some works with a lot to “say” may fail the “Is it art?” test because they’re (to use the original word) too pretty. And other works may be dazzling as hell to look at, but not able to survive close consideration.
There’s a Food Network cook-off I’ve seen in which the competitors aren’t chefs in the traditional sense. They’re called food designers; they start with regular recipes, but their goal is to make the food photograph well, for magazines and other media. This involves gimmicks like substituting non-foods for actual edibles — slightly colored soap suds, say, to top off a mug of beer whose foam won’t survive the hot studio lights. Or maybe they’ll apply epoxy resin to a steak to make it look mouth-wateringly juicy.
Is the end result of a food-design competition “too pretty to be good”? Depends on what you want it to be good for… but it sure isn’t (to borrow the tagline of another program) Good Eats!
Darc: Well, don’t jump to conclusions… There’s a fine line between “thinking” and “wasting time,” and I fall way too often on the wrong side of it!
marta: In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the narrator — besides recounting a motorcycle trip — is also reflecting on his past. Now a technical writer, he was a university professor of English, and somewhere in that past he became obsessed with what he called Quality (with a capital Q). It was exactly “the what-is-good question.”
Let’s say any given work of art has an allotted volume of Quality: the sum total of everything that may be good about it. Two components of its Quality might be (say) style and meaning, and the artist has a sort of bass/treble control which allow him to simultaneously dial up the style and reduce the meaning, or vice-versa. Some works come out better if they’re heavy in one direction, some the other, and some only if in close balance. What a given audience member prefers — bass over treble, rhythm over melody, representational art over expressionism, etc. — doesn’t say anything about the total Quality of the piece. It just says “Here’s what I like.”
Some of the densest and most eloquent book reviews really boil down to no more than “Here’s what I like.” There are many jobs I’d hate to have besides writing; full-time book reviewing is one of them, because it’s so hard to talk about the overall Quality of the work under review, without just arguing (in however many pretty words) that my preference is the “right” one.
Oh, and btw, you’ll be amused to know that the narrator of ZatAoMM did indeed make himself crazy — literally ended up in a strait jacket. Careful! :)
cynth says
One of the things I like about reviewing books is that I can render my “take” on something and hope that others will either use what I wrote as a starting point, or ignore me all together and think what they like.
I’d like to believe that none of us are blindly following each other, holding coattails and hopefully avoiding the potholes and pratfalls of life because of what “the other guy” said, did or wrote (or even drew!). That was always my beef with people who screamed about what shows were on TV. If you don’t like them don’t watch them. Turn them off and read a book (a novel idea–ugh, sorry). The prodding of the individual’s mind to come up with their own view, their own vision based on past experience and prejudices is indeed what makes art, any art…well, art.
One of the questions, the “too pretty” one reminds me of a woman I know. She is really, really nice. She seems too nice almost. She seems ingenuous in her “niceness”. But she is sincere and it’s so unbelievable that someone that nice can really be that way without any hidden agenda. Is she really that nice? Can anyone be that good, all the time? In my way of looking at the world, no, but she is the exception that proves the rule, I guess. It’s like you doubt the sincerity of the art, because it’s not rough enough or something.
In reference to the song, I think that Ricky Nelson singing it seems ironic–that’s the version I have on an oldies CD.
So I’ve gone on and on, and I’ll stop now before the words crash in on me.
John says
cynth: One of the demonstrations that humans are naturally story-loving (and -telling) creatures, I think, is the “too good to be true” impulse. Hunting around for ulterior motives, imagining hidden agendas and such — those are all ways to make a better story.
reCaptcha: Mrs smite: Cruella de Ville’s married sister.