Alfke.PASA@Xerox.ARPA (08/21/85)
From: Peter Alfke <Alfke.pasa@Xerox.ARPA> Davis Tucker: > How many "enjoyable" works have allowed you or forced you to walk > a mile in another man's shoes ("Soul On Ice"), or understand the > nature of death ("The Death Of Ivan Ilych") ...etc... Paul Chisholm: >Do you want a list? Fiction can be "entertaining" in some sense and >still do all those things. Okay here we go ... "Catch-22" is one of the funniest books I have ever read, but it did broaden my understanding of what it means to confront death. Thomas Pynchon's "V." was hilarious in places, engrossing throughout, and parts of it (the African reminiscence) rubbed my nose in what we humans have done to each other. I could probably go on and name several more. There seem to be two untruths going around: (1) ART is boring, dictated by omniscient critics, and pretentious; and (2) ENTERTAINMENT is nonserious, unimportant fluff ingested mindlessly by the masses. Both ART and ENTERTAINMENT are subjective judgments (we've gone over this before), which to a certain extent can be agreed-upon, since most of us share a cultural background. The two concepts are, as Ken Moreau (I believe) put it, orthogonal: either can exist without the other. Part of a critic's function is to describe whether or not the book is (in the critic's opinion, and thus, more likely than not, in yours) Art and/or Entertainment. Any of the four possibilities (except, I think, neither) is perfectly OK -- as long as that's what the book intends itself to be. Books that are written as art, but are patent failures at it, are most often supremely wretched, unless they then become unintentionally entertaining. Failures at entertainment are also usually pretty grim. I'm not sure about books that try to be both but fail at one. (Can't think of any examples right off.) By and large, I would expect that they would fail too, but there may be some that still work in the surviving category. Enough rambling. What do you think? --Peter Alfke
jimb@ISM780B.UUCP (08/23/85)
Hear, here. I second the motion, especially about the expectations of what Art and Entertainment are. Well said, Mr. Alfke. -- from the bewildered musings of Jim Brunet at UUCP: !decvax!cca!ima!jimb (?!) ARPA: ima!jimb@CCA-UNIX.ARPA (maybe this works)