Quote of the Day: 9/17/08

I was having a particularly down night and then I came across this quote, which helped shift my mood.  Gotta love Michael Chabon. 

"At some point in its history, the idea of entertainment lost its sense of mutuality, of exchange.  One either entertains or is entertained, is the actor or the fan.  As with all one-way relationships, grave imbalances accrue.  The entertainer balloons with a dangerous need for approval, validation, love, and box office; while the one entertained sinks into a passive spectatorship, vacantly munching great big salty handfuls right from the foil bag.  We can't take pleasure in a work of art, not in good conscience, without accepting the implicit intention of the artist to please us.  But somewhere along the course of the past century or so, as the great machinery of pleasure came online, turning out products that, however pleasurable, suffer increasingly from the ills of mass manufacture -- spurious innovation, inferior materials, alienated labor, and an excess of market research -- that intention came to seem suspect, unworthy, and somehow cold and hungry at its core, like the eyes of a brilliant comedian.  Lunch counters, muffler shops, dinner theaters, they aim to please; but writers? No self-respecting literary genius, even an occasional maker of avowed entertainments like Graham Greene, would ever describe him- or herself as primarily an "entertainer."  An entertainer is a man in a sequined dinner jacket, singing "She's a Lady" to a hall filled with women rubber-banding their underpants up onto the stage. 

Yet entertainment -- as I define it, pleasure and all -- remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each of us from everybody else.  The best response to those who would cheapen and exploit it is not to disparage or repudiate but to reclaim entertainment as a job fit for artists and for audiences, a two-way exchange of attention, experience, and the universal hunger for connection." 

- Michael Chabon, "Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story" from Maps and Legends

Comments

[Michael]

I too have just finished reading the essay in question. I love it. Particularly after just having read Stephen King's book on writing.

[Geoffrey]

I've always instinctively shuddered whenever I've turned up to the gig and found myself to be part of the night's 'entertainment' -- thanks for finding something to help clarify why.

[Tania]

How IS your writing going these days Matt? Are you studying writing at all in school (or anywhere else for that matter).

[Tania]

And to clarify, i mean writing as in "creative writing" as opposed to "journalism", if such distinctions mean anything anyway.

[M]

Hey Tania! Great to hear from you.

My writing is creeping along. Taking an independent study course right now called "Writing and the Editorial Process," which I LOVE. It's a grammar/structural intensive where I write non-fiction essays and then nitpick them with my professor; very helpful...in a very tedious way. :)

Haven't had much time for much creative writing, but I hope to in the near future. A few exciting developments in the "journalism" department though, as I just finished writing my first article for Playbill! More on that soon. Hope all is well!