One thing we should toss out: Marie Arana’s rant April 20, 2009

This weekend, Marie Arana wrote an editorial for the Washington Post detailing how the Nobel Prize in Literature is decided by a bunch of anti-American meanies and we should get rid of it. I don’t have a problem, necessarily, with her thesis, but her reasoning is so shallow and strange that I had to draft a response:

Marie Arana’s derisive depiction of the Nobel Prize in Literature in the Post’s feature “10 Things We Should Toss” was such a thinly cloaked move towards inserting politics where there are none that I’m surprised you ran it. To read an argument that several of the Academy’s selections are out of touch with modern literature would be interesting; however, Arana’s editorial concludes that we should dismiss the Nobel Prize in Literature because a) the academy is snobby towards Americans and b) they have failed to recognize several great authors.

While compelling works such as Lolita stand out among their peers, they do not confer the sense of “idealism” the literature prize seeks to reward. The prize is awarded to those whose body of work, and specific work during the year of their award, conveys a sense of idealism– not excellence alone. Books are not rewarded solely for their literary merit; they’re rewarded for meeting Nobel criteria. These are not left-wing or right-wing beliefs. They don’t even register on the conventional American political spectrum. This editorial is the literary equivalent of demanding that a popular snack be re-named Freedom Fries.

Additionally, the Academy is under no mandate to be kind towards American attempts; take a look at the NYT bestsellers list and you will see little American proclivity towards literary fiction. Suggesting the elimination of a worldwide literary prize because an Academy member was snide towards Americans is the very type of provincial hubris that frustrates much of the rest of the world.

Selecting a few controversial choices for commentary and deigning the Prize irrelevant because of those choices is also disingenuous. I would say that I found it disappointing that Salman Rushdie was not recognized, but recognizing him would certainly be providing a reward to someone who meets the Nobel criteria and whose cause could be construed as “liberal”– so I have no doubt she is pleased about his exclusion. Marie Arana failed to mention whether J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, or Toni Morrison fall within her 15 deserving laureates, but I would be shocked to hear otherwise. If Arana wishes to argue against the Nobel Prize again, I hope she will choose meaningful criteria for her critique, and will provide an example of a worldwide literary prize that does a better job.

…Thoughts?

A Mercy December 5, 2008

A quick note: Toni Morrison’s new book, A Mercy, is a bullet where her other books are adrift… though it’s sharper and leaner than Paradise or Song of Solomon, it’s still Morrison at the top of her game. It still gives you chills, it still weaves together all of its threads at the end, and it opens up those vast and deep caverns of womens’ experience and human bondage that take immense courage to peer into. That hurt is so vast, it threatens to overwhelm us, but Morrison has the courage to bear those stories and bring them into permanent record with the written word. But I digress…

I had the opportunity to see Morrison speak last night at 6th and I Synagogue in DC. She is gracious and sharp; although she’s a Nobel laureate, she is humbled by the grand reception her new novel has received. Morrison read selections from A Mercy for about 20 minutes, and went on to answer questions from the audience. She spoke about the way she felt the morning after Obama’s election: the curious absence she wasn’t expecting, a feeling that a steel band she didn’t know had been wrapped around her forehead was lifted. Asked for her response to a literary critic who says she writes too much about slavery, Morrison simply whipped back: “Who?”

She elaborated on why the door can never be closed on the history of genocide and human bondage, but her one-word response was enough to blow that criticism out of the water. Besides, she’s only written on slavery twice. I can’t blame those critics for feeling overwhelmed by Beloved, though– it haunts me still.

Maybe that’s why people brought copies of every single book she’s written, even the nonfiction pieces in paperback or library sale copies. Morrison was patient and kind, and she signed everyone’s books, uncomplaining, for about 90 minutes after the event. I brought two, and was overwhelmed when she signed my copies of Love and A Mercy. We are so lucky to have Morrison among us, writing and teaching, and being kind enough to meet and speak to her fans. Oh, and everyone should run out and buy this new book… because it’s great.

Art, like pornography: you know it when you see it? April 17, 2008

I’m all for pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable in art. Especially when it offends, but doesn’t necessarily hurt, anyone, I have few qualms about contentious installations. Andres Serrano’s crucifix of Jesus submerged in urine (Piss Christ), for example, doesn’t fit my definition of “master works”; nevertheless, if a gallery wants post it and some collector wants to buy it, be my guest. But for my taste, what follows is completely over the line.

Costa Rican artist Guillermo Vargas Habacuc decided it would be acceptable– further, artistic– to take a stray dog from the streets, give it the ironic name “Natividad,” and string it to a wire in the corner of a gallery– in fact, the gallery space within Costa Rica’s National Center for Culture. His artistic decision, for this presentation, was to deprive the dog of food and water, causing the diseased animal to slowly starve to death under the eyes of gallery patrons. Let me take the sugar-coating off that for you: this dude tied a dog to a wall so people could watch it die.

And they did.

Yes, a few people stopped to protest. But the vast majority continued through the exhibit, obliviously or uncomfortably ignoring the incredible suffering before their eyes. In my sentimental view, there is a special level of wrongness in mistreating an animal; beyond the fundamental wrong in abusing any living thing, there’s the extra layer that the animal cannot rationalize why, or even that, it is being tortured. It’s an especially sick form of abuse.

Habacuc claims that the dog would have died without his intervention, and further says the purpose of the exhibit was to highlight human suffering (indeed, the point of all art?). Some gallery patrons justified this torture for its artistic message. And some critics enjoyed it so much that Habacuc has been invited to re-create the exhibit in Honduras.

Obviously, I don’t consider this exhibit to be anything more than a sick trick aimed at shock factor. The knee-jerk reaction of disgust, compounded by some high-minded ideals about artistic expression and the historic persecution of visionary artists, are my best guesses as to what mindset led others to label this exhibit art. But the exhibit does bring two distinct topics worth probing: How do we define art, and mob mentality, or what will we walk right past?

Much great art depicts or deals with suffering. As a society, we don’t shrink away from images of emaciated children, abused animals, or neglected neighborhoods. We find these images instructive and emotion-inducing, and they serve to teach us about the recognition of suffering. There are moments, however, when artists take this pursuit so far that their actions cease to be art. I can only hope that Habacuc is misguided and genuinely believes his work is a visionary example of suffering, because otherwise he is a flat-out psychopath and abuser of animals. To passively allow that dog to continue suffering in the streets, to photograph its suffering without intervention, or to allow myriad stray animals to remain wild are all deemed generally socially acceptable behaviors. Confining the dog and consciously deciding to allow it to suffer is something different. Let me be clear about this: Because a work generates outrage and demands self-reflection does not deem something art, or else genocide and FGM would be considered art.

Further, those who chose to walk past the exhibit without attempting to free the animal (and worse, those who wish to re-create the exhibit) display an interesting example of mob mentality. In a big enough group, something that assaults the conscience of the individual becomes “someone else’s problem.” A classic example: You’re more likely to assist a person who has tripped on a deserted sidewalk and dropped a sheaf of papers than you are to assist a Metro passenger who’s spilled their briefcase at the height of pedestrian rush hour. I’d like to think I’d be overcome by emotion if I saw such an exhibit, that I would immediately begin working to free the dog or that I’d ask a curator if the dog had only been given the appearance of suffering. But I can’t promise how I would react; after all, hundreds saw the exhibit and the dog still died.

Finally, consider the Joshua Bell example. He’s a lauded violinist (responsible for the soundtrack to The Red Violin) who gave a concert in a DC Metro station, for free. On a Stradivarius. As an experiment. The question: Who will acknowledge this musician, and why? The result: Less than 50 people out of a thousand paid him the time of day. I suspect that the passengers who hurried by, not making eye contact, were experiencing a bit of desensitization mixed with some of that same mob mentality. Just as something beautiful doesn’t always register, so something awful doesn’t always register with a single face in the crowd.

But forcing people to acknowledge everyday horror can be done by something other than killing a dog for show. When it comes to defining trash disguised as art, I’ll appropriate the words of Justice Potter Stewart on pornography: “I know it when I see it.” And that’s all I see in this exhibit.

Update: In another bizarre twist, a Yale art student claims to have performed repeated abortions on herself in order to “inspire some sort of discourse.” If you’re going to do this, at least make damn sure you have an articulate statement on the purpose… Well, at least she’ll probably never be able to reproduce.