Imagination and Art

In an interview in the Star Tribune, Gregory Maguire says of his Oz,

"It is so real in my imagination that I could go Google Oz with it just like Google Earth. I can zone in to any little corner and find something fascinating. The place feels so real, with its own history and population, its peculiar strains of beliefs and imagination and social progress. It's the vehicle that has allowed me to open up the most far-seeing apparatus of my imagination."

I too have the ability to conceive in my imagination entirely new worlds.  Since childhood I've imagined vivid, detailed worlds, thriving in my mind, rich with imaginative, created reality.  My obsessive-compulsiveness also leads me to imagine all sorts of scenarios occurring in my life, all sorts of situations, all sorts of fantasies, hopeful or frightening or tedious.  In my mind, all sorts of events and places and people have existed, created but not real.

And I don't assume I'm special in this way: I think many, if not most, if not all, of us are capable of creating worlds in our minds.  Of imagining that which is not with rich detail.

What I lack, and what most people lack, is the aesthetic ability to express my created worlds to others.  I may be able to convey what I imagine, but not with eloquence or beauty or real art.  I cannot express it well in fiction or poetry, nor do I have much ability with visual art.  I don't believe I have aesthetic ability (though maybe someday I will find it, I don't know).  I can create worlds in my mind, but I cannot artfully give my world to you.

And this is what separates a writer's imagination from a non-writer's imagination (I imagine).  It is not the ability to create, but the ability to aesthetically express that creation to others.

(And in my opinion, anyway, Gregory Maguire does have that ability to aesthetically express his created world).

Wicked!

It's really happening now. Because I'm obsessive-compulsive, I haven't really believed it was happening until I knew we could get a mid-week babysitter. But now it's really immanent: my wife and I are going to Wicked at the Orpheum.

As it happens, I'm currently reading Gregory Maguire's third Wicked book, A Lion Among Men (well, as currently as my freshman composition papers allow). I was disappointed in Son of a Witch and wasn't terribly interested in the Cowardly Lion's life, but the book jacket description made it seem interesting enough. Yackle and all.

One reason I read is to enter a world that is not my own. I don't consider this escapism for yet another reason I read is for a deeper confrontation with myself, and that confrontation often comes at the level of imagination.

Wicked!

Wicked is coming to Minneapolis in November, and my wife got us two tickets. We're thrilled.

Gregory Maguire's novel is one of my favorites. Once he had the idea, he could have written an easy book. Instead he wrote a novel rich in complexities, mysteries, and ambiguities.

We've been listening to the music for the musical for two years now. It'll be great fun seeing the stage show and knowing all the music (that's how I prefer to watch musicals live).

Summer Reading: Son of a Witch, and what is Romanticism?

Gregory Maguire's Son of a Witch
If you check my profile, you'll see that Maguire's Wicked is listed as one of my favorite books, right there among Hamlet and Crime and Punishment.

As you might imagine, I looked to Son of a Witch, Wicked's sequel, with high hopes. For the most part, these high hopes were disappointed. Why?

The protagonist is rather dull; there's nothing terribly interesting about Liir at all. As I neared the end of the novel, I began to see that Liir's lack of personality throughout may have been intentional, a critical element of the themes of maturation and growth into individuality. However, it remains that he is dull.

The middle portion of the book, "The Service," is very, very boring. It was during this section I considered giving the book up.

But I could live with that. The sad thing is, what worked in Wicked just didn't work in Son of a Witch (or wasn't attempted). The ambiguities are there, but whereas Wicked's mysteries feel like deep, soul-wrenching truths, Son of a Witch's mysteries feel like forced ambiguity. The lack of action through large portions that helps give Wicked its strength was Son of a Witch's weakness.

Still, it has its good points. It is frequently surprising, the last long section of the book is very good, and there seems to be a parallel in the Apostle Emperor to the way Christianity is fused with American imperialism. But if Wicked is an A, Son of a Witch is a C: enjoyable in parts, but often dull, some good writing and interesting theme, but without the stirring depths.

pre-Romanticism
The typical narrative of literary history has British Romanticism beginning with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Of course, as in all intellectual history, there can be an arbitrary nature to how we define epochs of thinking. I've heard critics say that the threads of Romanticism appear in Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," which is true. I can also see its threads further back, in a poem like Sir Edward Dyer's "My Mind to Me a Kingdom is" (which seems to have deliberate correlation to Shakespeare's "I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space). But of course, given that the Romantics adored Milton and often fused the spirit Milton's poetry into their own poetry, Romanticism can go further back.

Defining literary eras has a certain usefulness; the generalization helps us to make sense of literary history in a broad sense. But of course, we have to remember that we are partly CREATING these eras; it's not that they exist in and of themselves, but we examine the work produced in an era and decide what is significant, what should be read now, what had influence. There were non-Romantic poets writing in early 19th century England, I'm sure--it's just that we haven't deemed them worth the study in a survey of English poetry. As with history, we create it--we pick and choose what is worth defining an era by.

Humans: the animals that get bored

What is the purpose of literature? I like the Marxist explanations (to teach cultural norms, to reinforce or subvert dominant ideology, etc.). I like the Existential-Spiritual explanations (to explore what it means to be human, to find the meaning of life, etc.). But those explanations don't seem quite there.

What I think about the meaning of literature, I picture a bunch of people sitting around a fire as somebody recites The Odyssey. I start thinking of long nights between days of work. And it all becomes clear just what the purpose of literature is.

To pass the time.

Literature exists to relieve boredom. My guess is that ancient people wanted something to entertain themselves with in the times between when they had things to do. Thus, literature.

Sure, it does other things. We've found all sorts of new ways to entertain ourselves and avoid boredom, and yet literature persists and wil persist because its meaning and purposes are deep. And yet, still literature's primary purpose is to pass the time, to entertain us, to relieve boredom.

Literature exists to pass the time (so do games/sports, which probably have a longer histoyr in human existence than literature, so don't be too snobbish in dismissing the pointlessness of sports and the supposed shallowness of those of us who follow and cherish them closely).

Anyway, today is a department meeting, so even though I'm still over two weeks from teaching my first class, I'm considering today the symbolic end to summer. So here are capsule reviews of the books I passed the time with this summer.

The World's Wife, by Carol Ann Duffy
I think it's silly that states have things like a state bird, a state flower, and all that crap. These are the clues that always stump me on crosswords. So I've started making up our household items. Our official household lighting fixture is lamp. Our official household mammal is cat. And if we have an household poet laureate, it would be Carol Ann Duffy, a rare poet that my wife and I both love. Should we write her a letter informing her of the honor?

Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, by Roland Bainton
A conventional Lutheran biography of the man that does a good job providing historical context.

Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History, by Erik Erikson
It's a book of ideas as much as a biography, and a brilliant one at that.

Luther: Man Between the God and the Devil, by Heiko Oberman
Revisionist history that isn't utterly convincing, but is well-written and insightful.

A Gathering of Old Men, by Ernest Gaines
This novel takes place during one day, and in that day Gaines succeeds in describing the entire history of white-black relations in the South. An underrated achievement.

Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Frankly, I like The Bluest Eye better. It's an important book, though.

Operation Shylock: A Confession, by Philip Roth
Roth is growing on me. A good novel of ideas.

MacBeth, by William Shakespeare
The Bard gives you something new each time you read one of his plays. This time, the issue of gender roles and essence stuck out to me.

Spiral, by Koji Suzuki
Actually creepier than the first book.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by Tom Stoppard
Funny stuff. Very funny stuff.

Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
The play that inspired a generation of playwrights to write about two boobs sitting around inanely waiting is still probably the best one.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire
My favorite book I read this summer. Awe-inspiring. The soundtrack for the musical is wonderful, too.

Mantissa, by John Fowles
Certainly not Fowles' best or most important work, but he knows it (the title is from an old word meaning an addendum that may be minor or trivial). Still, he plays around.

Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
I wish Miller were a poet. He writes some really incredible sentences. But I don't like works of literature or film that are just about a bunch of stuff that happens.

Against Aestheticism II (or, my utilitarianism)

Some further additions to the ideas in the post below, Against Aestheticism.

More and more, my evaluation of art and literature is based on what I'll call an "abstract utilitarianianism." When I read a book or see a movie, I have to ask myself a central question. This question can be worded many different ways, but it comes down to this: "What is new in this work that I can take with me?" How that question is answered goes a long way toward how I feel about the work (but it isn't the total answer).

Let me look at recent things I've read and seen that can illustrate and articulate my abstract utilitarianism. I finally got around to reading Beckett's Waiting for Godot. I did not pull much new out of this; HOWEVER, I also recognize why. This play is brilliant, and there are two reasons I didn't pull much new out of it. First, this play is representative of a worldview I am already familiar with--indeed, a worldview I have imbibed and felt and studied for years. Secondly, this play is so influential on the theater and literature that followed it, I feel like I've read several works that were similar in nature. So while on the one hand I don't pull much new from it (though there is a lot of comedy that is sharp and fun), I am at least able to recognize why not.

I recently read Gregory Maguire's Wicked, and besides being the most fun book I've read in quite some time, there were some themes that I can take with, to continue mulling over. No, this novel didn't give me a lot to think about in regard to the nature of evil. However, several things stand out to me. The tension and ambiguity regarding the nature of control and choice in our lives. The tension and cohesion of opposites. There's something for me to claw onto and keep thinking about. Many things, actually.

Earlier this summer I read two books by African-American writers examining the legacy of slavery in the U.S., Toni Morrison's Beloved and Earnest Gaines' A Gathering of Old Men. These are important books for me to read. Why? Because I'm white. I do not know what it is like to experience racism against myself. I don't know the details, the emotions, the anxiety. I can only learn about this experience second-hand. Reading Toni Morrison teaches me about the internalizing nature of racism, about the deep impact of racism. That gives me something to take away. Books which show us another way of experiencing the world, that show us how somebody else might view human existence, are the most necessary books of all. There are two approaches to teaching literature. One approach is to find literature students can relate to. This is appealing for students and to the teacher, because it can spark student reactions. But another didactic purpose of literature exists: to show students perspectives other than their own. That, I think, is the more important. What do students get out of RELATING to a work of literature? Something, I'm sure, though perhaps not enough. What do students get by EXPOSING themselves to a work of literature, by having another perspective exposed to them? Immeasurable value, I hope.

Finally, a film I was disappointed with, The Lady in the Water. There were several things I didn't like about the movie, but what comes to mind right now is that there was nothing new for me. I didn't learn anything from seeing it, I didn't relate to it, I wasn't able to learn any new perspective. Certainly that wouldn't hold as a very strong criticism of a film (and I wouldn't use it as an objective analysis), but that it my personal reaction.

This abstract utilitarian view might seem useless for evaluating material that has little artistic value, but still entertains. I say: not so. Not so at all. This is particularly useful in evaluating comedy. The best comedy is that which brings something new to us. Some new way of examining a part of life, some new way of bringing the mundane to comic effect, some new way simply to be funny and make one laugh. The old jokes work--but the best comedies bring something new to the table, they MUST bring something new because they must make us laugh. Above all else, they, must make us laugh. Two anecdotes come to mind: on The Simpsons, when Bart became the "I Didn't Do it" kid, but that got old, and on Alf, when Alf became a famous comedian, but was only telling the same joke, and eventually nobody laughed. Standup comedians will tell you how hard they work, and they do it because they have to. They have to bring you something new if they expect you to laugh. So even for art not meant to inspire, but meant only to entertain us, I can ask myself, "What is new from this that I can take with me?"

Quotes, Culture, and Politics

In Gregory MaGuire's Wicked, Glinda is asking Elphaba about her childhood, and in the telling Elphaba starts talking about the oppression of the Wizard. Glinda says, "We're talking about your childhood," and Elphaba responds, "Well that's it, that's all part of it. You can't divorce your particulars from politics." Now, I would say that you CAN divorce particulars from politics; people do it all the time. However, if they do so, they are taking a flawed view that is not helping them get any closer to "truth." Because everything everything that I am, everything I think, everything I believe, has something to do with my nationality, with my color, with my gender, with my class, with my region, with my education, with my occupation and the occupations of my parents, etc. There may indeed be something called "the human condition," but how is such a thing approachable without considering all the social, economic, and political factors? Simply put: it's not. Whatever we think it means to be human is influenced by class, race, gender, and all that. This is why an honest approach considers these factors. This is why John Fowles says that Nicholas Urfe, the main character of The Magus, takes on "if not the true representative face of a modern Everyman, at least that of a partial Everyman of my own class and background." Because THERE IS NO EVERYMAN. For our first and primary worldview comes from our class and background--it is the worldview we learn before we learn it is a worldview. This is why Helga's question in M. Butterfly is so narrow and ridiculous: she asks, "Politics again? Why can't they just hear it as a piece of beautiful music." What assumptions do we carry with us, because of class and background and culture, that makes something an apolitical piece of beautiful music? And what assumptions could somebody else, of a different class, background, culture, and personal taste hold, that makes something a political statement, or a piece of ugly music?

I believe in deep human experiences. I believe great literature functions to examine deep human experiences. I believe literature should help us examine what it means to be human: what it is to believe and to doubt, to love and to hate, to be brave and to fear, to laugh and to grieve, to hope and despair, to be born and to die. But to divorce one's experience of what it means to be human from politics...that is to examine humanity in a solipsistic vacuum.