On Taste and Lists and The Corrections

I've got to agree with Andrew on this one:

First of all, there is buried in Hallberg's argument a deep resistance to thinking of taste as anything that we consciously manipulate (or try to manipulate), an assumption that all manipulation is beady-eyed calculation. We are "moved" by some art, and the set of unmoved movers forms our taste; I find this a fairly narrow view of appreciation. The effort to comprehend a work which does not initially appeal to me often leads to a deeper integration of that work into my way of thinking; wrestling with its lack of appeal or mixed appeal is, I think, stronger grounds for what could be called "enjoying" it than an automatic rush of pleasure when I first encounter it. Taste is absolutely a conscious process because it is precisely how we discern between things that are unappealing and things that are bad which forms what we mean by taste, and the only way you can make that discernment is by active conscious manipulation.

You know, right when I read The Corrections, I really, really liked it too. (And then I read Strong Motion and had a similarly positive reaction.) Both books gave me one of those visceral reactions that I suppose you could compare to falling in love, or perhaps being powerfully smitten after a night of intense conversation.

And then what happened? I got a little perspective. Franzen started looking less and less impressive to me. Other books and authors more so. In other words, I began to embrace that more active part of discernment and taste that Andrew describes above.

I don't want to discount the effect that a book that really speaks to you can have on that first reading. It's a strange, intimidating, incredibly pleasant sensation, and it's something that not even a play or a movie or a poem can do quite in the same way a novel does. But is it actual aesthetic judgment? I don't think so. For that I think you need to be a little more sober, a little less in love. You need to put the book down and let your feelings grow cold, and then come back to it and see what you think. This, as Andrew says, is arguably a more evolved experience than that initial rush.

Perhaps the "Best of the Millennium" panel contributors did let their emotions subside with The Corrections and still thought it was the best book published since 2000. (In which case, I really don't understand . . .) I don't know, but I can't agree with Garth's defense of The Corrections at #1 as some kind of gut feeling that spanned a diverse readership.

That said, I do like what Garth quotes from Kant about an object “rationally shaped to perform an undefined task,” although I don't see how The Corrections (which Garth places under that description) fits at all. This is, after all, Jonathan Franzen, the self-confessed author writing against undue difficulty that will curtail his novel's broader appeal, the one man crusade for the return of the social novel, the author of "Why Bother," etc, etc. I'd say Franzen's task is fairly well-defined, which I think plays no small part in why his books, initially very overwhelming experiences, fail to transcend their place and time.

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