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Terry Teachout has written a piece on excessive complexity in art. He jumps off from an essay arguing that some of contemporary “classical” music is too complex to support an enjoyable aesthetic experience. I see some justification for this, as Boulez and Carter (the composers cited by Teachout as excessively complex) often start from extremely complex schema–schema that can partake in higher math–and said schema don’t always produce music that means much to my ears.
But this point is very arguable. I do find some of their work very enjoyable. And there is the possibility that future audiences will find their music far more familiar than we do. After all, serialist music–which anyone who has seen a horror movie understands perfectly–was once called similarly incomprehensible, but is now enjoyed by lay audiences and is used in all manner of experience from Hollywood films to TV commercials.
When Teachout tries to map this onto other art forms, though, I think he gets into trouble. I disagree with this:
The word “time” is central to Mr. Lerdahl’s argument, for it explains why an equally complicated painting like Pollock’s “Autumn Rhythm” appeals to viewers who find the music of Mr. Boulez or the prose of Joyce hopelessly offputting. Unlike “Finnegans Wake,” which consists of 628 closely packed pages that take weeks to read, the splattery tangles and swirls of “Autumn Rhythm” (which hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art) can be experienced in a single glance. Is that enough time to see everything Pollock put into “Autumn Rhythm”? No, but it’s long enough for the painting to make a strong and meaningful impression on the viewer.
Consider this your “glance” of Finnegans Wake: “It is the circumconversioning of antelithual paganelles by a huggerknut cramwell energuman, or the caecodedition of an absquelitteris puttagonnianne to the herreraism of a cabotinesque exploser?”
I bet the Wake has just made a strong and meaningful impact on you, though you probably don’t understand it any better than you would a Jackson Pollock after looking at it for a second or two.
Of course, a good painting can be looked at for hours (at the very least), an amount of time after which it will begin to yield up its grammar to you. Same goes for Joyce; obviously that sentence will have a lot more meaning if you’ve been immersed in the private language the Joyce has concocted for his novel. (And for the record, I’ve seen plenty of people glance at a Pollock and immediately walk away, clearly not interested in knowing any more and clearly unimpressed, in any sense of the word.)
I also disagree with Teachout’s assertion that the average reader isn’t prepared to make the effort for a challenging work of fiction:
You can’t get through a complicated novel faster by turning the pages more quickly. Reading demands a greater investment of time than looking at a complicated painting, and the average reader is not prepared to invest that much time in a book, no matter what critics say about it. I feel the same way. I suppose I could get to the bottom of “Finnegans Wake” if I worked at it—but would it be worth the trouble?
Tell that to 2666.
This piece reminds me of Lionel Shriver’s “authors who don’t use quotation marks are elitist” op-ed.
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Articles like this are the worst in two ways. First, they assume that “common folks” can’t read and enjoy “complex” works. This is wrong. Putting Finnegans Wake aside, I would say that nearly any other “complex” and “difficult” work of literature can be enjoyed by most anyone if they want to take the time to read it. I’m not saying that everyone would like J R or Gravity’s Rainbow, but I don’t think that it is essentially beyond “common” folks.
Further, it seems to me to be a failure of Teachout as a reader to be unable to see how these “complex” and “difficult” works do deal with the lives of the “common” man.
Second, even assuming that there are great masses of people who do not like and cannot read these dense tomes, it doesn’t mean that there are not people out there who like them. Even if 99% of the reading public would not pay good money for Darkmans or Rings of Saturn, why can’t I enjoy them?
The vibe I get off of these type essays is that that author likes to think of himself as smart, doesn’t like books that other smart people like and then feels as though he is being made to feel inferior, so he screeches that no real, common, normal person can possibly enjoy the work; or that the author really knows nothing, can’t write, is just showing off, etc.
This feels like a defense of his own “taste” to me. If I don’t like it, therefore there must be some reason that it is flawed. Isn’t it enought that some segment of listeners or readers finds it worthwhile? So you don’t like it—that’s fine but not ultimately that important.
Mr. Teachout writes for the Wall Street Journal, for heaven’s sake, so what’s there to expect from him? As a matter of fact, I’m rather fond of the music of Boulez and Carter, although it did take some getting used to. But wait a minute. Mozart, when I first heard him, I found loathsome. And Tristram Shandy, well, I had to start that one three times before I could get through it, only to realize at last it’s one of the glories of English letters. Given that he appears to endorse H.G. Wells’ comment about the Wake, my question for T.T. is: Why should everyone want to/have to read books (listen to string quartets, look at pictures) all done up to satisfy the desired level of complexity of “common men”? Common men, whoever they are, can read whatever they wish. Some of us are interested in greater challenges which, in my experience, bear greater rewards.
Don’t judge Teachout by the rep of the WSJ. For a couple years now I’ve been reading his column (for his theater coverage, which I could rhapsodize over – he may be the only critic in NY who properly values American theater outside NYC). He’s invaluable, and you dismiss him at your risk. I think some of these comments miss the point. He’s not saying the average reader *couldn’t* tackle these works. He’s saying the avg reader chooses not to because it takes too much of a time commitment for relatively little reward. (You could learn the basics of a whole language in the time it would take to properly read FW. Honestly, what’s going to serve you better in the long run? If you’re not a critic or Eng. prof, I mean.)
When people hit their 30s with busy careers and raising families, _time_ (again, his point) is at a premium. If you find enough of the precious stuff to read a book, most want to read something more accessible. Or most prefer to read Dan Brown, Steph Meyer or Dan Brown – why? to be able to talk about it with most people they meet. I could read Witz, and I’m considering it. But unless I go online to a site like this (and thank you for it), fat chance of having someone in my life to discuss it with.
A friend just told me of a reading group in our area devoted to reading Ulysses this year (over 100 members!), and I’ve heard of reading groups coming together to read Proust, as well. My experience is that many people want to tackle these legendary works at some point in their lives and respect how much time it takes. But FW has a reputation for being opaque. Given limited time and a choice, most people will not choose FW. And sensibly so!
If anything, you could criticize Teachout for the obviousness of the point.
Also, the horror movie soundtrack point (which I first encountered in Alex Ross’s book) is a good one. But soundtracks are like sets in a play. Most people won’t go sit in an actorless theater and spend two hours admiring sets. Just saying.
Urg, meant the second ‘Dan Brown’ to be Stieg Larsson.
Steve S, I understand your point, and Teachouts, however I disagree with the idea that difficult books are a large time commitment with little pay-off and the blanket assertion that people are too busy.
I am not a critic or academic: I am an attorney in my mid-thirties and married. I live in rural Virginia and have lived in the rural South for my whole life. When I come home from a long, taxing day, I want to eat a little food and then sit with my wife and read. I love Pynchon and Gaddis and Wallace and Melville and Joyce and Faulkner and all of the types of things that I “shouldn’t” have time for. I’m not saying that everyone is like me, but I reject the idea that these books take more time than they are worth and that it is a given that someone in my position can’t possibly have the time or want to read these books. Does everyone? No, of course not, we all have different tastes, but I do, and articles like this one enforce the idea that it isn’t possible to enjoy and be spiritually benefited from books like this.
I think this comes off more agressive and more screedish that I want. Please know that I understand and repsect your point. Yeah, there are lots of folks who aren’t into reading big long crazy difficult books. That’s fine. I balk at the asssertion that the books I most love can’t possibly be loved for the reasons that I love them.
Also I just got Witz in the mail and can’t wait to read it.
Steve, I’m in my 60s and still fully employed so I have time management issues of my own. In fact they’re one of the reasons I don’t want to spend too much time with run-of-the-mill stuff that offers no challenge, although I did read Dan Brown’s Big Book. (Afterwards, I had to cleanse my brain with a couple of hours of Paul Celan.) In what way is any book like The DaVinci Code “rewarding”? It may be amusing, even diverting, and that’s ok. I’m all for people reading what they enjoy, but a little sad if they don’t see the merit of stretching themselves at least once and awhile. The problem with Teachout is that he seems to take offense at the very existence of anything that’s challenging in something other than a Balzacean 19th century sort of way (to say nothing of his animus against the music of Elliott Carter, which really makes me sore at him).