Friday, January 29, 2010

The Madness of Art

I found reading Joyce Carol Oates’ essay “The Madness of Art” to be a very humbling experience. In a nutshell, here’s why.

Though I am in fact enrolled in a genre fiction MFA program, I’ve always been hesitant to label myself a writer of popular fiction. Call it elitism, call it what you will, but all my writing life I’ve striven to be what is generally termed a literary writer. This aspiration, I believe, has been revealed in most of the pieces I’ve written, be they works of fiction, poetry or non-fiction. For example, nowhere in my view have I employed more metaphors than in the monthly columns I wrote when I edited a newsmagazine. For the most part, it’s been my goal when writing to craft highly stylized pieces. On an occasion when an agent disdainfully referred to my work as “literary fiction”, I didn’t understand why that was an insult; in fact, I thought it high praise even if he didn’t.

Oates’ essay, however, made me reconsider the necessity of labeling myself as a writer of either literary or popular fiction. It is enough that I write and seek to write well, she postulates in statements like the following: “Yet talent, not excluding genius, may flourish any genre, provided it is not stigmatized by that deadly label ‘genre’.”

In the same essay, Oates points out that in this day and age, writers we consider great, such as Edgar Allen Poe, would be referred to as “mainsteam” writers. Personally speaking, to put it succinctly? If it’s good enough for Poe, it’s certainly good enough for me.

(As an aside, perhaps it is true as Oates maintains, that “to transcend categories others have invented for us, we have to be both dead – long dead – and classics.” Yes, I do think there’s validity to that statement.)

The same – that she is a “mainstream” writer – can be said of Oates herself, as she tells her audience when she interjects herself into the piece. She admits, unashamedly, she is “a writer predisposed to reading and frequently to writing what I call ‘Gothic’ work.” And she shouldn’t be ashamed, as she later posits: “Gothic fiction… is entertaining; it is unashamed to be entertaining.”

What a revolutionary idea, the notion that we as writers should seek to craft work that is entertaining as well as thoughtful! (Note the sarcasm.) This idea is at the very heart of Oates’ essay, as evidenced by passages like the following: “The standards for horror fiction should be no less than those for ‘serious, literary’ fiction in which originality of concept, depth of characters, and attentiveness to language are vitally important.”

After reading this piece, I realized what I feel is an important truth. Our ultimate goal as writers is to find readers, and then to engage the imaginations of our audience. If we accomplish this end, what does it matter what label is applied to us? Does it makes us any less writers if we are “mainstream” or “popular” than if we attain the heights I admittedly aspire to, to become “literary” writers?

According to Oates, with whom I largely agree, the answer to that is not at all. What matters in the end is that we are writers, and that we seek to do quality work regardless of genre considerations.

Pickman's Model

I’m a Lovecraft newbie, shameful as it may be to admit, and I really wanted to like my introduction to his work, Pickman’s Model. After all, this story had as its antagonist an artist who paints morbid pictures and who exudes a creepy if not murderous vibe. Anyone familiar with my thesis novel in progress will know that’s a premise I should enjoy, but I have to say that, on the whole, I was not particularly impressed with this piece.

In the early pages, this story had tremendous potential to terrify, but in my view it failed to live up to it. Lovecraft promises much but fails to deliver. First, he introduces a protagonist/narrator with, by his own admission, various eccentricities. This is a character I want to like and to whom I’m immediately sympathetic, but he seems to get lost entirely as the story progresses. Aside from his self declared hero worship of Pickman and his willingness – if not outright eagerness – to accompany him to his near secret studio, we learn very little else about the narrator. Thus, I never felt invested in his fate. I couldn’t care less if he had in fact been hacked to pieces in Pickman’s cellar. (Which, obviously, he was not.)

I felt the same way about Pickman. He never reached monster status, in my estimation, and that’s what Lovecraft set me as the reader up for in the first few pages. He seemed too much like your typical professor of art painting controversial pictures, in the end. I learn much about him and his leanings if not outright deviations, but I never get to see him actually commit any violent acts. Sure, he paints creepy pictures, and maybe he’s made some sort of deal with the Devil, but he doesn’t scare me.

I should insert here that I thought Lovecraft’s descriptions of the Pickman’s various paintings were beautifully rendered. His settings in this piece were also very well realized. Even though I wasn’t emotionally involved in what happened to the characters in each scene, I must admit that Lovecraft did a marvelous job of constructing a backdrop upon which much mayhem could have successfully occurred. But, it never did.

For me, that was the fatal flaw in this piece: the fact that I wasn’t at all interested in the outcome. I never felt genuine fear or revulsion. As the story closes, we as readers don’t receive what I believed Lovecraft dangled in front of us at the onset. I finished reading it and I’m left unclear as to what exactly the narrator still fears. Yes, he saw some seriously disturbed art. He’s spent a spell in a secluded location with a madman, but he’s come to no real harm because of it. He didn’t even have to escape some horrible fate; there was none in store for him. So, in short, I’m not sure what he’s so discombobulated about. Technically, he was never in any danger.

If this piece were submitted by a fellow student in a critique session, I’d have to label it competent but not stirring. Lovecraft’s prose is well crafted, no pun intended, but in my view the story doesn’t live up to its considerable potential. I was left wanting way more. Hopefully, as we continue to read Lovecraft’s works in the Readings in the Genre – Horror course, I’ll have the opportunity to read one I do find to be genuinely frightening.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

The [Actual] Return of the Bird Blog

Yep, I'm back. Yours Truly, everyone's favorite disgraced newspaper editor and recovering trophy wife, has decided to reclaim her space in the blogosphere.

Yesterday marked my return from my third residency at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA. For those who've been living under a rock for the past year in regards to YT? I'm enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program at SHU. Suffice it to say the experience [my third residency] was vastly superior to my second residency, during which I was more or less on the verge of a nervous breakdown. (The actual breakdown came later, post flight from the Bird Cage, but that's all irrelevant now, no?)

Back here in Hooterville, I've thus far managed to avoid seeing that paper I used to run back in my days of indentured servitude. I'll admit it smarts quite a bit knowing that I spent four plus years shaping that paper into what it became only to be denied any ownership of the same. But I think I'll stay the ostrich course, and keep my head in the sand in regard to the California Focus. (Go ahead, click the link, I designed the site and I still own the domain.)

After all, I've got a novel to write and a shitload of horror books to read, not to mention someone has to maintain order in this Dollhouse. Then, of course, there's the Amazing Dancing Guitar Strumming Emo Boy, who will be auditioning for the School of American Ballet early next month. Finally, there's Mulder, and the 100,000 words I'll need to listen to before I can get my toilet fixed again.

So, in a nutshell, I really don't have any time to feel sorry for myself, nor do I intend to. Back in June 2009, when I was literally living for six words on this very Bird Blog, I swore I would no longer waste time wallowing in self pity, and I do intend to keep my word.