I'm reading through Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon's just-published book of essays and tucked away in a piece on graphic novelist Howard Chaykin I find one of the best encomiums to pulp not written about pulp I've ever come across, and some of the most provocative writing about Heinlein that is not about Heinlein.

He begins [97] by saying, "In a popular medium that needs to label everyone a journeyman hack or a flaming genius god . . . Howard Chaykin is something else: a craftsman, an artisan of pop:
* * *
" . . . one of the best things about popular media is that, within their capital-and calendar-driven confines, sometimes a hack, half by accident [98] can turn out someting haunting, dreamy, or beautiful. What I'm talking about is a kind -- the toughest kind -- of balancing act. Taking pains, working hard, not flaunting his or her chops so much as relying on them, the pop artisan teeters on a fine fulcrum between the stern, sell-the-product morality of the workhorse and the artist's urge to discover a pattern in, or derive a meaning from, the random facts of the world . . . .

"The pop artisan operates within the received formulas -- gangster movie, radio-ready A-side, space opera -- and then incorporates into the style, manner, and mood of the work bits and pieces derived from all the aesthetic movements he or she has ever fallen in love with in other movies or songs or novels, whether hackwork or genius (without regard for and sometimes without consciousness of any difference between the two) . . . When it works, what you get is not a collection of references, quotes, allusions, and cribs but a whole, seamless thing, both familiar and new: a record of the consciousness that was busy falling in love with those moments in the first place. It's that filtering conscioiusness, coupled with the physical ability (or whatever it is) to flat-out play or sing or write or draw, that transforms the fragments and jetsam and familiar pieces into something fresh and unheard of. If that sounds a lot like [99] what flaming genius gods are supposed to be up to, then here's a distinction: the pop artisan is always hoping that, in the end, the thing is going to fucking kill. He is hanted bya vision of pop perfection: heartbreaking beauty that moves units . . . . "

Man, I've never heard it sais so right. Righteous right, tzadik right.

I was thinking the same thing, Bill. All of Chabon's stuff is well worth reading. My only complaint about the book is that it was packaged more as a manifesto, and what it is, is simply a set of disconnected essays. I would have preferred him to put down a more organized response to the issues he's raising.

I've heard Chabon talk twice, both times at the San Diego Comicon. The first time was after Kavalier and Clay was published. The second time he and Will Eisner were just going back and forth over whatever tickled them. Definitely a writer who is aware of what has come before and enjoys genre.

Rob

Most of the great artists wanted to be accessible. Elitist art that revels in being unpopular is the historical anomaly.

Of course I meant "unpopular" not in the sense of "Yeah, I get it --and I hate it" but in the sense of "wtf?" or the blank stare or even "yawn!".

And obviously some great artists are less accessible than others, not from a desire to tickle only the in-group, but because the crazy spot in their brain that forms their art is what it is.

Or as Stephen King once responded to a lady who asked him why he wrote horror stories --"What makes you think I have a choice?"

Or to say it another way, usually audiences are more often deliberately elitist rather than the artist him/herself. . .

Actually, art as elitism is the norm, not the exception.

Historically, art was the province of the rich. Patronage was necessary; while the Renaissance did have its public displays, much of it was private (the Sistine Chapel was not open to the public, iirc, until much later -- it is the Pope's private chapel).

The nineteenth century saw the rise of mass, popular art, and there was considerable scorn towards much of it, then as now. High art and low art are terms created by critics out to define such things; the artists themselves usually wanted the rewards that came from popularity, because it granted them financial and artistic independence. But the conflict between art and commerce is one of the factors in creating modernism, which openly and defiantly defied popular acceptance as a goal (even as many did harbor secret desires for popularity).

Anybody who thinks Pound's "Cantos" or Eliot's "The Wasteland" is aimed at popularity is a fool.

The modernists believed the world was destroying itself; their works were intended as their own private utterances, and if you wanted to be a part of them, you had to learn their language, their symbology. You had to work at it.

James Joyce was once asked about Finnegan's Wake what he expected from his readers: "I spent twenty years writing it. I expect them to spend twenty years reading it."

College professors choose works that require their presence to understand; works that are accessible don't produce tenure.

Accessibility does not equal literature, as a result, in most college courses.

Hemingway barely hangs on; Steinbeck is gone, except in history classes.

Depressing, but true.

Robert

I hate to disagree but I do not think baroque contrapuntal music is an acquired taste (except possibly sarabandes,) which are too slow for most modern ears. The faster movements seem pretty accessible to me if they are played with a lilt and not slogged through like a scale book.

Lots of our kids liked them and whistled them in the shower without any training - both 16th and 18th century counterpoint have movements that are pretty "catchy".

Actually come to think of it our youngest really likes Palestrina, and he is only ten and I have never taught him anything about counterpoint.

Well, sometimes people need pissing off, and I'm not going to sit in judgement on that generically. I accept in the macro sense that can be a legitimate aim of art --given the history of sf, how could I not?

But I will say the more it is done in a cheap/easy way, the less respect I have for it *as art* --and the more I assume that controversy for controversy's sake, rather than an honest attempt to change hearts and minds thru the power of art, is the goal.

Or said another way, if an audience of twenty insists that an artist is great, and they are the only ones who understand why. . .

. . . then without foreclosing the possibility they are correct, I really have to ask myself to what degree what they are really doing is celebrating their own greatness for having (they say) figured him out, rather than celebrating the artist's greatness.

But I am confident that the artist, likely long dead, would have been much happier if far more than twenty had grokked him to fullness (assuming he wouldn't have just been appalled by their analysis in the first place).

I obviously heard classical music prior to college; one could hardly avoid it in commercials and movies.

But I never chose to listen to it until I was in college, and took one of those classical music appreciation courses; 30 seconds of Bach and I was addicted.

Counterpoint was immediately accessible, but then I was 20....

R.

Can't argue -- but that's also what makes him a flaming genius god.

Late to the discussion (obviously) but VERY appropriate that you mentioned Chabon's descriptor of Chaykin... as Chaykin is one of the guys in comics who admits RAH is one of the biggest influences in his work (You can especially see it in his creator owned work on non-superhero stuff such as American Flagg, Twilight, City of Tomorrow, etc.) the mix of sci-fi-tech, individualism and accountability, and (of course) sex makes the influence VERY obvious.

Anyone who doesn't think pop art can be a serious purveyor of ideas should note the obituary for Stetson Kennedy, who used the forum of the old Superman radio program to expose the lies and activities of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s.
Who in my generation would have guessed?

Are those radio shows online anywhere? I had *no* idea, and I'd love to listen to them.

I have no idea, either. It was in the obituary that the Associated Press sent out.
I guess you could google them.