Against Masterpieces

The humble reader approaches the great text already feeling insignificant, barely able to pierce its surface.

Robber at the Gate of Paradise by Helene Schjerfbeck

I feel a pang of embarrassment almost every time I see some work of art described as a masterpiece, usually done in a protest-too-much manner that lets people exalt their own taste by attaching themselves to something seemingly bigger than life itself, an act of autofellatio to rival Kekule’s dreamsnake. It’s the exact point at which any potential discourse begins to wither away. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, knowing that the project has now been completed, properly understood, enjoyed and filed away to gather dust somewhere.

Recently I saw a post that attempted to provide short reviews of each of Cormac McCarthy's works. It went something like this:

No Country For Old Men: Didn't like it that much.

Blood Meridian: A masterpiece of modern fiction.

The Road: Bleak but good.

[...]

Well, that's it guys, thank you for reading my post.

What’s really going on here? Once they find a way to label you with a single word, good or bad, it signifies a certain kind of creative death. It's why the long negative review can be so kind. The amount of labor devoted to a given work says something about your relation to it, regardless of anything else, numerical scores or whatever. A long piece of text communicates that there is something within the discipline that you’re passionate about, regardless if you were able to find it in this particular work. Your personal taste, style, the values you despise or worship become vectors for discussion. It’s lovely.

I don’t wish to blame any particular person for adopting this in-group-signifier shortcut approach. Every day on the Internet some amount of human labor is devoted to creating and sustaining these artful points of interest, holding up identities and communities, senses of self and senses of belonging. I believe the pace of today’s life and the increasing, sometimes-invisible violence of our system makes it harder and harder for people to genuinely find time for things such as literary analysis. In a world where every decision is an investment, each book needs to hold the promise of a productive experience, in itself and regardless of its reader, in a sad manner so well embodied by the self-help genre.

Keep in mind the actual quality of any book is not being debated here. I’ve enjoyed most of McCarthy’s writing. His style will continue to haunt us in ways more and less subtle (I’m down to discuss The Passenger and Stella Maris as a meeting point between two core aspects of his being, the curt man of action and the incomplete theoretician), but I fear his death made it all too easy to further dehumanize him.

Looking at these giant Masterpieces looming over our heads I can't stop imagining a network of humans (made just a bit more literal by the Internet) existing solely as a derivative to these great islands of Art, our bodies their transport mechanism, most visitors just passively admiring the ruins, rarely any additional excavation being done for fear of toppling the structure. It's not a system of books, films, music passing from person to person, but the other way around. We continue to make ourselves smaller while looking up at them.

The illusion is that these works exist independently of our perception as separate cultural objects that one can “get” or not. The humble reader approaches the great text already feeling insignificant, barely able to pierce its surface. Another one stands nearby, all in somber reflection, going, Alas, I understand only some of it… But maybe someone someday… etc. The ultimate content awaiting its ultimate consumer.

I don't wish to pretend I'm somehow outside of this system (most of the writers I wish to dig into are either pigs or just plain bananas…), but at the very least I would like to leave the objects of my passion open to good-faith criticism. I want to question the authors I love more than the ones I despise. We’re doing them a disservice by holding them up like fragile pieces of porcelain. If the works we worship are sturdy enough, they won’t mind some roughhousing, and if it turns out they are easily broken, all the better. Use them to make something new. So let’s do a Strangers on a Train act and kill each other’s darlings.

We have reached the part of this text where you look at the state of culture, movies, literature, everything, and proceed to despair, the feeling at this point a generational hand-me-down. In the unending war between the past and the future we remain, as always, sore losers, lowlifes having to resort to dirty traps of all kinds. So be it. Either way, let’s make an attempt to release ourselves from the gravitational pull of big-A Art. Even if it’s bound to fail, it will throw us onto new, unexpected trajectories, hopefully equipped with enough reference points not to just continue writing in spite of singular people, but instead moving against entire market-approved trends, currents and information systems.

Am I addressing readers or writers? To be truthful, I don’t think there is much of a difference. With more and more people trying to find ways not to read “performatively,” it’s important to remember that (to wrap it up in a quaint academic metaphor) it's all group masturbation, and everyone does it. Some are just too shy to look the rest of us in the eyes. Well hold your head up for just a second pardner. Look up from your bent worm and look at me. Why Ive been smiling this entire goddam time.