Guy de Maupassant

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I recently picked up a copy of In Art or Instruction, a limited duodecimo-sized edition published in 1969 as a greeting to friends of Harcourt, Brace & World Inc. on the occasion of its fiftieth year.

Here’s what then president William Jovanovich had to say in it about publishing:

"Publishing, too, is steady work, for there can be no end to the constant, perdurable need to instruct and to engage by art and entertainment the whole of society no less than every one. By its best humanistic definition, publishing is a major means by which we conceptualize ourselves, by which we find our what the world is and what it wants of us. Books and journals and films and other media that inform, that tell what is knwon and intimate what is not – these reveal the identity of the reader and viewer no less than that of the author or producer. Assuming that men will always be curous about themselves, publishing must be, like awaiting the millenium, the longest-lived of professions."

Good exchange in the comments section over at Alone on a Boreal Stage, led by Zach ‘Hawkweed’ Wells, who first off quotes American poet Robert Pinsky

"I think that if an audience for any art is having a good time, they are willing to suspend the need for comprehension for a while—that’s part of the pleasure. So if the poem by Wallace Stevens or Marianne Moore sounds great, is amusing or engaging or spooky in a way that we like… then like the devotee of opera or rap music or rock music, we are happy to understand only gradually, over many listenings. And if it doesn’t sound good, it is boring even if we understand it. That’s the trouble with a lot of boring art: you understand the stupid cop show, or the tedious sitcom gag, too soon and too completely. Same for the stupid middlebrow poem."

Then follows up with this:

When I’m assigned to review a book, I want nothing more than to have that rare magical experience one has when reading great literature. Major understatement: It doesn’t often happen. A reasonable second place is a book with enough interesting things and evidence of serious engagement on the part of the author to make it worth the time to read. This happens fairly often. Sometimes, not that often, one encounters very little evidence of honest effort on the part of the writer (and, by extension their editors and publishers) and, moreover, next to nothing redeeming in the book. In short, you get the kind [of] "stupid" art that Pinsky’s talking about.

I couldn’t agree more. Greatness is indeed a scarce commodity, mediocrity is not; reviewers, commentators readers need to nullify feelings of guilt about not liking most writing that comes to them published and polished  up in fancy looking packages, or about hurting feelings, or coming across as a negativity monger…consider the published output of some of our greatest writers and poets…consider how much of it was mediocre…perhap this message should affix itself to all negative reviews. Perhaps it would mitigate some of the hurt…and hostility.

…from the introduction to Soul Says, On Recent Poetry (Harvard, 1995) by Helen Vendler

I’ve been fulminating in this space over the past little while about the lack of a Canadian Canon. Canadian criticism has for the most part run in the opposite direction of its evaluative responsibilities. Present though on this leveled playing field are at least two lists which lend some topography, some perspective, some/any measures of greatness. The Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and more recently the Giller, regardless of their faults, do serve a valuable purpose, especially in a land where judgment is so foreign. Telling, I suppose, that until recently, the task of identifying what has value, what is worthy of praise (at least according to the jury du jour), has been performed primarily by government. Now, the choices may all be ‘wrong,’ and largely unjustified, but at least they are out there, waiting for the brave to berate or congratulate them; to take them on, to defend or attack them at length. To get the ball rolling.

In light of these musings, it was with pleasant recognition that I read this from Philip Marchand in the National Post:

"Giller Prize juries make the best they can of an impossible task, anointing one book as best of the year. It’s ridiculous in a way, but it’s also useful. Like the university canon of Canadian literature, the Giller Prize choices give us a starting point to talk about Canadian books. In a world where we’re flooded with novels, we need a list of books to argue over and compare. We need a shared conversation about Canadian literature. For helping to stimulate that conversation, the Giller Prize deserves thanks."

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Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Written in 1917, published posthumously in 1920.

Buy the book for $4000 here:

Poems by Wifred Owen. With an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon.
Owen, Wilfred (1893-1918).

Bookseller: Peter Keisogloff Rare Books, Inc. (Brecksville, OH, U.S.A.)
Bookseller Rating:

…and how they resemble their masters (and vice versa). Well I only wish you could have seen the two of them walking together.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL3JSBXrFZs

Just back from getting blasted by Inglorious Basterds, a movie I can heartily recommend. Strong soundtrack as expected (had hoped to post Bowie’s dynamite new version of Cat People, but alas, all I could find was this soundtrack medley, with Bowie barely present…the song goes beautifully with Mélanie Laurent‘s dramatic, campy, sexy, shiny red-lipsticked, fuck-me dress sequence).  Superb use of lighting (reminds me of Welles), rivetting usage of ultra close-ups – audio and visual – (watch for cream atop the strudel; listen to the movement of leather SS jackets), disturbing, memorable violence…all the things you love and expect from Tarantino. Hitler fried in a theatre-oven then machine gunned in the face…and Brad Pitt, though entertaining, looking way too much like Robert Redford in The Sting to be anything other than distracting. Great film none the less. Christoph Waltz is magnetic as the sophisticated Jew hunter Hans Landa, especially in the splendid opening chapter.