Chapter Three

Continuing my reading of Nicky Marsh's book.

But chapter three, she's narrowing her attention to issues more akin to those that inspired me to request a review copy of the book in the first place. For this isn't about literature and attitudes toward hoarding or the exchange rate -- this is about Brit lit and attitudes toward "the City," the financial district of London.

One of the books prominently featured here is "What a Carve Up!" by Jonathan Coe (1994). This is very much a pomo novel. Its about a novelist, Michael Owen, which is always a good post-modern start. Michael has been hired to write the history of a particular eccentric family, the Winshaws. Increasingly, Michael's research uncovers ways in which the Winshaws' lives intersect with his own, so that he becomes central to his text.

One of the objects of that research is Thomas Winshaw, a banker. Through Michael's eyes, then, Coe describes Thomas' obsession with computer screens and the visually self-enveloping character of his work in the City.

Thomas, who supervises traders, installs a camera so he can stare all day at a screen that shows "nothing but row upon row of his traders, themselves staring at screens ... It seemed, at such moments, there was no end to the glassy barriers which he could put up between himself and the people (did they really exist?) whose money formed the basis of each day's intoxicating speculations."

This reminds me of last week's news out of France. Of course a superviser who followed Thomas' methods would never have found any harm in Jerome K's dealings. He would simply have seen that Jerome came in on time each day, sat at his desk, stared at his screen, and pressed buttons on the keyboard.

At any rate, on the evidence of Marsh's quotations from Coe, I have to credit the latter with at least that one arresting image of the work life of one sort of banker.

Meta-Painting

If the title to this blog entry doesn't make you yawn, if you think there might be something brilliant or original in the idea of a "painting about painting," then this story might suit you:
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=ac31b57d-8804-4189-81ed-77f78acb49f6.

But if it DOES make you yawn, consider this instead. In an episode of The Simpsons, the bartender Moe re-models his bar to appeal to the fashionable crowd. Along with other odd furnishing in the new Moes's, there's a television set hanging from the wall that shows an unblinking eye.

Homer asks Moe, "What's with the eye?" setting up the following brilliant dialog.

Moe: "Its' a pomo thing."

Homer: (Baffled expression on face) "Pomo?"

Moe: "Post-modern"

Homer is now silent, the baffled expression remains, Moe breaks the silence.

Moe: "Weird for the sake of weird."

Homer: "Ahhhhh!"

Romanticism and Classicism

Should you feel it necessary to develop a considered position on aesthetic philosophy (a felt necessity for only a small part of the population of the globe, I grant) it won't be necessary, or I think advisable, to do so by taking sides as between romanticism and classicism.

It is better simply to see those two labels as representing timeless possibilities for craftsmen, and markers in the history of taste. The history of taste, one might say, is a battle between novelty and connoisseurship. When a new movement gets underway, it is because taste has been sated by the old, and people are ready for novelty. Connoisseurs of the previous dominant school (which had been a revolutionary innovation itself once), who know all its rules and standards, are unhappy about this because their expertise has been rendered obsolete. So they end up writing art history texts, while the new school in time develops its own rules and standards, and its own connoisseurs. It time, this new becomes old, and the quest for novelty has been sated, so there is another break and the cycle is complete. That cycle has a lot of "cosms," micro and macro.

The greatest macrocosmic form of that cycle is the alternation between classicism and romanticism. I believe that what is known as "modernism" was in its essence a reversion to classicism, and "post-modernism" has been a re-enactment of the romantic rebellion.

By "classicism" in this sense I understand chiefly art that appeals to the intellect, whereas by "romanicism" I understand art that appeals chiefly through physiology. A classicism will understand the rightness of a chord, a romantic will feel the thrill of the trill. It is possible to write for either taste, for standards to develop around both, and for satiation to develop around both. Good and bad are possible in each line.

So let's not presume to choose sides between them, any more than we would presume to choose sides between hot dogs with, and those without, the relish.

The above is nearly identical to a column in my old blog posted a year ago today. I confess this before anyone catches me at it.