Full piece here (behind a paywall).
The reality of the moon’s composition, the truth made beautiful in a work of art, the unpredictable nature of electoral politics; all become oversimplified to true-believers. We are always in need of seeing ourselves in our stories.
The moon, or a movie, or an election, seen through a veil of progressive activism and reinforced belief, becomes predictably dull.
What’s newer is that such Left-activism seems to have become majority thinking within much of American media and cultural life, while, unsurprisingly, a lot of people disagree…
Once you stop questioning what ‘is,’ many ‘oughts’ follow.
Stoll:
‘There was a wonderful article by an editor at the magazine, Mary Norris, about commas. Wonderful, that is, until this passage, “That was during the Reagan Administration, when many of us suspected that Reagan had some form of dementia, but no one could do anything about it. The country was running on automatic.”
Such politicization can make for bad stewardship of the arts, certainly.
Perhaps New Yorker features are increasingly flogged to maintain readership in a competitive marketplace, or are being put to use for other purposes, like reaffirming political ideology and identities to signal the right beliefs and in-group/out-group loyalties. Many of the progressive pieties can be found on display at the New Yorker.
Unsolicited advice for The New Yorker: Build a wall around your political stable, don’t bet too much on current trends and politicians, and keep other spaces free for the genuinely ‘avant-garde,’ the strange and beautiful, and biting satire when it shows-up.
I ain’t holding my breath.
As previously posted:
Adam Kirsch was not so impressed with the 2009 inauguration ceremony:
‘In our democratic age, however, poets have always had scruples about exalting leaders in verse. Since the French Revolution, there have been great public poems in English, but almost no great official poems. For modern lyric poets, whose first obligation is to the truth of their own experience, it has only been possible to write well on public themes when the public intersects, or interferes, with that experience–when history usurps privacy.’
A reader sends a link to a SF Gate review of poet Jorie Graham’s ‘Sea Change:‘
‘In “Sea Change,” Graham becomes Prospero, casting spells by spelling out her thoughts to merge with ours, and with the voices of the elements. The result is a mingling of perceptions rather than a broadcasting of opinions. Instead of analysis, the poems encourage emotional involvement with the drastic changes overwhelming us, overwhelm- ing the planet.’
and:
‘Strengths and weaknesses, flows and ebbs, yet every poem in “Sea Change” bears memorable lines, with almost haunting (if we truly have but 10 years to “fix” global warming) images of flora and fauna under siege. Jorie Graham has composed a swan song for Earth.’
Oh boy.
What are these poems being asked to do?
Repost-Heather McDonald At The WSJ: ‘ The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity’
***Who do you trust for discussions of the arts and culture, and would you just rather publications be up front about their ideological bents and loyalties?