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...or a photograph, or a painting, or indeed any kind of artwork: not all of what it offers is in it.
Bear with me for a sec if you will. I recently attended a short talk about the 6th and 7th steps of many 12-step programs, which, if you don't know them, go like this:
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
The talk was about the distinction between the terms "defects of character" and "shortcomings," whether they mean the same thing or something different—and, if they are different, how that should be interpreted. Working from a number of sources, the speaker first reported an involved argument that assigned "shortcoming" the meaning of specific instances of a character defect, and "character defect" as the underlying cause or source of these shortcomings. So, in other words, "I knew the leftover cake in the fridge was yours and that you were saving it, but I ate it anyway" is a shortcoming, and the defect of character behind it would be selfishness and inconsiderateness.
But this isn't the case. Many editors and writers, as a matter of policy or habit, simply choose to use different terms to avoid repetitiveness. It's a rule of house style at many publications. Bill Wilson, the author of the original steps, stated on several occasions that he was just using a different term for the same thing. In hindsight, the two steps might have been better written as:
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove them.
In that light, the "defects of character vs. shortcomings" thing is a red herring, not available for insights—at least not according to the author. But here's the interesting thing: even the author of a book isn't the absolute arbiter of what the book means. It's a curious thing about a book. The reason is simple. The meaning, importance, feeling-tone, significance, connotation, and connection to any work of art is forged in the reader or viewer by a combination of two things: what the author or creator put into the work and intended it to be, and what the reader or viewer brings to it and takes from it. So if the reader decides to interpret "shortcoming" and "defect of character" as something different, and work these two steps accordingly, she or he may do so. You work the steps as best you can and according to your own best understanding and your own needs. It's up to you.
A photograph of a gun
Getting down to photographs, here's a simple example. Imagine an obviously old-fashioned photograph of a man kneeling on the ground holding up a large, long rifle which is prominently featured in the image. The landscape looks like prairie. The picture is historical and seems to date from the era of the American frontier. On the ground nearby is a small structure that looks like an "X."
One viewer looks at the picture and sees a brave frontiersman, and imagines him valiantly fighting marauding hostiles with the rifle or setting off on a hunt for bear or mountain lions. This person hunted with his father and uncles as a boy and has great memories of cold mornings stalking deer, and his family have always been responsible gun owners.
A second is knowledgeable about species extinction and has a special interest in American bison, and he recognizes the gun as a long-range rifled weapon for killing buffalo in a particular way: lying prone on the ground and propping the end of the barrel of the heavy rifle on the small gunrest (for that's what the X-shaped thing is), buffalo hunters could target a group of bison placidly eating grass far in the distance, and kill twelve or fifteen of them one after the other before the scent of death from the first one reached the others and they panicked and fled. The second viewer imagines that this is probably what just happened, and that the hunters will soon go to the kill site with their wagon to skin the dead buffalo and leave the rest of their bodies for predators or to rot in the sun. Past the edge of the picture, he can vividly imagine the pathetic sight of the slaughtered buffalo whose lives were wasted.
The first person sees the photograph in a romantic light, building a comforting and noble story around it. It brings up positive connotations and makes him feel good. The second sees the photo almost as a record or at least a reminder of an atrocity, a small detail in the overall destruction of the great bison herds, and it seems a great shame to him and leaves him feeling unsettled and troubled.
Then we come to the caption or explanation for the picture. It turns out the photo was made to display the gun itself, and talks about who made it, why it is superior to other buffalo guns, and what the gun's special features are. The man is not a buffalo hunter himself, but an employee of the company that made the firearm.
So then what is the true meaning of the picture? Strictly, it might seem that we have to accept that it is exclusively about the firearm and is primarily of interest to those who like guns: enthusiasts, historians, collectors. But the two viewers described bring to it very different ideas. It would also seem that their reactions are wrong because parts of their perceptions might be in error: the first person assumes the gun was used in warfare, which it probably never was nor would have been. The second thinks that the man holding the gun has probably just slain a dozen defenseless buffalo from long distance, which is not the case here, although it is the purpose for which the rifle was made.
What is actually "in" photographs? The difficulty of interpreting even a single photograph fully and exactly is best exemplified for me by Errol Morris's investigations into Roger Fenton's "Valley of the Shadow of Death"—here's a brief video introduction at Vox if you're not familiar with it. The three long original articles in the New York Times, when they were published, provoked long and erudite comments numbering in the thousands when they were published. Here's Part One (you'll have to Google for parts two and three, as the links appear to be broken. Not all the comments are archived). The takeaway is that there are some things that are in a photograph, but even exercising the utmost rigor and an unlimited interest in solving the mystery and establishing the facts in evidence (Morris journeys to the Crimea among other exertions) there are limits to what you can know from what's actually in the picture.
But even once you settle the idea of what you're actually looking at, there are all sorts of other things that influence your reactions and, eventually, opinions. Your history, your experiences, your fears, your ideas of beauty, your sexuality, specific memories, all manner of things—the list is long. And yes, one of those things might be your taste, although "it's all a matter of taste" is always such a gross simplification that it's never useful. Or rather, it can be useful for one thing, namely, dismissing work you don't want to engage with or give consideration to. Many people believe that in written descriptions in books, whether you know the subject firsthand or not will amplify or diminish the capacity of the words to transmit a vivid image. When you read "the hot sunlight on her face," the words conjure a feeling because you have felt hot sunlight on your face. You might respond differently to photographs of mountains and alpine climbing if you have personal experience of mountains and alpine climbing. Or the opposite might hold more sway: you might have romantic ideas about mountains and climbers without knowing much about it; certainly when we read books about 18th-century pirates or 1930s gangsters we're not bringing personal experience to bear. Oddly, some people get very persnickety about mythical clichés that don't have any concordance to a verifiable reality—for example, what the clothing of Santa Claus should look like. That's yet another thing that can influence your reaction to photographs: what if it shows something you have an idea of but shows a reality that conflicts with your conception? Even your own work might influence how you experience similar work by others. A landscapist might have an abiding interest in how other people solve the same problems and what they can show her about how to succeed. Or a street photographer might be jealous of others who do work similar to their own. They might respond with reflexive denigration or scorn that has its origins in anxiety.
These days, another dimension is added to every "photograph"—because we're still calling them that—what is real and what was faked? I don't think it's any accident that recent years have seen numerous examples of famous photographs being cynically recast as probable fakes. Our minds are changing. We used to be trusting; now we are not. For example, no one when I was young seemed to have doubts about the veracity of Robert Capa's "The Falling Soldier," at least that I remember. But lately it's been fashionable to think it was staged and is fake. The picture hasn't changed; it's our attitudes surrounding pictures that have changed. We now think we need to start every experience with wariness, a sort of caginess, asking ourselves, first, whether we are being duped. The more that things are faked, the more likely it is that we'll suspect honest things as being possibly dishonest. I personally believe the picture, because I believe Capa. He said it was what he said it was, and I don't believe he would have lied. Viewing old photographs with new suspicion and mistrust is a sign of the changed attitudes with which we approach the experience of looking at created objects.
Collision
The curious thing about a book or any work of art is that we bring ourselves to it. And the resulting event-specific alchemy is what creates the work of art. It's not necessarily contained in the work itself; nor is it entirely about your understanding and feelings. It's the intersecting of the two.
It's also true that with many works of art, we react to them differently depending when in our lives we encountered them. Think of the movie that really changed your world and blew your mind when you were 17—or that just seemed perfect somehow. While you might continue to like it today—memories, sentimentality and all that (every now and then I re-watch American Graffiti)—would it have the same life-affecting power if you saw it for the first time today? Assuming you're an adult and have been one for a while, how about the best movie you've seen in the past two years? Would it have struck you the same way when you were 17? Books are like that too. It's not just age dependent, of course. It's also stage-of-life dependent. We are most moved by what reflects our concerns, interests and thinking when we experience them. I've seen Barry Lyndon three times. The first time I saw it, right after it came out, I was completely enthralled, almost mesmerized; the second time, only a short time later, I was bored stiff, not to mention alarmed that my experience of the film could shift so drastically in such a short time; and when I watched it again a few years ago, when it was 40 years old already, I had read some good critical exegeses about it and deeply appreciated the movie, and enjoyed it as well. I'll probably watch it a fourth time before I go shuffling off to Buffalo.
Another example from movies: think of a movie in which you achieved the Coleridgian "willing suspension of disbelief"—you got into it, and accepted its world at face value, identified with the characters, went along with the action—versus one for which you were unwilling to suspend disbelief. In that case, you kept yourself apart from it, maintained your critical distance, evaluated the mechanics of acting and direction and plot as you watched—very different experiences, no? The first movie you love, the second you approve of. I think of the scene in Goodfellas where Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) is trying to get Karen Hill (Lorraine Bracco) to go into his warehouse a block down the sidewalk to get herself a nice dress. He's trying to see if she's frightened of him or if she still trusts him. I found myself desperately trying to read his body language and expression to detect his motive, and I could feel Karen's barely-under-control terror. Thinking back on it I realize how completely the movie had drawn me into its world.
Is there such a thing as a great or excellent book? Well, of course—if many people have a positive experience with it, if critics find in it lots to talk about, if it was important in its time, if it was influential, if it's particularly beautifully written, if the author is a household name. There could be all sorts of reasons. And cultures need shared experience in order for them to cohere, although those stories are more often movies, now, than books. And sometimes the stories transcend the books themselves, culturally. Most people know the outlines of Gulliver's travels but haven't ever (and will never) read Gulliver's Travels. Especially, a book can be good if one person's good experience with it is reliably (more or less) transferable to another person, such that recommendations work and are appreciated. But it's not entirely in the book—Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress were once considered great books in Great Britain. Does anyone there read them today? (I tried to read them both, once upon a time, and failed.) Despite having eight billion people on the planet, only ten people per decade read Critique of Pure Reason or Remembrance of Things Past. That's my guesstimate and I'm sticking to it.
The bottom line is that with any work of art, the potential is always there for us to have a personal experience with it that is uniquely meaningful to us. And you don't have to have a deep, meaningful experience with art just because it's famous and venerated. And you can have a deep, meaningful experience with something few other people like and respond to (one of my favorite movies is Adaptation, a movie about a screenwriter so conflicted he had to be played by twins, who were played by one actor. It's not a movie very many of my acquaintances knows about). I once wrote something to the effect that "I reserve the right to react to art as if my encounter with it is a meaningful occasion for me." Works of art aren't static. They don't contain one effect that they impart to everyone equally. They aren't necessarily the same work of art for two different people at the same time. They aren't even the same work of art for the same person at different times; the next deeply meaningful book you read might be one you already read before, when you were younger. You were a different person then.
The search for good art is never over, if we're open minded. It's very much like the search for your next great picture. If you get the knack of making your experiences of art into occasions, you never know what occasion is headed your way next.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)
Featured Comments from:
Dave Miller: "Well said, Mike. There are a few precious books on my shelves to which I return every decade, knowing that something new and valuable will await me. Most of those walls in our house which are not obscured by bookshelves are hung with art works. Although I have lived with them for many years, I still discover something fresh and new in the best of them whenever I take the time to contemplate them."
robert e: "Wow. That's a lot to think about. First of all, I loved Adaptation!
"From another perspective: Henri Cartier-Bresson talked about using the camera to question how he fit into the world. If all artists are doing that to some extent, and presenting us with the results of their inquiries, and if they are skilled, then some of those results are going to resonate with those of us asking similar questions (consciously or not) at some personal or even profound level, if not necessarily in the same way.
"Those moments of resonance or recognition may be my favorite thing about art museums. It's not always deep, or consistent, and it's not always there, but when it is it makes the world considerably less confusing or flat or lonely. (Museums because both quantity and quality increase the odds. Yes, 'quality' in that case is largely determined by professional consensus and that's not the only way, but it works well enough for me, to an extent.)
"I've always thought that one of the things that made J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books great is that so much of the text is devoted to mundanities like food, drink, sleep, hiking, riding or sitting around fires telling stories. It's not wasted space—these celebrations of the quotidian root a fantastical tale of magic and monsters in a reader's everyday experiences; and, interleaved with reminders of how all that is threatened, they bring the story's stakes home, literally.
"Peter Jackson's film adaptations understandably had to take a different tack, relying instead on the immediacy and spectacle of cinema to do that work, but for my money they lost a good deal of the power of the original in the process."
Win G Low: "Since gods do not exist, the start of the article makes the rest a bit hard to swallow!"
Mike replies: At the outset, I asked you to "Bear with me for a sec if you will." But if you won't, then you won't.
Ugo Bessi: "Borges wrote a tale, 'Pierre Menard autor del Quixote,' in which Pierre Menard, after many tries, rewrites the Quixote; Menard's version is identical, word for word, to the original, but its meaning is utterly different, because it's written in another century."
Mike replies: J.L. Borges is the M.C. Escher of literature!
Kodachomeguy: "This disbelief in modern images and the suspicion that AI may have generated them is one reason to use film. If anyone questions your print/scan, show them the negative. It was there on the spot when you took the picture. The actual photons modified the silver/dye in the emulsion. It is a time machine, like tree rings in a 500-year-old log. Film is the real thing."
AN: "I think this idea of the malleability of an artwork’s meaning based on the essential interplay of the author’s literal content and the variable interpretation of the audience is a reason that, for me, works that are particularly driven by an explicit message/argument tend to fail as satisfying art. It’s important when making creative art to leave some space for the audience to make their contribution. I think that’s one of the big challenges: knowing when to guide or direct, to gesture or articulate, to suggest or define. If it’s too amorphous, it won’t be engaging, but if it’s too defined, it prevents the audience from getting swept up."
Mike replies: That's beautifully put, and so true. I remember watching cartoons in the early 1960s(!) in which the "moral of the story" was too obvious, and getting turned off by it even as a six-year-old. And the same thing still happens today.
It seems to me I read a profile of the late Edward Gorey recently in which he talks about not saying too much and leaving space for the viewer's own perceptions and reactions.
