Thursday, June 7, 2012

CRAP RULES

Good article about mediocrity, which is everywhere in the good old USA:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-ca-puttnams-law-20120603,0,672709.story#tugs_story_display

People are afraid to be too creative, too original, too inventive, at least in culture and the arts. It's OK to be bad, if you are bad like everyone else.

The same thing is true in popular and not-so-popular literature. Most fiction in the USA today is unbearable crap. But few venture outside the norms.

This is true of all kinds of fiction, from so-called literary fiction, which is not usually very literary at all, to the most blatant of genres, mystery fiction.

The famous mystery writer Raymond Chandler said, toward the end of his career, “As I look back on my own stories it would be absurd if I did not wish they had been better. But if they had been much better they would not have been published.”

Maybe this also accounts for the preponderance of crap in the art world.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

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