(I contend that) Insightful criticism (so rare today) helps in establishing standards just as much when it is focused on a negative example (of whatever the artwork may be) as when focused on a positive example. So, I very much disagree that one "must point out, not what [he] think is execrable, but what [he) think embodies or defines excellence. Do you actually apply such a narrow prescriptive rule in practice? ---rejecting an otherwise insightful criticism simply because it has focused on a "bad case" and criticized it for its faults without also somewhere presenting a model example of "good work"? My approach is that I'll welcome any good, insightful criticism which leads me to better see and understand something of value--whether its focus is on a holding up for review and examination a "good" model or a "bad" work. I believe that a bad example is just as instructive as a good one (actually, in most ways, a bad example is far more instructive than a good one), that one can presume that a lesser work's faults, if avoided, help tend toward the production of a better work. In addition, your view seems to suggest that what critics should do is hold up examples for emulation so that others will be able to, well, emulate them and in that way avoid work of poorer quality. That's fine I guess if one's idea of the goal is to promote and encourage copyists, emulators, who are concerned first and foremost with following models.
We're talking about standards of taste here. That means helping educate and promote a better, finer practice of perception, of appreciation in the public generally---and that's as much needed among the so-called "elites" as the rest of us (a dichotomy to which, frankly, I don't subscribe). Elites aren't born, to the extent that they exist at all, they're made, formed, brought up through long practiced instruction. Anyone who's determined to do so can join such a course of development in his taste.
The most arresting high quality works to come , while springing from the same impulses and motives as earlier works of quality, won't necessarily outwardly resemble much if at all what was previously typical of the best work. So, how are people supposed to recognize it if the criticism they've studied had largely been devoted to the praising of models of the best current work?
In making an example of quality work the point is not to recommend to others to follow---as audiences or as artists---"other stuff like that" but to look for and recognize work which is drawn from the same springs in other artists, namely, their creative, and thus very personal and peculiar inner impulses to expression. Many fine artists may be obscure, but obscurity by itself is not necessarily indicative of quality work. However, in our culture, which is dominated to a crushing extent by an all-consuming commercialism, best-selling work is typically going to be work which is emulative, derivative, and which panders to a low, if not the lowest, common denominator; my view, however, is that this common-denominator, while it always exists, and exists "somewhere," is not fixed and immutable. It can rise or fall relatively, as people gain or lose generally in the quality of their perceptions and capacities to appreciate quality.
You assert that, "...the taste of most people has never been any better than it is now." ...
And I say that's rubbish. Either you're arguing that average taste is and must remain at some immutable level, never appreciably better or worse at one time than another or, otherwise, the upshot of your assertion is that we are today at what has to be seen as a "summit" in taste relative to the all times past. In either case, such a view strikes me a wildly absurd.
Browse the best-seller lists of the New York Times from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s and, into the 50s and compare what people (average readers, not Oxford and Cambridge professors of literature) were buying and reading with what is on the best-seller lists today.
Or, take another example: compare for literary quality, the Early Modern English Bible, particularly William Tyndale's landmark translation, on which the King James Bible is based--Bibles which were the daily reading (or listening)-matter of millions of English people with the most commonly read Bible today--The New International Version. The point in making the comparison is based on the fact that the Tyndale Bible, once it overcame authority�fs attempts to suppress it, and, later, the King James Bible, comprised the formative reading of their time. Even illiterate people were steeped and formed in it, in the rhythms, the vocabulary, the figures of speech--which remain in use today. Today, its analogue, the most widely-read English Bible is the New International Version. Compare them for literary quality and then please try and make the case that the taste of most people has never been any better than it is now. I notice that you're no more generous in examples than you assert I ought to be. You don't point out which of today's best-selling novelists compare favorably --or simply outshine--the acknowledged best-sellers of earlier decades.
Let's look particularly at the last thirty years of the 20th century:
for each year, we have the #1 best-seller:
��1970
Love Story, Erich Segal
��1971
Wheels, Arthur Hailey
��1972
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
��1973
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
��1974
Centennial, James A. Michener
��1975
Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow
��1976
Trinity, Leon Uris
��1977
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien; Christopher Tolkien
��1978
Chesapeake, James A. Michener
��1979
The Matarese Circle, Robert Ludlum
1980 - 1989
��1980
The Covenant, James A. Michener
��1981
Noble House, James Clavell
��1982
E.T., William Kotzwinkle
��1983
Return of the Jedi Storybook, Joan D. Vinge
��1984
The Talisman, Stephen King and Peter Straub
��1985
The Mammoth Hunters, Jean M. Auel
��1986
It, Stephen King
��1987
The Tommyknockers, Stephen King
��1988
The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Tom Clancy
��1989
Clear and Present Danger, Tom Clancy
1990 - 1999
��1990
The Plains of Passage, Jean M. Auel
��1991
Scarlett: Sequel to Gone with the Wind, Alexandra Ripley
��1992
Dolores Claiborne, Stephen King
��1993
The Bridges of Madison County, Robert James Waller
��1994
The Chamber, John Grisham
��1995
The Rainmaker, John Grisham
��1996
The Runaway Jury, John Grisham
��1997
The Partner, John Grisham
��1998
The Street Lawyer, John Grisham
Now, how does that list, which I rate as pathetic, compare to the thirty years from 1930 to 1960?
1930 - 1939
��1930
Cimarron, Edna Ferber
��1931
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
��1932
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
��1933
Anthony Adverse, Hervey Allen
��1934
Anthony Adverse, Hervey Allen
��1935
Green Light, Lloyd C. Douglas
��1936
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
��1937
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
��1938
The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
��1939
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
1940 - 1949
��1940
How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn
��1941
The Keys of the Kingdom, A. J. Cronin
��1942
The Song of Bernadette, Franz Werfel
��1943
The Robe, Lloyd C. Douglas
��1944
Strange Fruit, Lillian Smith
��1945
Forever Amber, Kathleen Winsor
��1946
The King's General, Daphne du Maurier
��1947
The Miracle of the Bells, Russell Janney
��1948
The Big Fisherman, Lloyd C. Douglas
��1949
The Egyptian, Mika Waltari
1950 - 1959
��1950
The Cardinal, Henry Morton Robinson
��1951
From Here to Eternity, James Jones
��1952
The Silver Chalice, Thomas B. Costain
��1953
The Robe, Lloyd C. Douglas
��1954
Not as a Stranger, Morton Thompson
��1955
Marjorie Morningstar, Herman Wouk
��1956
Don't Go Near the Water, William Brinkley
��1957
By Love Possessed, James Gould Cozzens
��1958
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
��1959
Exodus, Leon Uris
1960 - 1969
��1960
Advise and Consent, Allen Drury
Please remember: my case concerns "climate," not "weather." I don't deny that there are some "clunkers" to be found in each of the thirty-year lists, as well as the rare item of worth in the 1970s-1999 list; though, really, from the end of the 1960s the "drop-off" is truly dramatic. The bottom falls out of the "quality" field and we're given a list of the top-selling fiction which is truly miserable in its quality.
links :
http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Community/Featured/bestSellers20thCentury.shtml
For better detail, look into the best-seller lists year by year, which give not only the single top-selling title of the year but the top ten best-selling titles in each year. While many are now long forgotten, I'll wager that many of these forgotten titles and authors put the near totality of today's best-sellers in the shade in terms of their quality. Of course some of them will be relatively poorer in quality; but, you've asserted that average tastes are simply static, immutable--a stupendous claim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishers_Weekly_list_of_bestselling_novels_in_the_United_States_in_th e_1920s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishers_Weekly_list_of_bestselling_novels_in_the_United_S tates_in_the_1930s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishers_Weekly_list_of_bestselling_novels_in_the_United_States_i n_the_1940s
from 1940 alone we have, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Louis Bromfield and Christopher Morley--all of their works cited, best-sellers, at a time, mind you, when to reach that accolade, you had to sell huge numbers of copies, unlike today. What's a best-seller's minimum qualifying sales? Do you seriously suppose that anything like the sales of a best-seller today could have placed that title on the lists of the 1920s, 30s, 40s or 50s?
Others, best-sellers, from the 1940s, include
James Hilton, A.J. Cronin, Margaret Mitchell, Edna Ferber, Pearl Buck, Daphne DuMaurier, Somerset Maugham and Sinclair Lewis. Who have we got? John Grisham, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Tom Clancy, Stephenie Myer, for crying out loud!
regarding the best-seller, Twilight, by this author, it happens to be
"One of Publishers Weekly's "Best Children's Books of 2005;
One of School Library Journal's "Best Books of 2005";
...
"Initial reviews for Twilight were mostly positive, with Publishers Weekly called Meyer one of the most 'promising new authors of 2005'. The Times praised the book for capturing 'perfectly the teenage feeling of sexual tension and alienation', and Amazon.com hailed the book as '[d]eeply romantic and extraordinarily suspenseful'. Hillias J. Martin of School Library Journal stated, 'Realistic, subtle, succinct, and easy to follow, Twilight will have readers dying to sink their teeth into it', and Norah Piehl of TeenReads wrote, 'Twilight is a gripping blend of romance and horror'. Publishers Weekly's starred review described Bella's 'infatuation with outsider Edward', their risky relationship, and 'Edward's inner struggle' as a metaphor for sexual frustration accompanying adolescence. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_(novel)
I intend to leave the following for a more detailed reply, but, till then, I'll confine my observation to pointing out that this misses the point---it's not so much what people could, or might find among the millions upon millions of resources buried somewhere on the internet, it's rather what they generally do find and stick on, and, in consequence, take as a model or guide. One is hard put to look for and find what one doesn't even imagine might exist in the first place.
I am arguing with someone who is failing to see that dreck has always been around; that the taste of most people has never been any better than it is now; that the internet merely makes ancient human tendencies more visible than they were previously.
But more than that, you are failing to see (or at least are being silent about) the power that the internet puts into the hands of proponents of the very cultural excellence that you are defending. That's why I brought up Conlon Nancarrow and Charles Ives earlier. Their music is getting a much larger audience now than it did before the internet. You no longer have to wait until the one copy of the scratched up cd down at the library becomes available. You can listen to it instantly. How is this bad?
As long as people like you talk of the internet as if it were nothing but tons of amateur crap, without ever mentioning the fact that it is also the best way of exposing yourself to cultural greatness; as long as you gripe about how many things suck without once providing a link to a single one of the millions of canonical public domain texts that you can download at the internet archive; as long as you fail to acknowledge that the web improves the communicative abilities of everyone, whether geniuses or idiots, I will continue to argue with you.
Sorry.
I argue with Mike all of the time too. I disagree with him about all kinds of things. But in this case, I share his optimism, perhaps because I remember how difficult it was to find interesting cultural artifacts before the internet. I used to read histories of music thinking 'boy, I sure would like to hear some of this music that I have been reading about; too bad I can't find any of it at my library or at any of the crappy local stores'. Music students today have access to so many more resources than I did that it boggles the mind.
And again, how is this bad?
An interested, motivated, curious reader could, or yes, might, find any number of fascinating things available on the internet. But the internet, in and of itself, and especially by its routine influence and use, not only won't encourage a person who isn't already that sort to become that sort of person, it will more likely tend to discourage one's becoming that sort of person.
On this day a year ago, Aten Design Group hosted a funeral for IE6 in Denver, Colorado. We heard about it and sent flowers. While the funeral gave a strong indication of the desire to rid the world of IE6, the browser still has a presence. So today, we bring you the next step in our mission to see IE6 gone for good. To demonstrate our commitment to getting rid of IE6, we’re launching a website called ie6countdown.com.
Now that it’s 2011, IE6 is officially a ten-year old browser. According to Net Applications, IE6 still has 12% share worldwide. Our goal is to get this share under 1% worldwide. Why 1%? We realize that there might not a magic number for when web developers and IT pros can drop support for older browsers, but we believe that 1% will allow more sites and IT pros worldwide to make IE6 a low-priority browser – meaning you don’t have to invest as much time in updates or fixes. We recognize that IE6 usage varies depending on where you live, so ie6countdown.com includes the details of IE6 share by country. We will update the site’s stats on a monthly basis and celebrate as countries dip under the 1% mark!
We know that many IE6 users are on the older browser because it’s at their workplace. We’ve put together some resources for IT pros to help understand the business value of moving off IE6 and are delivering to them the tools to help them navigate the process. And, with the assets provided on ie6countdown.com, we’re encouraging developers around the world to spread the word by placing an upgrade notification to IE6 users on their website. Top websites, like CNET, have already done this on their website, and other sites, like Meebo and MSN, are launching upgrade notifications soon.
We’re inviting everyone to share this site with friends, acquaintances, clients, and IT admins to see for themselves why even Microsoft thinks the world would be better off without IE6. Please join us in tracking the progress as we count down the market share of IE6.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, IE6 was a great browser for its time, but we all need the web to move forward. Visit ie6countdown.com today, and help us say farewell to IE6!
Thanks,
Roger Capriotti
Director, Internet Explorer Product Marketing
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