March 20th, 2011 / 4:45 pm
Author Spotlight & Random

biochemistry made 11 cats

1. Cathy Day said, “Why not write in the classroom and workshop outside the classroom?” (It’s about time to write a traditional-workshop-structure-is-dead post, but not now. Later.)

1. After 130 years they dig up a Robert Louis Stevenson novel. (No, Tess Gallagher did not find it in a sock drawer.) Stevenson abandoned it. So people ‘finish’ it for the dead author, publish it. Same old story.

1. Best books on Nuclear accidents/fears/history.

1. Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East.

11. Visual artists rarely feel the need to explain the artifact. Writers often do. Why is that?

Tags: , ,

14 Comments

  1. Ja Rule

      re 11: explanations deter buyers.

  2. deadgod

      11. Writers already monger words vocationally; to monger words about mongered words is easily within the ambit of their vocational ambitions. That is, the result of what writers do when they’re writing is easily, though not necessarily, already a theme of what they’re doing.

      While many visual artists are eloquent, and some loquacious, their response to “the artifact” is artifactive; already vocationally, they ‘make objects artfully’ about objects and about making art. To add talk about “the artifact” (including talk about the process of making some “artifact”) in response to “the artifact” seems to some/many/most visual artists to be redundant or, perhaps, uglily in excess of “the artifact” – and in a way that ‘writing about writing’ can’t exceed writing itself (though, of course, ‘writing about writing’ often is different from ‘writing artistically’).

  3. Nick
  4. deadgod

      ha – it was only when I looked at the frisbee cover that I realized she was disarming the guy

  5. Curt

      A#11: the work of visual art takes up space (it can be sensed because it exists in front of us) while simultaneously appealing to the mind. the written relies only on the mind (with certain exceptions, such as ekphrasis poems). visual = empirical + rational // written = rational. i would say the writer’s explanation compensates for his medium’s lack of an empirical angle

  6. Anonymous

      Visual artists rarely work only in defined words, while writers often do. Why is that?

  7. shaun gannon

      I will ghostwrite any future stevenson books for a minimal fee, i can write very victorianly and even wear a v for vendetta goatee for the duration of the writing & subsequent promo tours, please contact shaunpgannon at gmail with details of requested project for a price quote

  8. Sean

      Jabberwocky mindbendingly good milkshake.

  9. Anonymous
  10. Anonymous

      vipshopper.us

  11. kb

      Geh? Any modern art gallery I’ve been to has an essay attached to the wall next to every piece in incomprehnsible technocratic jargonbabble.

      Same thing with “artist statements”. I thought that’s what the art was for, but not really anymore, the art itself is usually just an illustration of some vague concept and thus incapable of communicating anything without a translation into idea-symbology, language…. and of course you can make anything “say” anything. I am skeptical about a lot of art, having been exposed to a lot of it… I think there’s a lot of sham going on in the art world….

  12. kb

      exposed via having been in a long-term relationship with a mod art gallery curator in a major city. perhaps i am projecting my final analysis of that relationship on her profession!

  13. Sean

      Visual arts exist to be admired many, many places outside museums. Sculptures, gardens, landscaping, wall hangings, tricked out rims, makeup, etc.

      A lot of museums do not have placards. A lot I go to just have a name.

  14. Sean

      or galleries, etc.