Post a Comment On: The Life And Opinions of Andrew Rilstone

a work in progress 5
Some people would say that the writer who can write a 15 minute script which ends with the hero getting captured in such a way that millions of children literally can't wait to find out if he escapes or not is just as clever -- maybe cleverer -- than the one who can write 4,000 pages about the minutiae of his childhood in such a way that the broadsheet newspapers salivate over it. But I don't think they really believe it. People also say "You have to be just as good an actor to play Widow Twanky as you do to play Hamlet" but I don't think they really believe it either."
I think that what everyone really believes is that there is a sort of league table of genres with Superman at the bottom, Middlemarch is at the top, and Agatha Christie in the billiard room with the lead piping.

Which means we have been making very heavy weather of a very easy question. "I like this even though it is bad" means "I like this despite its low position in the the hierarchy of genres"
Emotionally, I am pretty sure that this is what I believe. Middlemarch is "better" than Superman. One is about a whole community and a whole nation and asks us to redefine our whole definition of psychology and narrative, where the other sold breakfast cereal to American kids. I definitely feel that Middlemarch is better than "some text that some copy writer wrote on the back of a box of Kellogs Pep" although I also accept that advertising copy writing is a hard job and neither me nor Mary Evans could have done it. 
But I am not sure that I could rationally defend these feelings. What does "better" even mean?  I could just as well argue: 
Superman — Poked fun at the Klu Klux Klan when it was dangerous to do so; encouraged literally millions of kids to practice tolerance and clean living

Middlemarch — Approved of by F.R Leavis
Superman — Millions of kids ran home to school to listen to it 
Middlemarch — Literally no-one would read it if someone hadn't decided that an English Literature GCSE was needed to get certain kinds of job. 
Superman - Figure who literally everyone on earth has heard of; genuine 20th century myth. 
Dorothea Brooke - Who she?

6:
Mr C.S. Lewis proved that what defined a "good" book was that the reader had a "good" literary experience. One of the markers that a "good" literary experience was taking place was that once the reader had finished the book, he might go back and read it for a second or third time. The person consuming a romantic story in Woman's Realm (intending to throw it away once he's finished it) is doing a different kind of thing to the person sitting down to read Barnaby Rudge for the fourth time. 
I have never read Barnaby Rudge. I have no idea why that was the example which occurred to me.
I don't know if would be prepared to argue (except in order to annoy my Mother) that Doctor Who is "better" than Coronation Street in some objective way. I don't think that it necessarily has better actors, better writers, better directors or cleverer plots. I suppose I could say that it's cleverer to create an alien planet that people believe in than to create a Manchester kitchen that people believe in but on the other hand we've spent 50 years apologizing for the sheer unbelievableness of many of Doctor Who's planets. And some of his kitchens.

But there is no question that we Doctor Who fans do go back and watch our favourite episodes over and over again; but the the idea of anyone going back and listening to old episodes of the Archers is obviously silly. I think I am correct in saying that soap fans, if they miss a few installments, don't try to "catch up" by watching the parts that they missed: they simply start watching again from this weeks episode and take it for granted that the characters themselves will bring them up to speed on what has been happening while they've been away. A bit like real life. There are DVD collections of Inspector Morse, Grange Hill, and the Banana Splits but none of EastEnders or Coronation Street.
On Lewis's view, a "good" reading is one which "receives" the book — that looks at what is there, and only what is there, which appreciates what the writer is doing and tries to have the emotional reaction that the writer wanted you to have. A "bad" reading is one that "uses" the book: which takes some descriptions of sails billowing in the wind and jolly rogers being run up flagpoles as a jumping off point for a day dream that has nothing very much to do with what the author wrote. It's the difference between the person who listens to the classical concert in silence (because he wants to hear every single note down to the last triangle) and the person who is glad that the brass band has started playing because it gives him the excuse to sing along terribly loudly. On Lewis's terms, virtually all pop music is bad. The whole point of pop music is that you "use" it: you dance to it; you use it create ambiance for your party. If you go to a live concert you scream down the band. 
Well, yes. But a dance band is there to provide music for people to dance to; and it might do that well or badly. It might take just as much skill to get everyone in the disco bopping as to win a standing ovation from the cognoscenti in the Albert Hall. Lewis is right that sitting and listening carefully is different to singing along; but I am not sure where he gets "listening carefully to music is better than dancing to it" or "music that you listen carefully to is better than music that you dance to" from. Morally? Psychologically? Theologically?



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