EXCESSIVELY DENSE TRANSACTIONS

 

The author who achieves excellence in one or more of the four potentialities does so because he/she becomes engaged enough with the material to DESIRE to give it a density, a thoroughness, that seems to be like that of lived experience. The creator of a poor work, within whichever potentiality one judges the work by, has no desire, or next to none, to convey investment in the material to his audience. The creator of a fair work has some desire, but only up to a point. It's only the creator of a good work who's totally invested with respect to at least one potentiality.-- DENSITY=EXCESS.

I came across the notion of correlating my James-derived concept of "density of specification" with an observation from 1920s philosopher Martin Buber while halfway through a re-read of Robert Pirsig's 1974 philosophical reminiscence ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE.  By the book's halfway point, Pirsig was attempting to define "Quality." Since the author shows throughout the book that he's familiar with the Greek philosophical tradition, I speculate that Pirsig took a fair amount of influence from the Greeks' tendency to embody concepts as essences-- "Truth," "Beauty," and so on. I'm not partial to this tradition. As seen in my self-quote above, I tend to speak more of discrete "qualities," though one could still argue that I am "essentializing" by, for instance, associating all kinetic effects with a category called "kineticism."

Now, when I spoke of authorial desire, I didn't engage with the source of that desire, because said sources can vary. The paradigm with which all readers are familiar is the one that Karl Marx simplistically called a "cash nexus." The desire to be remunerated when one "sings for one's supper" is close to being universal, both in canonical and non-canonical art. The few exceptions would be authors like Kafka, who write what they want to write and may not even want many, if any, readers, much less their remuneration. However, the difference between Kafka and most other authors may be more apparent than real. The commonality with all authors is that in order to say what they want to say, they must imagine an "ideal reader," someone who will "get" what the author wants to say.

Superficial critics tend to oppose "artistic" and "non-artistic" authors by imagining that the first type of author doesn't pander to an audience, but just says what he wants to say. This is nonsense, given that many inferior "artists" are capable of imitating other artists, or of anticipating what he thinks influential critics want him to say. But even the superior "artists" cannot help but create in their own minds an ideal reader, by whom they measure whether or not they're communicating what they want to say. This process is identical with that of even the most commercial authors. Charlie Hack cannot really commune with the huge majority of readers he wants to reach in order to make lots of money. Charlie can only conjure up an imaginary ideal reader, whom he Charlie *thinks* will respond positively to a certain number of imitative scenarios.

Now in my 2010 essay SLASHIN' MARX, I used Martin Buber as a corrective to Marx, who speaks of making one-to-one exchanges-- "love for love, trust for trust"-- as a rhetorical device to stigmatize the capitalist exchanges of goods for money. I pegged this as false idealism and quoted Buber's superior conceptions of "I and Thou" and "I and it:"

Every Thou in the world is by its nature fated to become a thing, or continually re-enter into the condition of things. In objective speech it would be said that every thing in the world, either before or after becoming a thing, is able to appear to an I as its Thou. But objective speech snatches only at a fringe of real life.

To me, the "I=it" relationship characterizes the baseline of all forms of exchange, not just those of capitalism.  If I want a milkshake, I go to a restaurant that serves them and I pay for a milkshake. I am an "it" to the restaurant-owner and he is an "it" to me. That doesn't mean that either of us is incapable of believing that the other one MAY BE a "Thou" within some "Thou" relationship. It's simply that the limited nature of our interaction makes only the "I=it" exchange possible.

Now, even within the span of "commercial art," there can be variables in terms of what different authors offer their readers, and different valuations by those readers. Say that I am (as I once was) a comic-book buyer in the early 1970s, when the average magazine cost twenty cents. I see two new comics, one written by Steve Englehart and the other by Bill Mantlo. From previous experience, I think the former writes better characters than the latter, and if that's my priority, I choose the Englehart book. That would be my take on a specific type of "quality"-- that of dramatic excellence, within a specific context-- and I experience that excellence as the idea that Englehart's characters are more densely realized.

Now, I might end up buying a bad Englehart comic, and I might later learn that the Mantlo comic I passed on was actually better. But even though both comics cost the same, Englehart has conveyed the sense of giving me more for my money-- which may cause me to spend more money. overall, on Englehart's comics, both good and bad.

I can know nothing of the personal lives of either author. But if I believe Englehart is the dominantly better author, then it's because he has in mind an "ideal reader," for whom he writes "more densely," possibly (though not necessarily) because he responds in his own reading-experiences to other authors who share his priorities. So even though my monetary exchange with Englehart's comic-book publishers is no greater than another exchange with those of Mantlo, the first author has treated me as a "Thou"-- even though he does know me in the least-- while the second author has still treated me as an "It." Both judgments would be purely subjective interpretations at base, though if a substantial number of buyers share the same opinion, then both interpretations would become *intersubjective* for at least a specific span of time.