Harper Lee's follow-up to the widely revered To Kill A Mockingbird hit the shelves this week to reviews ranging from merely tepid to downright scathing (NYT review here). Go Set A Watchman appears to be, according the folks who've read it, the literary equivalent of a Van Halen/David Lee Roth reunion: an embarrassing and ill-advised cash grab that threatens the integrity of the original project.
Of course, the ill-advised plunder of past works is nothing new. Contemporary reviews of works set in established fictional settings are often less than complimentary. I'd wager that after The Aeneid saw its first publication, critics were quick to lambaste it for straying too far from the source material. More recently, there has been some upset over the insults delivered to the Star Wars universe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the planned Ghostbusters reboot, and a—of all things—Full House sequel.
Time has proven the literary contribution of Virgil in Homer's fictional setting to be among the greatest treasures of Western Civilization, so maybe it's too early to say whether or not Jar Jar Binks will enjoy a fruitful legacy. But whether or not the passage of the ages will be kind to liberties taken with source material, it's fair to say that fans appreciate the integrity of a well-crafted fictional setting and don't immediately appreciate breaches of that integrity.
Sentiments of anger and disgust are typical of fans who feel betrayed by canon violations. If the insults to a beloved franchise continue, anger softens to sadness, disgust to resignation. If I didn't know better, I'd say that the pattern sounds an awfully like a bout of regret. A loyal fan who sits down expecting to enjoy another chapter in the life of John Connor and ends up getting Rise of the Machines instead can perhaps be forgiven for suffering the taste of betrayal. In the extreme, the regret can extend back to the original properties. "I'd never have become a fan if I knew this was in store for me."
Why mention this? Who cares? It's just entertainment, after all. Mere escapism. And that's true, as far as it goes. No one will starve for lack of consistent narrative structure and tone across the Jaws franchise. But it is big business. And it's big business for a reason. Stories are profoundly human. If you've been camping, you might be familiar with the urge you get to start spinning yarns round a crackling campfire after the sun has slipped below the horizon. It's perfectly natural to indulge sentiment for one's beloved, even if it arises as the product of an author's imagination. You won't starve for emotional betrayal, but you might lose sleep. And you will almost certainly lose peace of mind.
What's to be done, then? The savvy consumer will train herself in the fine art of expectations management. Think twice before listening to a new album, going to an art opening, cracking the spine of a new novel, or squishing your buttocks into a theater seat. Think twice about your benchmarks. Think twice about the whether or not the cow in your mind is sacred or just chuck on the hoof. Think twice about how your nostalgia might be quietly influencing you. Think twice on whether or not you're the intended audience anymore. And on the producer side, maybe take a minute to consider the motivation for a project. I might be an oddity among folks with an economics training, but I cannot bring myself to accept the idea that mere mercenary motivation is likely to produce great, or even good art. If your purpose extends no further than to make an alimony payment or buy a new yacht, maybe the TV show you produce will end up more like Shasta McNasty than the original run of The Twilight Zone.
Let a thousand flowers bloom, sure. But maybe make sure it's in well-fertilized, properly drained soil.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Friday, October 24, 2014
Exegesis in the Springtime
I often hear this or that thing being called "Straussian", but I never [hear] if people think Strauss was right in his main claims.
— robinhanson (@robinhanson) October 21, 2014
There's good discussion appended, so I encourage you to click through for more.For my readers unfamiliar with Leo Strauss, his main claims were that philosophers, poets, scribes, translators, and playwrights encode hidden messages and secret knowledge in their writing. Naive readers can enjoy the surface meaning of books, plays, poems, whatever and walk away content. But for the initiated, the hidden wisdom is what matters. Finding the hidden meaning of coded text is called "exegesis." The discipline of finding the hidden meaning in any work, written or otherwise is called "hermeneutics." As you might imagine, it's a tough claim to test empirically, though there are good game theoretical reasons to believe that writers with little direct political clout might wish to hide heretical ideas inside coded text.
The question then is: why should anyone bother to look for Straussian encoding in more modern works? There is no longer an Inquisition interested in strapping heretics to a dunking stool. Anyone in the secular west can write as they wish, without fear of state reprisal.
Answer (1): Straussian writing is a skill, and like any skill, it needs to be practiced lest it atrophy. Sure, there's little political suppression of disfavored speech these days, but forward induction urges risk-averse writers to keep their nibs sharp in case a totalitarian regime takes over, burns the books, and marches the heretics up the gallows scaffolding.
Answer (2): Straussian writing is a defense against the soft coercion of tribal exclusion. Are you a Team Blue partisan wishing to criticize the Chief Executive ca. 2009? Are you a Team Red partisan wishing to criticize the Chief Executive ca. 2002? Maybe you'll be gently dis-invited to write for DailyKos/NRO if you make your criticism plain. Even if the BATNA is not dire, it still remains unattractive.
Answer (3): Straussian writing is fun. Contrast a Straussian message with outright satire. Satire is an outrageous caricature of a position, with a very obvious exegesis; no special training is required to understand the "hidden" message. You simply have to be not-stupid. Straussian exegesis, to the contrary (when done properly) needs a key to unlock the mysteries held within. For example, if I'm guilty of Strausianism from time to time, the key is a passing familiarity with public choice economics. For the Tao Te Ching, the key is obtained after solving a series of koans. For Seussian Straussians, you need merely eat it in a box with a fox.
Answer (4): Straussian writing is accidental. Exegesis is prone to Type I errors, especially if the reader is actively on the hunt. Joe McCarthy was a hermeneutical Communist hunter. If you have the stomach for it, perform a search for "Illuminati" and browse what you find.
Answer (5): Straussian writing keeps out the riff-raff. If you want to go Full Nietzsche (never go Full Nietzsche), hidden knowledge should be reserved only for the eyes of those courageous few who have the fortitude to pass through the crucible of enlightenment. This is perhaps reasonable for some select religious texts. Recall that much of the Gospels are parables.
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| Get lost, Richard O'Brien |
#GamerGate
Monday, July 7, 2014
Stocks Need Flows Need Stocks Need Flows Need Stocks
Anno Domini 2014 boasts a historically impressive amount of content. Not only does the world have all of the surviving lore of the past, not only do the residents of the world produce new material proportional to the raw adult population, but now more than ever before in the history of the world have the costs of accessing that information dropped so precipitously for so many. Even without the specific ability to read, ordinary humans can watch nature documentaries about exciting new discoveries, new frontiers in science, new ventures, new horizons.
New telenovelas.
A great deal of this immense tsunami of information is, to put it bluntly, rubbish. Much of, if not most of modern entertainment is pablum, sanitized and bland and the prophet of this excess of waste is destined to be remembered as the Greatest Man of the Early 21st Century: Michael Bay. He is the Orson Welles of the naughties. Here we have a director working in the same medium that produced Ikiru and Fitzcarraldo and 2001: A Space Odyssey and what does he do with it?
Explode everything.
But as face-blasting and mind-numbing Bay is, he is not out setting fire to the last copy of the sheet music to La Bohème. Unless it's in one of his movies. Which might actually be pretty dang self-aware of him if he did. Point is, new material only ever adds to the cultural stock, and unless you, O my careful analyst, are willing to forward the curious proposition that the people responsible for The Jersey Shore would otherwise be toiling over parchment to produce fine Italian opera, there's no fine art/crude art (f-art/c-art) tradeoff to speak of, at least in the aggregate.
But that's in the aggregate. Individuals are not aggregates. As an individual, our entertainment puzzle is to estimate the share of the giant dogpile of history we're individually willing and able to add to our own small stock of cultural knowledge. Shall I treat myself to an operetta this evening or is it more of a dubstep night? Virgil or Palahniuk? Jan de Bray or Jan Švankmajer? My choice of flows directly determines my cultural stock. Everyone's choice of flow determines the future cultural stock insofar as producers respond to incentives. Give the public what they want, even if what they want is the easy pickings from the dung heap left over from a few years back.
I'm a bit curious though. Does my choice to consume pop culture junk food impose upon you a negative externality? Do I have a greater propensity to be a boor, a dolt, a jerk, or a misanthrope simply because I like to listen to Front Line Assembly more than I like to listen to Dvorak (most of the time anyway... I'm listening to the New World Symphony as I'm writing this, and the 4th movement of Part 1 just came on. You know the one even if you don't know the title)?
And if there is a negative externality, what's the correct policy prescription? the f-art/c-art dilemma doesn't resolve itself by wishful thinking, so subsidies for f-art are more likely on the margin to result in wasteful failure. And I trust you shudder to think of the tax incidence for going all Pigou on lowbrow art. Poor people are already poor enough without raising the price of the latest EA title. EA is perfectly capable of ripping off their customers without your help, I assure you.
The Helen Lovejoy of it is that kids don't know any better what to put in their media diet. I'm all for the idea of joyous tolerance, that I can just loathe to the depth of my being every single note of hee-haw, yee-haw, them-thar honky-tonk badonkadonk country music that's ever drifted across the airwaves, while exulting in the knowledge that I needn't impose my narrow prejudices on my fellow humans. Dominion is a far worse negative externality than any twang of a hayseed's banjo.
Of course, there's always the Rush problem. Not so sure about that one.
But that's in the aggregate. Individuals are not aggregates. As an individual, our entertainment puzzle is to estimate the share of the giant dogpile of history we're individually willing and able to add to our own small stock of cultural knowledge. Shall I treat myself to an operetta this evening or is it more of a dubstep night? Virgil or Palahniuk? Jan de Bray or Jan Švankmajer? My choice of flows directly determines my cultural stock. Everyone's choice of flow determines the future cultural stock insofar as producers respond to incentives. Give the public what they want, even if what they want is the easy pickings from the dung heap left over from a few years back.
I'm a bit curious though. Does my choice to consume pop culture junk food impose upon you a negative externality? Do I have a greater propensity to be a boor, a dolt, a jerk, or a misanthrope simply because I like to listen to Front Line Assembly more than I like to listen to Dvorak (most of the time anyway... I'm listening to the New World Symphony as I'm writing this, and the 4th movement of Part 1 just came on. You know the one even if you don't know the title)?
And if there is a negative externality, what's the correct policy prescription? the f-art/c-art dilemma doesn't resolve itself by wishful thinking, so subsidies for f-art are more likely on the margin to result in wasteful failure. And I trust you shudder to think of the tax incidence for going all Pigou on lowbrow art. Poor people are already poor enough without raising the price of the latest EA title. EA is perfectly capable of ripping off their customers without your help, I assure you.
The Helen Lovejoy of it is that kids don't know any better what to put in their media diet. I'm all for the idea of joyous tolerance, that I can just loathe to the depth of my being every single note of hee-haw, yee-haw, them-thar honky-tonk badonkadonk country music that's ever drifted across the airwaves, while exulting in the knowledge that I needn't impose my narrow prejudices on my fellow humans. Dominion is a far worse negative externality than any twang of a hayseed's banjo.
Of course, there's always the Rush problem. Not so sure about that one.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Artportunity Cost
Peter Singer is worried about your bad taste (h/t Angus). Near the end of the editorial is this fun passage:
Barnett Newman: b.1905 d.1970
Francis Bacon: b.1909 d.1992
Mark Rothko: b.1903 d.1970 (til Rothko was Latvian)
Andy Warhol: b.1928 d.1987
Each of these artists are deceased, kaput, late, pushing up daisies, ex-parrotesque--dead in other words. The sale of their work is exchange in artifacts, and the prices no longer send useful information to producers. The coordinating function that allocates, say, cut diamonds (where craftspeople can still produce new goods) is absent when people trade the work of dead painters. Without that production signal, the sale of fine art (f-art, for short) is (almost) a pure transfer. The opportunity cost of f-art sales is a bit of research and auction time, plus the value of the alternative uses of labor for gallery curators and very high-end art history specialists. The social costs, in other words, scarcely constitute a rounding error. Mostly, it's just one rich guy forking over tens of millions of dollars to another rich guy. The seller is more at liberty to philanthropate to the tune of the sale price (minus any commissions and fees). Real resources are neither created nor destroyed in this transaction.
That's true for dead artists though. What about the living? My awesome neighbor is a fine artist (f-artist, for short). She, unlike Roy Lichtenstein, can still respond to price incentives. She can paint more, paint harder, and paint with a vengeance if the price is right. It's tough to look at her work and walk away with the impression that she's not doing it out of a deep and abiding love of the medium and her subjects, however. Is it just, is it euvoluntary to put a price on her agápē?
I think it is. I also tend to think of f-art patronage systems as pretty good compared to the alternatives. Under patronage, the f-artist is accountable to the patron, even if the patron has terrible taste. Under public provision (in the US, the National Endowment for the Arts), if there is any accountability for content, it's to grant-issuing bureaucrats. Now, I have nothing against bureaucrats per se, but the problem of spending other people's money is extremely difficult to consistently overcome. Even more difficult perhaps than relying on the private opinions of university professors to chide others on matters of taste.
The alternative to either patronage or public funding is what Cassie G. does: bootstrap her own shop. You can contact her yourself (and if you like acrylics of cute kitties in Miyazakiesque fantasy landscapes, she's your girl) and commission your own painting directly with the artist. It's patronage lite, and managing her online store for prints and sundries is certainly not cost-free. Time spent managing her sales and marketing is time spent away from the easel.
So how about it then? How euvoluntary is the exchange of newly-created f-art? Do patrons have a moral obligation to buy paintings from beleaguered f-artists in developing countries rather than the young lady who lives next door to me? If so, why? Does it matter if the buyer really really really likes Cassie's Kitties and couldn't give one tender rip about painstakingly hand-painted knickknacks from Kuala Lumpur? By what moral lights should trade in imagination be limited by the sensibilities of third parties? And how long must we wait until irked commentators properly understand the differences between costs and transfers?
If artists, art critics, and art buyers really had any interest in reducing the widening gap between the rich and the poor, they would be spending their time in developing countries and with indigenous artists, where spending a few thousand dollars on the purchase of works could make a real difference to the wellbeing of whole villages [sic].At the top of the op-ed, note the names he lists: "Barnett Newman, Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko, and Andy Warhol," each and all household names.
Barnett Newman: b.1905 d.1970
Francis Bacon: b.1909 d.1992
Mark Rothko: b.1903 d.1970 (til Rothko was Latvian)
Andy Warhol: b.1928 d.1987
Each of these artists are deceased, kaput, late, pushing up daisies, ex-parrotesque--dead in other words. The sale of their work is exchange in artifacts, and the prices no longer send useful information to producers. The coordinating function that allocates, say, cut diamonds (where craftspeople can still produce new goods) is absent when people trade the work of dead painters. Without that production signal, the sale of fine art (f-art, for short) is (almost) a pure transfer. The opportunity cost of f-art sales is a bit of research and auction time, plus the value of the alternative uses of labor for gallery curators and very high-end art history specialists. The social costs, in other words, scarcely constitute a rounding error. Mostly, it's just one rich guy forking over tens of millions of dollars to another rich guy. The seller is more at liberty to philanthropate to the tune of the sale price (minus any commissions and fees). Real resources are neither created nor destroyed in this transaction.
That's true for dead artists though. What about the living? My awesome neighbor is a fine artist (f-artist, for short). She, unlike Roy Lichtenstein, can still respond to price incentives. She can paint more, paint harder, and paint with a vengeance if the price is right. It's tough to look at her work and walk away with the impression that she's not doing it out of a deep and abiding love of the medium and her subjects, however. Is it just, is it euvoluntary to put a price on her agápē?
I think it is. I also tend to think of f-art patronage systems as pretty good compared to the alternatives. Under patronage, the f-artist is accountable to the patron, even if the patron has terrible taste. Under public provision (in the US, the National Endowment for the Arts), if there is any accountability for content, it's to grant-issuing bureaucrats. Now, I have nothing against bureaucrats per se, but the problem of spending other people's money is extremely difficult to consistently overcome. Even more difficult perhaps than relying on the private opinions of university professors to chide others on matters of taste.
The alternative to either patronage or public funding is what Cassie G. does: bootstrap her own shop. You can contact her yourself (and if you like acrylics of cute kitties in Miyazakiesque fantasy landscapes, she's your girl) and commission your own painting directly with the artist. It's patronage lite, and managing her online store for prints and sundries is certainly not cost-free. Time spent managing her sales and marketing is time spent away from the easel.
So how about it then? How euvoluntary is the exchange of newly-created f-art? Do patrons have a moral obligation to buy paintings from beleaguered f-artists in developing countries rather than the young lady who lives next door to me? If so, why? Does it matter if the buyer really really really likes Cassie's Kitties and couldn't give one tender rip about painstakingly hand-painted knickknacks from Kuala Lumpur? By what moral lights should trade in imagination be limited by the sensibilities of third parties? And how long must we wait until irked commentators properly understand the differences between costs and transfers?
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Stripping for Cash
Gurri on Watterson on the comics industry.
ATSRTWT
Tis this: struggling artists are chicken-winged by syndicates (how did I never notice the sinister undertones of this word before?) into signing away a lot of creative control. In exchange, they get to make a living doing something they love. The alternative is (these days, anyway) webcomics.
I'm friends with a guy who does similar work (I won't reveal his identity) and he tells me that most creatives, be it in games, comics, comic strips, whatever, are in it for the love of the art. The labor market is way over-saturated. The guys producing cover art for whatever Dungeons and Dragons copycat game you enjoy are making but a small fraction of the minimum wage if you count labor by the hour.
And webcomics? I have a hunch Weinersmith drops by here once in a while, and he's top-tier. Despite that, I still bet that he won't be retiring to the Bahamas next year, even if his work is utterly brilliant. Would you say that's accurate, Z?
So where's all the public outrage? Why aren't folks flooding the streets with pamphlets decrying the cruel exploitation of art workers? Why is this instance of non-EE so non-rageworthy?
A few possibilities:
ATSRTWT
Tis this: struggling artists are chicken-winged by syndicates (how did I never notice the sinister undertones of this word before?) into signing away a lot of creative control. In exchange, they get to make a living doing something they love. The alternative is (these days, anyway) webcomics.
I'm friends with a guy who does similar work (I won't reveal his identity) and he tells me that most creatives, be it in games, comics, comic strips, whatever, are in it for the love of the art. The labor market is way over-saturated. The guys producing cover art for whatever Dungeons and Dragons copycat game you enjoy are making but a small fraction of the minimum wage if you count labor by the hour.
And webcomics? I have a hunch Weinersmith drops by here once in a while, and he's top-tier. Despite that, I still bet that he won't be retiring to the Bahamas next year, even if his work is utterly brilliant. Would you say that's accurate, Z?
So where's all the public outrage? Why aren't folks flooding the streets with pamphlets decrying the cruel exploitation of art workers? Why is this instance of non-EE so non-rageworthy?
A few possibilities:
- folks don't retain much pity for people with natural talent
- the actual BATNA is to work a 9-to-5, giving up the dream entirely
- artists obtain unusual status: some of them are well known for having access to mating opportunities in excess proportion to their income or physical appearance (I think this is mostly musicians and actors, but perhaps the same moral intuitions apply)
- selling out is still pretty good: look at what Breathed did with the Sunday pages, and consider that if you're a great, your work will survive long after your bones are dust
- ordinary people don't know about the plight of the struggling artist, or they believe that the struggle is part of the art and without it, all that's left is artifice
I don't know how many, if any, of these are accurate, but it does seem interesting that when people aim to portray the struggle of the working class, they talk about single mothers far more frequently than some dude hunched over an easel.
I too look forward to the forthcoming documentary. I'm a lifelong comics fan myself.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Hume and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
For those of you who haven't read the 1974 Robert Pirsig classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. It's a quick, breezy primer into an often felt, but seldom articulated gulf between art and artifice.
But he didn't get there first, not by a stretch. David Hume, Essay XV:
Artifice: the pretense to, "regulate, refine, or invigorate any of those springs or principles, which nature has implanted in me."
'Tis the cold heart of a clod what never has known the tug of authenticity. You don't need an artist's soul to appreciate a fiery sunset or the geometry of a snowflake or the dazzling athleticism of an NBA final match. No painters beret need ye don to lose yourself in an elegant snippet of C# code or engross yourself in the majesty of the stars or unmoor your imagination to swim in the oceans between sweeps of ink that bind a narrative together. Everyone knows art, yet it's often that we consume artifice. We buy bottled sugarwater, see blockbuster films, and God forbid, drive a Toyota.
And what of the ticky-tacky attempts to bridge that gulf? What of the saccharine platitudes that urge us to buy "fair trade" coffee and intentionally smash teacups so that we can mend them for the elusive wabi-sabi aesthetic? Do the way we rank these things in our quiet inner places match how we rank them in an objective marketplace? Should they be ranked alongside each other? Or is it a distinction made irrelevant by individual calculus? Do I have any right to be offended by either epicureans or ascetics? By elitist snobs or dreadful boors? Is it not enough that I have access to my own euvoluntary exchanges that I have to get wound up by those of others?
What are the bounds of uncompensated externalities? Does the bad taste of others count?
But he didn't get there first, not by a stretch. David Hume, Essay XV:
Even in those productions, commonly denominated works of art, we find that the noblest of the kind are beholden for their chief beauty to the force and happy influence of nature. To the native enthusiasm of the poets, we owe whatever is admirable in their productions. The greatest genius, where nature at any time fails him, (for she is not equal) throws aside the lyre, and hopes not, from the rules of art, to reach that divine harmony, which must proceed from her inspiration alone. How poor are these songs, where a happy flow of fancy has not furnished materials for art to embellish and refine!
But of all the fruitless attempts of art, no one is so ridiculous, as that which the severe philosophers have undertaken, the producing of an artificial happiness [emphasis in original], and making us be pleased by rules of reason, and by reflection.Art: the product of happy nature, a graceful dalliance with a winsome muse and the reflection of a sensitive scribe.
Artifice: the pretense to, "regulate, refine, or invigorate any of those springs or principles, which nature has implanted in me."
'Tis the cold heart of a clod what never has known the tug of authenticity. You don't need an artist's soul to appreciate a fiery sunset or the geometry of a snowflake or the dazzling athleticism of an NBA final match. No painters beret need ye don to lose yourself in an elegant snippet of C# code or engross yourself in the majesty of the stars or unmoor your imagination to swim in the oceans between sweeps of ink that bind a narrative together. Everyone knows art, yet it's often that we consume artifice. We buy bottled sugarwater, see blockbuster films, and God forbid, drive a Toyota.
And what of the ticky-tacky attempts to bridge that gulf? What of the saccharine platitudes that urge us to buy "fair trade" coffee and intentionally smash teacups so that we can mend them for the elusive wabi-sabi aesthetic? Do the way we rank these things in our quiet inner places match how we rank them in an objective marketplace? Should they be ranked alongside each other? Or is it a distinction made irrelevant by individual calculus? Do I have any right to be offended by either epicureans or ascetics? By elitist snobs or dreadful boors? Is it not enough that I have access to my own euvoluntary exchanges that I have to get wound up by those of others?
What are the bounds of uncompensated externalities? Does the bad taste of others count?
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Do Writers Write Better if They Get Paid?
Why do writers write?
Is "better" writing (whatever that means) the result of the application of the artistic temperament, unsullied by monetary incentives?
Or do the best writers write to make money? Interesting piece from NYR-blog, with some speculations.
Reminds me of this famous encomium, to David Hume:
There is no instance of a man of genius who has wasted less in idleness or in unavailing pursuits. Money was not his object, nor was temporary fame; though, of the means of independent livelihood, and a good repute among men, he never lost sight: but his ruling ambition, pursued in poverty and riches, in health and sickness, in laborious obscurity and amidst the blaze of fame, was to establish a permanent name, resting on the foundation of literary achievements, likely to live as long as human thought endured, and mental philosophy was studied.-- J.H. Burton, Life and Correspondence of David HUME, Vol. 1, p 18.
Maybe. But Hume was famously disappointed when his Concerning the Principles of Morals "fell dead-born from the press."
So, do writers write for money? Are the best books written for money, or something else? And does offering money spoil that artistic enterprise? In effect, do incentives distort art, and is the distortion worst when the artist is very poor and has a terrible BATNA?
Is "better" writing (whatever that means) the result of the application of the artistic temperament, unsullied by monetary incentives?
Or do the best writers write to make money? Interesting piece from NYR-blog, with some speculations.
Reminds me of this famous encomium, to David Hume:
There is no instance of a man of genius who has wasted less in idleness or in unavailing pursuits. Money was not his object, nor was temporary fame; though, of the means of independent livelihood, and a good repute among men, he never lost sight: but his ruling ambition, pursued in poverty and riches, in health and sickness, in laborious obscurity and amidst the blaze of fame, was to establish a permanent name, resting on the foundation of literary achievements, likely to live as long as human thought endured, and mental philosophy was studied.-- J.H. Burton, Life and Correspondence of David HUME, Vol. 1, p 18.
Maybe. But Hume was famously disappointed when his Concerning the Principles of Morals "fell dead-born from the press."
So, do writers write for money? Are the best books written for money, or something else? And does offering money spoil that artistic enterprise? In effect, do incentives distort art, and is the distortion worst when the artist is very poor and has a terrible BATNA?
Saturday, October 8, 2011
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