Art is always aimed (like a rifle, if you wish) at the middle class. The working class has its own culture and will have no truck with fanciness of any kind. The upper class owns the world and thus needs know no more about the world than is necessary for its orderly exploitation. The notion that art cuts across class boundaries to stir the hearts of hoe hand and Morgan alike is, at best, a fiction useful to the artist, his Hail Mary. It is the poor puzzled bourgeoisie that is sufficiently uncertain, sufficiently hopeful, to pay attention to art. It follows (as the night the day) that the bourgeoisie should get it in the neck.

Political reaction comes from the middle classes

babyfinland posted:
ORWELL

tapespeed posted:

babyfinland posted:
yes. writers come from the middle classes. thanks tapespeed

Do you disagree that they come from comfortable lives more frequently, or do you disagree that middle class lifestyles end up leading to defense of the status quo and wanting to be nouveau riche and impress the elite, etc?

the latter

leftist writers are middle class as well

artists and theorists/politicians both

capitalism is actually destabilizing of the class system so it produces alienated people from all classes

its a huge error to take that idioitic psuedo-marxist perspective that only the working class has any substantial grievance against the status quo

babyfinland posted:
the latter

leftist writers are middle class as well

artists and theorists/politicians both

capitalism is actually destabilizing of the class system so it produces alienated people from all classes

its a huge error to take that idioitic psuedo-marxist perspective that only the working class has any substantial grievance against the status quo

would you maintain the proportions are roughly equal?

tapespeed posted:

babyfinland posted:
i think its far more dependent on the specific character of the society than anything else what the proportions are

Do you think an equal number of societies have characters where the majority of the intellectuals/writers that emerge from non-elite classes are more prone to use their talents to champion the left than suck up or sell out to the right?

who cares what i think about that, why do you want to hear me make up unsubstantiated opinions about this

lungfish posted:
babyfinland posted:
Left-wingers can certainly be passionate and unscientific too, but their writing is less appealing because it is all about how the world is shit and needs to be replaced with their vision of it whereas the right tends to focus on the beauty of the world, reverence for its lost traditions, and righteous scorn of those who are enemies to it.

not really. rightists are the best when theyre callng for the destruction of everything (e.g. celine)

babyfinland posted:
who cares what i think about that, why do you want to hear me make up unsubstantiated opinions about this

You were arguing against me in a patronizing, dismissive way I interpreted as strong confidence I could be shown to be incorrect, and I wanted to fill the gaps in my knowledge.

I'm not arguing a doctrinaire Marxist perspective and I agree with you about the times and places being relevant. The context established by the OP (and most of the writing typical people of our sort have read) was post-Enlightenment works by people in industrial capitalist societies or the last days of feudalism transitioning into something similar. I agree that there probably were places where intellectuals from non-elite classes tended more left than reactionary, but my feeling is (certainly for the Anglosphere, mostly for France/Germany/Russia and not so much about the Japanese cited since I don't know too much there) that my contention about the higher proportion of writers emerging as reactionary for the context established matches what I know about the cultures in the times we read most from.

Of course emancipatory leftism/willingness to write as a class traitor, etc. increases in the 20th Century and may have at some recent point or at some point in the future become a bigger trend amongst non-elite writers than defending the status quo, but I don't see the proportion being anywhere close for the whole of the time period implied by the context in the OP (the last several centuries in Western industrial capitalisms and their imperial domains)

Impper posted:
aesthetics. what about for you?

Same, but since I come to a different conclusion than you, I will have to ask by which sort of aesthetic criteria and specifics you are making your judgments.

Impper posted:
if it seems to you that people mostly judge writing from the last few centuries it's probably because the novel didn't really exist and certainly wasn't popular until very recently

obviously

Impper posted:
the aesthetics of pWnage

Specifics, please. If you only present something known to you I cannot understand and agree or disagree with it.

tapespeed posted:

babyfinland posted:
who cares what i think about that, why do you want to hear me make up unsubstantiated opinions about this

You were arguing against me in a patronizing, dismissive way I interpreted as strong confidence I could be shown to be incorrect, and I wanted to fill the gaps in my knowledge.

I'm not arguing a doctrinaire Marxist perspective and I agree with you about the times and places being relevant. The context established by the OP (and most of the writing typical people of our sort have read) was post-Enlightenment works by people in industrial capitalist societies or the last days of feudalism transitioning into something similar. I agree that there probably were places where intellectuals from non-elite classes tended more left than reactionary, but my feeling is (certainly for the Anglosphere, mostly for France/Germany/Russia and not so much about the Japanese cited since I don't know too much there) that my contention about the higher proportion of writers emerging as reactionary for the context established matches what I know about the cultures in the times we read most from.

Of course emancipatory leftism/willingness to write as a class traitor, etc. increases in the 20th Century and may have at some recent point or at some point in the future become a bigger trend amongst non-elite writers than defending the status quo, but I don't see the proportion being anywhere close for the whole of the time period implied by the context in the OP (the last several centuries in Western industrial capitalisms and their imperial domains)

left-right and discussion of the state have to begin in this period. before the french revolution there was no left and no right, no nationalism, etc

animedad posted:
personally i think that the great authors insert themselves in a previously unspoken place, a void that can be exposed or explored or exploited. obviously it's not enough just to be "clever" since to be clever is to be indifferent to life. the greats are dangerous and put themselves at stake, every sentence is written with crackling pleasure

id like this to be more than just an opinion but id be hard pressed to justify that this is a "correct" metric. there is stuff written amongst depression, anxiety, other emotions than mania that are probably alright, but i tend to discount writers that havent reached a state of mature cynicism

the first paragraph is exactly what milan kundera says in his set of essays called "the curtain"

- Because, my dear fellow, no one knows what you're thinking. And that is why people read novels, to identify projections of their own unconscious. The hero has to be fearfully real, to convince them of their own reality, which they rather doubt. A novel without a hero would be distracting in the extreme. They have to know what you think, or good heavens, how can they know that you're going through some wild conflict, which is after all the duty of a hero.

this is basically sarcastic (gaddis ruthlessly criticizes modern (50s) psychology in the book) but it because he is the GOAT even the scarecrow opposition has substance