N.B.

Different Reentry Problems of Artist and Art-Receiver: Mainly Quantitative

It is one thing to write The Sound and the Fury, to achieve the artistic transcendence of discerning the meaning in the madness of the twentieth century, then to finish it, then to find oneself at Reed's drugstore the next morning. A major problem of reentry, not solved but anaesthetized by alcohol.

It is something else to listen to a superb performance of Mozart's Twenty-first Piano Concerto, to come to the end of it, to walk out into Columbus Circle afterwards. At best, a moderately sustained exaltation; at worst, a mild letdown.

Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book.

Comments

[Waterfall]

Wow. For a moment there, I thought I was having an intense case of deja-vu. I just finished reading Lost in the Cosmos (again) last week. I love that book. And reentry sucks.

That's romantic nonsense.

A more valid comparison would be between listening to the 21st piano concerto and writing it.

For the art-receiver, at best, a moderately sustained exaltation? Maybe for Walker Percy, who seems to have a tin ear. I'd say at best there is no re-entry. Whereas all indications are that Mozart the artist received, at best, a moderately sustained exaltation upon payment for his work.

[Lickona]

No re-entry? I disagree, even at best. We aren't angels. Eventually, your stomach's gonna rumble, or your bladder's going to fill, and you're going to be dragged back out of the realms of exaltation. Those realms are wonderful, and should not be denigrated, but you can't stay there forever. I wonder about the mainly-quantitative bit - the artist makes, the receiver participates in what the artist has made. Isn't that a qualitative difference? Mightn't it give rise to a qualitative difference in re-entry problems?
An additional tidbit from Percy, Faulkner, and bourbon:
"Then imagine William Faulkner, having finished Absalom, Absalom!, drained, written out, pissed-off, feeling himself over the edge and out of it, nowhere, but he goes somewhere, his favorite hunting place in the Delta wilderness of the Big Sunflower River and, still feeling bad with his hunting cronies and maybe even a little phony, which he was, what with him trying to pretend that he was one of them, a farmer, hunkered down in the cold and rain after the hunt, after honorably passing up the does and seeing no bucks, shivering and snot-nosed, takes out a flat pint of any Bourbon at all and flatfoots about a third of it. He shivers again but not from the cold."