An Elite's Populist Manifesto

Book critic for The Washington Post, Michael Dirda, in a largely sympathetic, postmodern- and politically-correct review of What Good Are the Arts? — a new book by John Carey, chief book reviewer for the The Sunday Times of London, and former Oxford professor of English — outlines one of the book's central theses:

Instead of approaching artworks as showpieces, concludes Carey, we would be better off emphasizing personal participation in the arts. The activity itself matters more than the quality of the end product. Art should be "something done, not consumed, and done by ordinary people, not master spirits." It should result in community, not a fatuous sense of superiority. [...] "It is not what you paint on a piece of canvas that counts," Carey argues, "but what painting a piece of canvas can do for you."

See? Art is really about personal therapy, self-improvement, and the fostering of a perfectly equalitarian sense of community with one's fellow human beings, not aesthetics nor a revealing by a gifted artist of that which is normally hidden from and beyond the ken of us ordinary folk thereby enriching our spiritual lives in ways achievable by no other means. What's important is that art involve one as creator, bereft of any discernable talent though one may be. And if in participating in the making of art one creates, say, the equivalent of a velvet Elvis, or another C&W song exactly like the exact same five-gazillion that preceded it, no matter. The quality of the end product is of little importance. What's important is the acquiring of the proper attitude toward one's fellow human beings through the agency of one's involvement in the making of it.

Reading such imbecile, equalitarian-populist lunacy, especially coming from an obvious and privileged elite, one doesn't know whether to make sport of or skewer the lunatic.

But why one or the other? Why not both?

The real question that we need to keep in mind, says Carey, is "How does this person's love of art affect his, or her, attitude to human beings?" All too often, reverence for the divine Mozart or a heavenly Vermeer tends to reduce the rest of us to interchangeable extras on life's stage, unimportant and quite expendable.

But my dear fellow, the rest of us are interchangeable, unimportant, and quite expendable — professors of English, former or current, and book critics most particularly.

See now how that works?

There's a good fellow. I knew you would.