Transcending the Trivial

Were it not for cable television (particularly the HBO offering of Generation Kill but with honorable mentions to Showtime for another round of Weeds and AMC for Mad Men), it would be easy to write off this summer as one triviality after another, not only where the paucity of "live" performance is concerned but also in the paucity of texts worthy of that activity that may legitimately be called "reading." Perhaps this is precisely the point that Nicholas Carr was trying to make in his Atlantic Monthly article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?," not to mention Andrew Keen's thesis that the Internet (and, in the subtitle of the paperback edition of his book, The Cult of the Amateur, a whole lot more) is "killing our culture." However, I suspect that what Keen's version of amateurism has in common with Carr's critique of "bite-sized content" is the extent to which Gresham's Law may be as applicable to content (whether in the form of a text we read or a performance we attend) as it is to currency: the "artificial" (paper fiat money in Gresham's case) drives out "specie" (taken either literally or metaphorically).

In this bleak time I was thus happy to see that the San Francisco Chronicle chose to give pride of place (even if most of the space was occupied by a photograph) on the first page of their "Books" section (which, unfortunately, is now "embedded" within the "Insight" section, as good a demonstration of "artificiality" as you are likely to find) to How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken, a collection of recent essays by Daniel Mendelsohn. Regular readers of this blog know that I am already familiar with Mendelsohn's writing, particularly where it involves opera and music. What might not be evident is that I have been drawn to Mendelsohn by his canny perceptions that always seem to give equal attention to questions of text and questions of performance, those two "fronts" currently being so brutally assailed by trivialities. Reviewer Martin Rubin hit on what appeals to me most, even if he saved his observation for his concluding remarks:

Unlike so many critics whose writing seems designed to draw attention to themselves and the impressiveness of their mental processes and theoretical underpinnings, Mendelsohn is rightly content to let his [scholarly] methodology speak for itself.

Rubin explains that Mendelsohn's title comes from a stage direction in Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, whose overall plot line can well be read as a reflection on the intimate relationship between beauty and fragility. However, Rubin supports his own concluding remarks by citing an extended passage in which Mendelsohn offers his reason for choosing the title:

I suppose that one reason that this haunting line struck me with such force when I first came across it is that it acknowledges, with perfect simplicity, the inevitable entwining of beauty and tragedy that is the hallmark of the Greek theater, and is a consistent element in the works that have always moved me the most, from the plays of Euripides to the 'History' of Thucydides, from the light comedies of Noël Coward to the films of Pedro Almodóvar. As the Greeks knew well, it's the potential for being broken – which boils down to the knowledge that we all must die – that gives resonance and meaning to the small part of the universe that is our life.

That last sentence captures, for me, why it is that I shall always prefer "live" performance to recordings, no matter how great the quality of reproduction may be. The "live" performance always has that "potential for being broken" and thus demands far more substantiality (the fundamental quality of "specie") from the performers than is required for recording studio work. Indeed, that potential also says a lot about texts that, were it not for Mendelsohn's intervention, I might well have been content to dismiss as trivial, the most recent example being the score and libretto for Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.

However, this sentence also captures the prevailing malady that has made this summer so disconcerting. Critical thinking should not be reduced to rooting out trivialities and calling attention to what makes them trivial. Ultimately, such thinking is about that quest for, in Mendelsohn's words, "resonance and meaning;" and, if this summer has given cause for regret, then that regret concerns the extent to which, as a culture (perhaps the very culture that both Keen and Carr have put so much effort into analyzing) we seem to have given up on the quest altogether. Returning to my analysis of how Vladimir Putin may currently be viewing the United States, it may well be our national resignation to giving up such a question that indicates that our fruit has gone rotten.