Linh Dinh

Ann Lauterbach on Wealth, Fame and Power:

Art is not entertainment, and it is not decor. It is one of the rude fallacies of our time to want to reduce all art forms, and in particular literary arts, to their most facile and elemental role, and so deny their potential to awaken, provoke and elicit our glee at being agents in the construction of meaning. As Martha Nussbaum points out, “We are accustomed by now to think of literature as optional: as great, valuable, entertaining, excellent, but something that exists off to one side of political and economic and legal thought, in another university department, ancillary rather than competitive.” We have, she adds, “narrowly hedonistic theories of literary value.” Our world—late twentieth century America — is relentless in its desire to dictate to us what we desire; it wants to assign and to determine how we construct and construe meaning in our lives, it wants to tell us from where our pleasures come. It wants us to believe that only Wealth, Fame and Power (WFP), in some combination or another, are worthwhile goals, because only WFP can confer —what?— celebrity.

Celebrity: the modern, secular form of martyrdom, where individuals are cast into the riotous blast of an eviscerating, obliterating light. How many personal disasters of every conceivable kind — suicide, homicide, divorce, addiction — before it is understood that celebrities are victims? “Their divorce was more predictable than their marriage.”

01.17.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (35)

Linh Dinh

Power, Money and Fame

Linh: Everyone wants power. And money. And fame. Get over it.–Kenneth Goldsmith
I don’t seem to want power or money or fame. I only seem to want food and shelter, (library) books and good friends.–Unreliable Narrator

He said, she said, but I say that if power, money and fame are your primary objectives in life, then poetry is a dismal career choice. Imagine hearing your teenaged offspring confiding at the dinner table, his or her mouth stuffed with Chef Boy R Dee, “Mom, dad, since I won’t rest until I’ve achieved lots of power, money and fame, I’ve decided to study noncreative writing with Kenneth Goldsmith at the University of Pennsylvania.” With tuition for 2008-2009 at $37,526 and rising fast, $51,300 if you count cost of living, I’d advise against such a bold choice, unless you’re really dedicated to non-creativity, then go for broke, literally, and don’t look back!
Sure, it’s nice to always have enough change to eat, at least, and be sheltered, but money and power—I’ll leave out fame, for now–are rarely the rewards for those who won’t quit emjambing, starting from early youth, even as rejection slips flutter around their ankles, so what they’re chasing must be more pathetic and sublime than anything that would interest, say, Hank Paulson, Bernard Madoff or George W. Bush?

01.16.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (17)