Anthony wrote:
"And of those "masterpieces" have a large group saying they
are not just one person ... they also have a large body of
"experts" in their respective areas saying they're
masterpieces. As far as public acclaim goes ... the public
know its a master piece ... it's accepted by the public as a
masterpiece. It's not nonsense. Joe blow doesn't just decide
that something's a masterpiece because they think it
is."
You seem to be saying that the opinion of a bunch of people
who believe it is a masterpiece simply because they have been
told so, who define masterpiece as "some book that has no
appeal to me, but was assigned in English class and I read
the Cliff Notes" is a sufficient criteria. Sure, "Joe Blow"
knows Moby Dick, for instance, is a masterpiece because a
bunch of experts and English teachers have said so. It
doesn't come from reading the work, but from reputation,
deserved or not, and is ultimately irrelevant, just a rumor,
in effect.
"What the work was met with initially is irrelevant ... it's
the history of the work that matters."
Wait a minute, you said masterpiece is defined by "public
acclamation"
-- so how can the work's initial reception not matter? Under
your stated theory, shouldn't it be completely contingent
upon that reception, shouldn't bestsellers ("the greatest
public acclamation") be considered masterpieces while they
are on the charts, but cease to be if they go out of print?
So Clancy and Grisham write masterpieces, but those same
books may or may not continue to be masterpieces? And
unpopular books that later meet with acclaim (like much of
the accepted canon) do not become masterpieces until they
meet with that fame? So, you're saying that "masterpiece" is
wholly defined from the outside, by reception (but evidently
not initial reception), and has nothing whatsoever to do with
internal merit?
So the list of masterpieces changes day to day along with the
bestselling lists. And as far as that goes, no "classic" book
is ever on those lists, even with sales inflated by school
requirements, so theirs are never the masterpieces that the
books by the day's most popular writers are?
"Besides in the past "the public" wasn't the general
population ... for one, they couldn't read and for two, they
rarely had access to the works. Only in our time has there
been such a wide public access to the arts."
General literacy is well over a century old -- Dickens, for
instance, was distributed through the popular press and was
wildly popular during his time; people waited at the
newstands for the next instalments, as if it were a new CD by
the Backstreet Boys. As a matter of fact, two centuries ago,
the novel was greeted with cultural disdain simply because it
appealed to the common person (Moll Flanders, Pamela,
etc.).
To bring it closer to home, what about the pulp writers,
themselves? That's before the current time and they were
certainly widely available and consumed by a general and
varied audience. Very few of these very popular authors were
considered masters at the time, but we base much of our
discussion here on the fact that we believe many of them were
and remain such. So those that still sell are masterpieces,
but those that aren't are not, simply because their sales
have declined?
Mark
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