Take a big, black permanent marker and remove all the names from all the fronts of all the books you own. Right now. Then come back and carry on reading.
Did you do it? If you did, you’re a much less cautious person than me; I’d have finished reading the article before taking such drastic action! Moreover, I would have read the article with an eye to answering the question, “Why?”
When we read a book, or look at a painting, or watch a film, we are doing so in a context. Often that context is, fairly explicitly, the other works of that author (or artist, or film director; we’ll stick with the word ‘author’ for the general argument). Watching Michael Mann’s Collateral, I compare it to Heat. Reading The Castle, I compare it to The Trial and The Metamorphosis.
In doing so, we’re not evaluating the work on its own merits, purely judging it against the other films we’ve seen or books we’ve read; when we’re disappointed by a band’s second album it may still be good relative to its peers, just not as good as their debut.
Worse yet, getting bound up with the work of a particular author, our tastes can become coralled. I might wait eagerly for the new Haruki Murakami novel or Ridley Scott film, instead of searching out books or films by authors unknown to me. A system of merit where a novel (or any artwork) rises or falls on its own merits—not on the reputation afforded by previous work or a fashionable name—is fairer. Such a system better serves the fact that the artwork, not the author, is the atomic unit of art.
This suggestion is, of course, hopelessly impractical: the current system is too deeply embedded, human beings too conservative, authors too egotistical. Moreover, the ability to search by author is simply useful; you can go to a bookshop or a library, check under A or J or W, and find other books by the same person, affording a better chance that you’ll enjoy the book you buy or borrow than if you simply picked one at random off the shelf.
So, since it’s not going to change, why bother writing this at all? Well, hopefully it’ll help me—and maybe people who read this—to reconsider the basis on which we discover, judge and appreciate art. Erase the names and engage with the thing itself.
2 responses
This is an interesting thought and such anonymity would really focus the attention on what actually makes the book, film or album great, without the baggage. But as an ardent completist, I like to sample all works from particular ‘authors’ so as to get an overview of their entire body of work. I guess I’m fascinated by the recurring or contrasting moments in an author’s life, the dips and peaks of a long creative career. As such, I would go to some effort to ensure I read an arguably lesser Stoppard such as The Real Thing or view half-assed Hitchcock like Rope or Marnie, even if I may know them to be this, because it helps me create a larger picture of a creative individual, which interests me. And they will always contain something of interest anyway.
I realise this means that for every complete collection (Bowie for example, even the terrible 80’s stuff) they’ll be a great artist I should be hunting out who may well have made the defining album of my life, which I know for a fact would be better than Tin Machine. So I do try to compromise — I still get drawn into my collections but will do my best to sample unknown works, perhaps because of a nice album cover or a good blurb or occasionally a good trailer. Having said that, I think an author’s identity does add additional meaning and appreciation to a work even if you try to fight it.
Glyn October 24th, 2005
Apart from the impracticality, I think there are real and persuasive arguments against the position I espoused, and you’ve latched onto some of them.
‘Erase’ is a radical manifesto, and I’m not sure it’s one I could honestly sign up to. Keeping its points in mind is, I think, worth doing, but in the end the position of the article’s companion piece is probably closer to my true feelings on the matter.
That said, it was something I wanted to discuss, because I think that making things is something so intrinsic to us. How we respond to it (and as is discussed here, how we should respond to it) is a fascinating area of inquiry.
ionfish October 25th, 2005