Copy What You Like (2006)

It amounts to the same thing. "What you like" is part of "who you are" (a.k.a. "yourself"); and "learning to treat as authoritative" those opinions is roughly what's meant by "finding." That is, nobody has to literally find himself; finding yourself is learning to pay attention to what's within, what you actually care about/think/like, in preference to all the concerns/ideas/opinions coming at you from without.

>I now know that liking Harry Potter more than Joyce's "Ulysses" doesn't mean there's something wrong with my brain.

Oh, I do wish people wouldn't bash on Ulysses as much... there's some nonsense in the book to sift through, yes, but there's also some truly wonderful stuff as well. One of my favorite passages:

>"and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

The novel's moments of beauty are worth working for, I think.

But you're still entitled to your opinion. :)

Thanks for understanding what I was going for, and I'd like to offer just a slight bit of additional encouragement as another creative artist. Just pursue what you want to make, work on it, grow, and either the world will take notice, or, at worst, simply ignore it (baseline result). You're right that being "in the canon" is really a luck-of-circumstance type of thing. Just ask all those dead black guitarists that Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin ripped off over the years. He's in the canon, very few of them are, but what does that mean? It means do what you do, do it the best you can, and when you die, it's something that will live on after you forever. Not a lot of CEOs or Founders can say the same about their life's work.

"Finding yourself" is not an end goal for me. It's a journey towards using the time I have on this planet to a) have (great) impact b) doing what I'm passionate about

In other words, it is the quest to "find a mission" and not just your live on a day-to-day basis. I think this is what most of us strive for, but don't have the guts to pursue, because it means taking time of your day job, reading books, talking to people etc. And even if you find your mission there is no guarantee that you'll fulfill another necessary condition: earning enough money for you and your family.

I truly believe that if more of us would start a journey to "find themselves", find a mission and drive the human race forward with their skills we'd be better off. However, the opportunity cost for this approach can be quite high, which is probably the reason just a few follow their heart and instead spend 1/3 of their lifetime (8 hrs per day) working for soulless corporates with no (or prentened) mission.

Pompous? Sure, but I'm the one with the English degree who doesn't go telling other people it was a waste of time, effort, or intellect to use the journey constructively. The point of the personal essay was to elevate his experience as some sort of ideal, off-hand, and I think that's incredibly insulting to people who grind day in and day out on what they love and can barely eat. It's one thing to talk about self-actualization when living hand-to-mouth, it's another when sitting on financial security.

"The only difference between crazy and eccentric is the size of the bank account."

A movie was made 1986 based on this called "Stand by Me". It was a favorite when I was young. River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Wil Wheaton are in it. It may seem dated and shallow compared to the story, but it's worth watching.

I think the values of the groups you're a member of influence your values, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. A well-adjusted adult probably has to have many values that they don't compromise on, but also many where there is some flexibility, and where continuing good standing within the group is more valuable that clinging to a value that conflicts with the group.

Philosophy, at least in the analytic tradition, is supposed to be precise and formal, starting from axioms and reaching well-supported conclusions in the same way as mathematics.

By contrast, the problem with Nietzsche is that he was such a good writer that no one can agree on what it is he actually said or meant: the same colorful metaphor and ambiguity that makes Nietzsche fun to read also makes his writings a mirror into which people can see anything they want. Which is entertaining, but doesn't make for great philosophy.

That's why contemporary philosophy doesn't pay much attention to Nietzsche, especially by comparison with his stature in the public consciousness: they just can't decide what, if anything, he was actually saying.

The three philosophers you cite are among those commonly cited as good writers! I cited Nietzsche myself above. I suppose it depends on how you define 'good' writing. In the case of literary style I think for most people it boils down to there being some amount of creativity and play on the level of language itself (i.e. see Nietzsche) which is disconnected from the content. e.g. I'm sure Bertrand Russell was capable of comprehending Nietzsche's ideas(though the actual Russell never would have) and could just as easily have written a treatise on eternal recurrence or the history of morality as Nietzsche conceived of it. Point is, Russell's rendering of these ideas would have been entirely different, even though they are employing the same medium of communication. Another person could very well have formulated the same ideas as Nietzsche, but probably wouldn't have conveyed them with as much creativity and grace. There's writing that shines as writing and there's writing that is in service to some goal, i.e. the clear work of modern analytic philosophers--they'd hardly gain any attention for literary ingenuity or clever turns of phrase, but you are correct that if our judgement is based solely on the effectiveness of the communication of the idea, they are in fact quite fine writers. And actually, in this sense Nietzsche would be pretty poor, because as Analemma mentioned his loose play with metaphor, while incredibly delicious on the level of style, does not communicate very well, if the idea is that a 'good' piece of communication delivers a single idea all the consumers of that communication can agree upon.

So perhaps I'd revise the claim to something like, most philosophers are not good stylists (that is, they don't frequently engage in play at the level of language, as a skilled poet or essayist might)

As to your second point yes. There is always a reason. You can question that reason--i.e. you may think the reason is simply that academics were bored and decided to laud the first sap whose writing they came across that day--but this is a pretty absurd claim. You'd essentially be stating that a whole domain of tradition, practice, and procedure which organically grows and evolves, and I might add, in almost logical progressions at times, was ousted by the whims of one foppish professor who gamed everyone into liking something he liked simply because he liked it and was impassioned enough about it. When you plunge into a field of art, technique is often the criterion and leveling factor. For instance, you say you have never heard a convincing argument as to why Pynchon would be considered worthy of canon status--well, I'm not going to be so absurd as to claim he'll still be there in 200 years, but if you have knowledge of literary craft the reasons why he's there now are pretty clear--his maximalism is both well crafted and unique and his style is a turn away from the still dominant style of american literature (Hemmingway based minimalism) which is positively refreshing (the same could be said for DFW, who was consciously, I believe, rejecting the minimalistc style--I recall he wanted to move away from his maximalism too around the time of his unfortunate death). It's because he utilizes traditional structures and devices in a unique way--but in a way that is importantly still comprehensible under the lens of this tradition. Take for example the dawn of the unreliable narrator--it utilized a familiar technique in the field of literature, namely the narrator, and modified it in such a way as to generate interest--as to who gets the credit for such developments--well, it probably comes down to luck and knowing the right people. Yes, all these aesthetic considerations are ultimately conventional and wispy--as all human values tend to be--but they nonetheless obtain, and traditions develop, evolve, die, or persist. There are indeed plenty of 'rules' when it comes to art forms--that is how, at the most basic level, for instance, I know that something is a painting and not a piece of music--the medium and form follow particular restrictions (and then we have great fun blending and challenging these notions).

That's why any critic worth his salt often delves into art history, the artists personal development over a series of works, and analysis of form and technique over simple and baseless value judgement. I may wretch at every Jackson Pollock piece I come across, but if I am educated in the discipline of painting, its history, and its techniques, I can understand where his pieces fit into the narrative of painting history, what they challenge, what they change, and ultimately how unique his forms are and what they communicate within this context. If I dislike it, if I find it shouldn't be considered art--well I have to argue it from this perspective, from within the game of homo sapiens art history. This is why anyone who makes a snap judgement against such artistic efforts and says things like "anyone could do that, it's not art" always comes off sounding dumb and uncultured--they are treating the work entirely out of context and clearly lack an appreciation for the medium as a whole--unless of course they provide reasons which leverage knowledge of this medium.

At root our aesthetic explanations and investigations ultimately boil down to our base value judgements of simply "I like this thing or don't"--but artistic forms exist because there are elements of these traditions a large number of people can generally agree they appreciate, can describe with a common language, and can critique in comparative ways.

Thus the cannon isn't a good judge of anything other than what your precursors believed should be appreciated. It's essentially the historical development of a shared value judgement, or a shared human prejudice. So of course you can repudiate the whole thing. But at that point you are no longer even engaging in that art form--or at best you are engaging with blinders on, and any aesthetic mastery you manage to pull off is largely lucky and unconscious. You are starting from a different base. you are playing your own game. Thus you shouldn't be too upset when other people don't appreciate what you do, or your work isn't considered interesting. You're not even speaking their language.

It's funny to compare different advice on reading material in this context. Faulkner suggested you ought to read everything. Schopenhauer suggested bad books ought to be avoided like poison--the old garbage in garbage out principle. Both work, but if you forget your contexts and say, suggest to a film critic that the marvel movies rival Citzen Kane, they won't even begin to agree unless you layout a sophisticated argument that appeals to the criterion generally recognized by adherents to the art form, elements of cinematography, the quality of the script, etc. etc...

Wittgenstein's notion of language games, I think, is very informative when applied to the realm of aesthetics.

Sorry for the lengthy reply. You got me on a role. Good stuff.

Yeah, it would have been clearer, and grammatically correct, if he had used a colon instead of a period. Though it also would have been less stylish.

The fine essay is a delicate balance between style and clarity.

I didn't get this either even though I understand XOR. I get it now.