1) “Even though the idea of originality has been dissected and pulverized by so-called postmodern artists, they are still expected do so in an original way. In the end, I think sincerity and integrity are the primary value in art, and these result from making something as good as you can make it so that it reflects your ideas, interests, and your passions as clearly as possible. That is a very tall order, but it’s more about drive than talent. If an artist can do this—in whatever medium—he or she can achieve some degree of originality. Whether it’s going to change the course of history is another question. On the other hand, we all look for things we haven’t seen before. You don’t want to listen to cover bands doing Beatles songs the rest of your life. You know that Arrested Development is a different kind of sitcom than anything that’s come before it.” An interview with Roberta Smith in the Brooklyn Rail.
2) “I have been to many library sales since and can vouch for the fact that these duplicates are rarely examined, or their source respected, for out of them have fallen, as out of book fair books, treasures that sometimes surpass even their pages: not just the debris readers normally leave behind to keep their place—paper clips, kitchen matches, rubber bands, foil, curls of hair, bookmarks, bills, sucker sticks, lists, letters of love, postcards, postage stamps, gum wrappers—but photographs and threatening notices, greenbacks, checks and a draft of a telegram to be sent to the Allied High Commissioner asking him to expedite the transport of Werner Heisenberg out of Germany, which fluttered to my floor when I riffled one of Arthur Holly Compton’s books after purchasing it for 50 cents at a Washington University purge.” William H. Gass on libraries in St. Louis Magazine.
3) “I want to emphasize that my point is not to correct Sontag politically; nor do I want to denigrate the significant positive effects of Sontag’s political arguments and activities. Everyone, after all, is self-interpreting and self-inventing–writers and artists more than most. Sontag was a true cosmopolitan, and that is an achievement not only of morality but also of imagination. But cosmopolitanism, too, is a set of choices, and Sontag’s choices in this realm so strikingly resemble her choices in the realm of literature and culture that one must wonder whether for her being itself was not, in Peguy’s famous formulation, “elsewhere.” At a certain point you have to ask why there was this unquenchable need to comfort, this limitless sympathy, for Bosnians, but not for lesbians.” Daniel Mendelsohn on Susan Sontag, in a brilliant essay published in the New Republic. I recommend all three of these, but if you are to choose only one, let it be this one.
Tags: Brooklyn Rail, Daniel Mendelsohn, libraries, Roberta Smith, Susan Sontag, The New Republic, William H. Gass
