I'm experiencing a crisis where, when I think about books, I keep wondering what is left to be said about them and if any of it is worth saying.Especially in an academic context it just all feels kind of pointless. Endless mountains of paper that amount to nothing. Does any length of argument, no matter how convincing, on why the Green Knight is green or whatever in any way enrich the artwork, add anything to our understanding of it? I feel like the answer is no.If anyone could provide examples of someone contemplating literature and gaining deeper, consequential insight into the art form I would be thankful. I am going to read Nabokov's lectures, hopefully they will rekindle my desire to think critically about literature
You have a point. But it's only useless as long as you fully understand the book.Otherwise, I believe discussing or analyzing it can improve one's understanding.
>>23538429Not directly related, but I think Ray Carney's thoughts on film and art in general are fantastic:https://people.bu.edu/rcarney/>My teachers told me that filmmaking was about telling gripping stories. It took me years to realize that that's not an ambitious enough goal. You can do much more than that. You can give viewers new eyes and ears. You can change their states of awareness so that they see, hear, care, and feel differently. Your work exists to express things too delicate, too fluttering, too multivalent to be said in any other way. You're doing something much more radical than telling a story. You're rewiring people's nervous systems. You're doing brain surgery. Art gives us more than new facts and ideas; it gives us new powers of perception.
No, the goal of consuming secondary material about art or literature is to elevate yourself beyond the need for secondary material. Those who remain dependent on secondary material forever have Peter Pan syndrome.
