John Updike on literary criticism

John Updike once stated his personal rules for literary criticism, in the introduction to Picked-Up Pieces, his 1975 collection of prose:

Updike delivering the 2008 Jefferson Lecture.

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give enough direct quotation—- at least one extended passage—- of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy précis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in any ideological battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never... try to put the author "in his place," making of him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys of reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

From Wikipedia

Arcahic representations

Henrich Wölfflin has warned that the "rigidity" of archaic representations must not be judged as though later "Formmöglichkeit" (possibilities of form) was already known.

Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception 1974, page 184

Experiencing architecture

There are monumental and very simple buildings that play on only one effect, like the hard and heavy. But most buildings are a combination of hard and soft, of light and heavy, of loose and tight, and of many different kinds of surfaces. All this are elements of architecture, something the architect can play with. And it is necessary to be able to sense these things if one wants to experience architecture.

Steen Eiler Rasmussen

[translated from Danish by me]

Kai Nielsen

Peter Schjeldahl podcast on bike through town

I normally don't have earphones on when biking but did today; a hour long podcast from the The National Gallery of Arts' amazing selection of art podcasts. It's called Let's Talk: A Conversation with Peter Schjeldahl, my first meeting with this [I gather legendary] art critic working for the New Yorker. Funny and original guy and it made the bike tour. First, my headphones are not plugs, so I needed to bike slow because of the wind which made the tour special [slow biker ahead] because of this kind of pace made me see the known stretches of streets and other familiar sights afresh, kind of, and since the whole reason for the bike tour was to listen to this one hour show, it really did not matter where I was biking. This way I discovered the form of baroque Church of Holmen from the corner of the Admiralgaden and Holmens Kanal [the street, not the canal].
Schjeldahl had some really funny and interesting things to say, especially his answers of questions from the audience, but I could not hear the questions from the audience, only Mr. Schjeldahl's answers. I'm not finsihed with this guy [written a book called "Let's See: Writings on Art from the New Yorker"].

Clinging to the clutter

One of my strategies for motivating myself out of chaos of any kind is viewing a mental image of a very orderly homepage. I have no idea where it came from, but it has been with me since at least 2003 when I was walking the Camino between Borges and Leon in northern Spain. On this monotonous stretch of straight road (and fields into the horizons on both sides) I kept getting this mental picture of a nice laid web page which I should make when I came home. The content was of no importance and it never materialized but still I get this feeling of hope when I visualize it. I guess feeling life being chaotic we - I - long for order (margins, lists, headlines, hierarchies, nice images with nice small sentences below, good looking fonts etc.). Looking around my office I know I need to clean up. I'm clinging to clutter not intentional but because every single piece is nice or pretty or important. On my computer desk top there is a million things from the net I just had to download because I would never come back to the place I saw it. It’s all the important articles about all the interesting topics. They could be part of my mental homepage, as sub pages with links to the front page. I get a really good feeling thinking about it. I'm serious.

John Berger's Ways of Seeing

"The following is an except from John Berger's Ways of Seeing, put out by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1972. It is considered an early and very accessable work of postmodernism."

One may remember or forget these messages but briefly one takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either memory or expectation. The publicity image belongs to the moment. We see it as we turn a page, as we turn a corner, as a vehicle passes us. Or we see it on a television screen while waiting for the commercial break to end. Publicity images also belong to the moment in the sense that they must be continually renewed and made up-to-date. Yet they never speak of the present. Often they refer to the past and always they speak of the future.
We are now so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact. A person may notice a particular image or piece of information because it corresponds to some particular interest he has. But we accept the total system of publicity images as we accept an element of climate. For example, the fact that these images belong to the moment but speak of the future produces a strange effect which has become so familiar that we scarcely notice it. Usually it is we who pass the image - walking, travelling, turning a page; on the TV screen it is somewhat different but even then we are theoretically the active agent - we can look away, turn down the sound, make some coffee. Yet despite this, one has the impression that publicity images are continually passing us, like express trains on their way to some distant terminus. We are static; they are dynamic - until the newspaper is thrown away, the television program continues or the paster is posted over. Continue