Elizabeth Hardwick wrote "The Decline of Book Reviewing" in Harpers in 1959, and then went on to co-found the NYRB with Robert Silver during a big publishing strike.
In general, stuff like this is insanely inside baseball and navel gazing for the book review industry (of which little remains of the old glory days).
That said, I don't know anyone into literature who takes the NYTBR seriously. That the Best Seller list is a gamified black box is basically an open secret. The NYTBR, in particular, has become far too interconnected into the MFA-publishing-literature industrial complex. The reviews are so bland and milquetoasty because so much MFA-lit is bland as all hell and the reviews are just marketing.
The NYRB and the LRB are orders of magnitude better reading than the NYTBR, even if this article seems to criticize them (unfoundedly, in my opinion) as fuddy or old fashioned. They're not traditional "reviews" in the sense that they usually don't come around to saying whether a book is good or bad, though; they're essays that use the books reviewed as launch vehicles for pushing the ideas in them into new directions or put under a new light. The NYTBR, in contrast, often reads as ad copy or toothless summary (the latter being the plague that has infected nearly all film criticism as well).
There has also been a big resurgence in smaller mags, like N+1 (now an elder statesmen of the new upstarts), The Drift, The European Review of Books (heavy focus on translation), and many others that have excellent, lively, criticism. Also subreddits like r/truelit are a great way to expose yourself to new or interesting books. I usually find a book to add to my TBR list once or twice a week. Is the writing always up to par with professional publications? Not always, but sometimes it honestly is. (r/truelit does have a strong slant towards formal experimentation, though, which some people aren't a fan of. People more interested in "the classics" or contemporary-lit can find great recs still in r/literature.)
I hardly have the time to read the books I want to read. My second cup of coffee on Sunday morning is about the time I'm willing to give to reading about books somebody else wants me to read (or not), and for that the NYTBR is ok.
Anthony Trollope give a chapter to criticism in his autobiography, which you can find at Gutenberg.org (else I wouldn't be quoting it). The second-last paragraph concludes
And readers will also find that by devoting an hour or two on Saturday to the criticisms of the week, they will enable themselves to have an opinion about the books of the day. The knowledge so acquired will not be great, nor will that little be lasting; but it adds something to the pleasure of life to be able to
talk on subjects of which others are speaking; and the man who has sedulously gone through the literary notices in the Spectator and the Saturday may perhaps be justified in thinking himself as well able to talk about the new book as his friend who has brought that new book on the tapis, and who, not improbably, obtained his information from the same source.
Just because art always has a political component, doesn't mean reviews and discussions of it need to focus on viewing it through a political lens.
Yes sure, art is political, but art is political in a different way in which a discussion forum might be said to be political, and it's entirely reasonable to wish for a discussion forum with a less political bent.
I think there's a misunderstanding in this discussion. As an observer you can make all art political if you project politics onto it. All art isn't political in that it can be – and often is – created without politics in mind.
> That's a nonsensical definition. By that standard literally everything is political
The definition implies it, yes
> which means the word has no meaning.
I disagree, the "if everithing is X then nothing is X" applies only to thing that are in part defined as negative/contrapposition like being special, tall, a luxury, progressive, conservative, etc. it does not make sense when applied to things like being religious, having human rights, being moral.
"Everithing is political" means that nothing can be fully separated and insulated from the surrounding political atmosphere. I personally think it is not a constructive way to perceive the world, but it is perfectly self-consistent
Van Gogh painted it in an asylum (social safety net) run by Franciscans (repeal of anti-Church laws during the Third Republic) because he had self-admitted after cutting off his own ear (treatment of physical violence as a medical problem) because he owed money to Gaugin (private property). It includes an imaginary house and was painted from memory because he wasn't allowed to paint in his room (medical treatment in a total institution), but he was allowed to use a spare room in the half-full asylum which was normally for the wealthy (obvious). That said, he considered it a painting from nature, rather than an "abstraction", a form which was preferred by Gaugin in order to indicate harmony between man and nature (a fin de siècle concern which also directly lead to the rejections of liberal democracy and bourgeois society in the early 20th Century). On his own account, the subject matter of stars connotes a spiritual hope — and you can make what you will of the more specific religous and astronomical interpratations that came later.
In a narrow sense, there's no political art except electoral propaganda, in a broad sense anything made by humans is political.
So I don't find the game of definitions is not particularly interesting. It's not even that interesting whether the political content of art is intentional or self-concious on the part of the author or whether it's imposed by others. The process which I think is worth thinking about is the very second-order process we're engaging in now: who wants to make a claim about the politics (or lack thereof) of art, and why are they interested in doing that?
I have no idea, nor do I necessarily think that they exists. An hypothrtical person holding the opinion I described might try to point out some effect the artwork had on the world as a political effect, I for sure do not know enough about art and/or history to speculate.
In this view authorial intent has a second-class position to its tangible effect.
I actually do not like the emphasis on death of the author that much[0], I appreciate the relativism of saying that authorial intent is not the only allowed interpretation, yet it is still a very important one.
[0] Also I feel the need to reiterate that I was expressing the possible opinions of a hypothetical person I made up, not my own.
Do you read boring books because they're all about working in fields and mills? Do you enjoy adventure books, but avoid reading them because the content isn't weighty enough?
Personally I powered through some boring-but-virtuous books in my youth, but now I'm a middle-aged adult with less free time, I've realised reading is supposed to be fun.
So if a book review tells me a book is virtuous without telling me if it's fun, that book review isn't much use to me.
Everything involving a substantial agreement or disagreement between persons is politics, that's what it means. Claiming that something 'should not be political' is almost always an assertion that your position is unassailably correct.
The act of asking those questions is politics, you don't have to ask those questions.
The real answer to those questions is that it makes the story more interesting. You are searching for a political reason where there is none. The question "what makes a story interesting" is philosophy and writing and not politics.
umm... There you go injecting politics where it doesn't belong.
Although the first sentence "YA about young heroine rebelling" is itself about politics really, so my comment doesn't apply.
Authors write what they feel like writing and what readers feel like reading, not what some liberal arts professor wants to include in their "the politics of YA books" course. Let me assure you that neither the writer nor the reader are interested in your concerns.
Art is intrinsically political. If you think it's not political, that's because it's just taking a political position you either don't see, or one you agree with.
The only way to remove politics from art would be to remove the people.
Is this art? What is the context? I can't tell without knowing the context. Who drew it? How did they draw it? Why did they draw it? What inspired them? Without understanding these aspects, nothing is art, or everything is art, and it loses its meaning.
Yes, art is the projection of skill and beauty, but how we define skill and our perception of beauty also depend on context. You accepting the painting of the Mona Lisa as art tells something about you, while my grandfather rejecting it with the words "my 7-year-old granddaughter can draw better" tells something about him. This is inherently political. A modern art painting with color splashes is, in the most basic sense, not distinct from a 5-year-old playing with paint without context. With context, whether you accept it as art or not is political.
> Politics is the set of activities associated with making decisions in groups or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.
So even if you could argue that art itself is not political, you surely cannot argue that the perception of it isn't.
> you surely cannot argue that the perception of it isn't.
Your perception of it is, most people don't see art as political. Nobody would find a painting of a sea with a rock to be political, except really annoying people.
> To repeat what a previous commenter said, nothing is political as long as they fit your political view.
I don't share the politics of Van Gogh, yet I don't feel "The Rocks" is political.
So in general there are plenty of stuff that you wont find political even if you don't share the views, that is what people mean when they say an art piece isn't political. A person who says such an art piece is political is just trying to find politics in art where there isn't one.
Even if the original artist says it is political it isn't, because there is no politics in the art the politics was in his statement that it is political. Art stands on their own free from the opinions of their creators. You can of course embed political messages into art pieces making them political, but this isn't such a case. If you can't deduce what politics the person is trying to convey just from the art piece alone then it isn't political.
> I don't share Van Gogh's politics, yet I don't feel "The Rocks" is political.
Don't you see the contradiction?
I know people often complain that everything has become political. I understand because I do it too. The main problem in this discussion is the loss of nuance in the different usages and meanings of the word "political." In everyday usage, it refers to views being part of the policy-making process, especially when more pressing matters exist. What we really mean and criticize is divisive politics.
However, in the extended view of politics, which is a very common view, designating something as art involves politics. It's a political process. This doesn't degrade art or make it inherently divisive. It certainly doesn't make art a subset of politics.
Nonsense. Art is strongly related to culture, and culture is strongly related to politics. The fact that art these days is very much viewed in a political frame, in the US in this case, is because politics have taken a huge role in US culture. Like, it's all American people seem to be thinking about these days.
But no, art is not political in itself. Art, by some definition, is a thing whose meaning is created by who experiences it. Art might look political if the observer looks at it in a political point-of-view. But in reality, tinned faeces [1] are not a political statement nor a reflection on the human condition. They are literally just shit in a box.
I think this is too strong. If art has no inherent meaning, you can't say that it's not making a political statement, only that whether it's making a political statment or not is undefined.
Otherwise, saying that something is not making a political statement is actually a very strong political statement in itself (e.g. things which are "not political" can't be negotiated or changed).
"All art is political" is like "atheism is a religion". Obviously true if politics is everything to you. I'd call it 'true' in the same self-referential way as "dollars/bitcoin have value": it holds to the extent everyone believes in it. It's worth asking if the world where it holds is a better one.
All art is political, because art relates itself to the society it is made in whether the artist likes it or not. Is a Nazi painter that paints totally apolitical pictures of landscapes while the genocide is happening one village over apolitical? i'd argue that this would be deeply political art, even if it wasn't meant to be just that. Taking no stance, while the world around you is happening is a political stance in itself.
Being apolitical is also political – in a stark difference to various gods politics will also affect you and your life, if you don't believe in politics.
I did kind of say that to the extent the people around you make all of life political, you can't avoid that constructed social truth. But like the value of money it's a 'truth' conditioned on a particular equilibrium. There's another equilibrium where pushy haters of private life are a small minority.
By definition, all art should challenge the participant/consumer of it.
That challenge can be personal, or something else.
But all is not political. It only looks that way because in the current cultural environment The Politics Industrial Complex has over-developed (?) it's position in the hierarchy of the broader culture. It creases unhealthy biases etc to the point that We have forgotten "The government needs us, we don't need it."
Everything is not political. We as individuals still have influence. The PIC's lens isn't working. It's a false god. The sooner we change that, the better.
Which flower did you choose to paint? Why? Is it native, an import, a new arrival, or endangered?
Is there cultural context? The Victorian Brits encoded messages into flowers; some of those meanings are still current. (Give a friend a red rose, another friend a potted daisy. Do they react differently?) A red poppy is a symbol of one thing, specifically because of culture. Chrysanthemums mean different things in America and Japan.
And if the artist writes a statement: "This is just a painting of a pretty flower." that too is a political statement.
Please display your definition of "political" which makes sense in all our usual contexts but also makes at least some art unable to be viewed as political.
Books recommended on hn are almost always books that are "useful" in the spirit of productivity and all that. Not that it's wrong, but it feels heavily tilting towards monotony i.e just one kind of books, sort of.
Ultimately those books are the best. Fiction books don't have much of value, as does the rest of entertainment. If you can lean - you could study instead or work instead.
And there's always going to be someone who does who will kick you from your job.
Are you for real? I mean, it's fine if your dream life is that of an ant worker where art has no place, but don't think for a single second you're the sane one.
Elizabeth Hardwick wrote "The Decline of Book Reviewing" in Harpers in 1959, and then went on to co-found the NYRB with Robert Silver during a big publishing strike.
In general, stuff like this is insanely inside baseball and navel gazing for the book review industry (of which little remains of the old glory days).
That said, I don't know anyone into literature who takes the NYTBR seriously. That the Best Seller list is a gamified black box is basically an open secret. The NYTBR, in particular, has become far too interconnected into the MFA-publishing-literature industrial complex. The reviews are so bland and milquetoasty because so much MFA-lit is bland as all hell and the reviews are just marketing.
The NYRB and the LRB are orders of magnitude better reading than the NYTBR, even if this article seems to criticize them (unfoundedly, in my opinion) as fuddy or old fashioned. They're not traditional "reviews" in the sense that they usually don't come around to saying whether a book is good or bad, though; they're essays that use the books reviewed as launch vehicles for pushing the ideas in them into new directions or put under a new light. The NYTBR, in contrast, often reads as ad copy or toothless summary (the latter being the plague that has infected nearly all film criticism as well).
There has also been a big resurgence in smaller mags, like N+1 (now an elder statesmen of the new upstarts), The Drift, The European Review of Books (heavy focus on translation), and many others that have excellent, lively, criticism. Also subreddits like r/truelit are a great way to expose yourself to new or interesting books. I usually find a book to add to my TBR list once or twice a week. Is the writing always up to par with professional publications? Not always, but sometimes it honestly is. (r/truelit does have a strong slant towards formal experimentation, though, which some people aren't a fan of. People more interested in "the classics" or contemporary-lit can find great recs still in r/literature.)