My trip to Florida interrupted this conversation, but in the interest of procrastinating tonight:

I read the Nabokov essay, and I disagreed with almost every point. Giving it a cursory re-read now, I don't have such a violent reaction to it; at the time, I think what set me off was the claim that being a "good reader" requires re-reading a work. That the process itself of reading prevents us from taking in the work as a whole. Even if I did have more free time, that idea would be absolutely abhorrent to me. I think that process is crucial to literature; it's why you choose a novel vs. graphic novel vs. painting vs. film, etc. It's what I spend the bulk of this post talking about, with the rhythm of sentences and paragraphs putting you into the mindset of the character the way that no other medium can.

It was so baffling to see the author of Lolita, with its astounding opening paragraphs, write about the act of reading as if it were an inconvenience or a necessary evil, that I thought at first the entire essay must be parody or satire. How can the author of something so brilliantly lyrical insist that the words are nothing more than a tedious, archaic vehicle for the ideas?

So that put me in the wrong frame of mind for the rest of the essay, and the part that I think you're interested in, the part about storytellers, teachers, and enchanters. I disagree, but only in terms of the extent. I think it still puts all of the value of a work into the hands of its creator. It's that idea of author as puzzlemaster: all the meaning of the work is encoded in the work itself, and the audience merely decrypts it.

Again, I'm not suggesting that the value's entirely in the hands of the audience, either. I've acknowledged several times that different works have different intent and different "weight" to them; The Hunger Games is not The Walking Dead is not The Road. You say "it's nuts to pretend [the difference] doesn't exist at all," but that's not what I'm claiming and never has been. I'm saying that it's nuts to pretend that the value embedded in a work is universal and objective, although plenty of people have no problem insisting that that's true.

The movie Prometheus is a good example. Obviously, it's not a good movie. But it tries so hard to be. The filmmakers aren't stupid; there are lots of people involved with that project who've proven their ability to be "enchanters" in the past. (You could certainly debate whether Damon Lindelof qualifies, and I guess even Ridley Scott isn't immune to criticism, but I would have little problem giving both those guys their due. Even after the final season of Lost). They loaded the movie with symbolism and allusions and weighty questions about the nature of our existence, but it all fell apart into a comical mess once it made it to the screen.

The most obvious lesson: you don't get to talk about the nature of creation until after you've at least figured out how to take care of your villain without having her rolled over by a spaceship. But the implicit lesson from Prometheus is the explicit one in Sullivan's Travels and Barton Fink: even the most high-minded intentions don't guarantee high art, or even good art. Those guys were deliberately not making the excellent but campy Starship Troopers, or even the execrable Event Horizon; they had every intention of being enchanters, and they failed.

(To try and head off any possible objections before they're raised: when I say that Lindelof & Scott pass the "enchanter" bar, I'm not trying to play up the weighty themes in Lost or Alien or Blade Runner, because the stories all kind of fall apart to one degree or another. I'm talking more about the indelible cultural imagery of the Dharma initiative and numbers stations, chest bursters, and the giant crashed ship in Alien. Just because Lost ultimately made not a lick of sense doesn't mean that it didn't accomplish some astounding pop culture myth-making).

It's not just that a good idea can fall apart during execution, either. It's that the surest way to prevent yourself from making great art is to go into it with the intention of making great art. I've never read Eat, Pray, Love, because I have a penis, but Elizabeth Gilbert gave an interesting TED talk about separating the idea of "genius" from the writer to the act of creation. I'm not completely sold on the idea, since I've seen enough examples of consistently talented creators to know that not every great work is a fluke. But I do like the idea of shifting the significance of a work away from the creator and towards the act of creation.

And since I'm assuming it as a given that art is about communication, then the act of creation is inextricably bound to the act of interpretation. If I remember correctly, one of the things that set off the whole conversation a while ago is when I said something along the lines of "a lot of so-called 'high art' could take lessons from The Hunger Games about being more accessible." That immediately set off the Chuck is advocating pandering to mass audiences alarm. But I'm not saying that artists should pander; I'm saying that artists should stop being so self-indulgent and masturbatory, and simply acknowledge the fact that profound and insightful ideas are useless if no one is around to hear them. And audiences should stop taking it as a given that there's inherit merit in the misunderstood and the obscure.

And by "obscure," I mean just that. Not "layered." I think you make an excellent point when you say that getting distance from a shallow work just makes it fall apart, but distance from a more layered work just yields more depth. Adding layers to an idea enhances it, clarifies it, subverts it, or intensifies it; it doesn't bury it. That's the objection I had to Chris's description of having to "pull" meaning from a work as opposed to having the author "push" it onto the audience: I think a great work rewards a deeper examination and introspection; it doesn't require it.

And I still disagree with the notion that it can all be split up into an orderly hierarchy based on age, maturity, or wisdom. That idea of "evolving" from Archie to Watchmen to Maus. Archie, sure. But I still think Watchmen is more successful than Maus, and I'm not willing to concede that it's because I've still got plenty o' growin' up to do. (For the record, I can't really say that I like or enjoyed either one, but I respect them both). A huge part of it is simply the initial barrier to entry: a reinterpretation of golden age comic books gives me more of an "in" than a story about Holocaust survivors.

You could dismiss that as being hopelessly shallow, but if I remember correctly (it's been well over a decade, but Wikipedia seems to back me up), that was one of the recurring ideas in Maus itself: the question of how you represent something so horrific in a manageable way, without completely robbing it of its importance. I understand the central conceit, and I respect the thought process that went into it, but it still doesn't work for me. It never felt like an adequate abstraction, but just seemed like an affectation. Here was a book full of intensely personal and honest stories, but the conceit simultaneously trivialized it and distanced me from it.

Watchmen is more distant and less sincere, and yes, its impact on me has worn off over the years (and I frankly wasn't all that crazy about it when I first read it). It's pompous, and self-important, and also full of affectations. But the structure works. You could read it completely free of context, and it'd still be a reasonably good comic book story. Gradually, as you start to notice the symbolism and the repetition, layers of deeper meaning start to become apparent. Then you see more allusions, more references to comic book history and world history, and notice images that are repeated from one book to the next. Ultimately, my problem with it is that it's an absolute masterpiece of form that doesn't really say much of significance; there's too much artifice there for it to resonate with me. But a masterpiece of form is still, in my mind, more successful than a book whose form alienated me completely from the deeper and much more relevant meaning.

If I'm going to "grow into" an appreciation of Maus, then I frankly don't have all that much time left. And let me throw Batman: Year One into the mix. Where does it fit into the hierarchy? It's a completely straightforward story. It's shamelessly a "pulp" story, with no hint of the I'm using the format of Golden Age pulp to do something greater self-consciousness of Watchmen. The author is a nut who (in my opinion) never accomplished anything comparable before or since. It doesn't try too hard for symbolism, or all that much of a sophisticated structure. And still, I'd say it's a masterwork, which I'd say is more successful than either Watchmen or Maus. The structure is near-perfect. It's become the definitive versions of those characters, and it's full of unforgettable, character-defining imagery. I won't say that I get deeper meaning from it each time I read it, but it does have enough depth that I've read it multiple times over the years, and each time felt like reading a new story instead of a simple repetition.

I may not get a glimpse into the greater human condition from reading it (apart from seeing Miller's unhingedness begin to manifest itself), but I still get that "spine-tingle" that in my mind elevates entertainment to art. It gave me that when I read it at 40, just as it did at 30 and at 20, so it's not just an artifact of age or wisdom. It doesn't reveal new layers of depth on rereading it, so it's not just an artifact of meaning encoded into the work. Plenty of people think it's good but not great, or that it's not that good at all, or that The Dark Knight Returns (which I hate) is indisputably better, so it's not completely objective. It simply speaks to me. And not just on the greeting card level, because I too am a wealthy orphan driven to fight crime, but because it's full of perfect combinations of form, image, and words; everybody involved from writer to artist to colorist to letterer is working at the top of their form. And I like comic books about Batman.

So basically, I guess I'm saying fuck Nabakov. I don't think "artists are enchanters;" I think works can be enchanting. And what's just "storytelling" for one reader may be "learning" or "enchanting" for another; there's some level of objective intent and value in a work, but it's not entirely objective. And if a reader wants to learn about life in Gay Paris or sad Russia, no "alas" is necessary; it doesn't prevent him from being transported to a time and place and being transfixed by the structure, beauty, and message of the novel itself. If a reader's gateway to that "enchanting" experience is an interest in life in Paris as opposed to, say, the memoir of a pedophile, then how is that possibly a negative?