This Kingdom of One
There’s a good, relaxed interview (”conversation”) with/between John Updike and NEH chairman Bruce Cole talking about art criticism – in the latest issue of Humanities Magazine. Two widely separated extracts:
[Updike] “We’re drawn to artists who tell us that art is difficult to do, and takes a spiritual effort, because we are still puritan enough to respect a strenuous spiritual effort. We don’t really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills. Sargent misses getting top marks because he made it look easy.”
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COLE: It must be nice to know that it will get published too.
UPDIKE: You know, it makes it real. One trouble with writing poetry or fiction is that you can be kidding yourself. Or the air can be leaking out of your balloon and you don’t know it. There is always a chance of failure, of producing something totally unnecessary. But I guess that chance of failure is what makes tightrope walking, race-car driving . . .
COLE: . . . and doing criticism and . . .
UPDIKE: writing novels fun, interesting. You’re one level out, though, when you’re writing fiction. I called one of my collections Hugging the Shore. When you’re writing out of your head—imaginary stuff—you are alone out there, but you’re also the only person in charge. In this kingdom of one, you’re the boss. And the slave, too. You are the workforce.
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I am very familiar with that “kingdom of one”. Link to the full conversation is here.
-Julie
