Mr. Blowhard gives us several juicy bones upon which to gnaw.
First, the point about closet conservatives. They come in one of two breeds: 1) those who hold conservative views but keep them quiet, preferring to avoid discussing politics altogether for fear of being sniffed out, and 2) those who not only hide their political views, but openly and falsely profess liberal views.
My good friend Martin, a professional musician, admits to me that he is among the former. “When I’m at social events, or any gathering of entertainers, and they start talking about Bush is evil, blah, blah, blah, I just bite my tongue, because I know that even if I say something, I’m not going to have time to correct all their stupid errors and assumptions, and even if I did, there’s no damn way they’re gonna listen to me anyway.” It sounds like you think artists are dumb, I say. “They are,” he answers with a sigh. “Incredibly.”
For Martin, and those of his breed, I have genuine sympathy. An artist in his position is surrounded constantly by people with whom he must work, with whom he must get along for work to both keep coming and run smoothly. Many of these co-workers are personal friends. This last is no small matter – artists are intensely clannish, and form tight personal bonds. So in my friend’s case, why jeopardize friendships? Why jeopardize income? Perfectly understandable, it seems to me, that he lets his friends and co-workers prattle on.
The latter breed, however, the ones who affect a liberal bias, projecting a false beard to the world, are a different matter. This is truly insidious, because the aim here is not just to protect one’s income by muting beliefs, but to gain income (and friends, I suppose) under false pretense.
(Mr. Blowhard thinks there may be a fair number of these folk, this, “go along” crowd. I hope he’s wrong. I can’t say that I know any myself, and for that, I am quite glad.)
Mr. Blowhard also brings up the New Formalists, a topic which nearly everyone I speak to about this subject mentions, and so we will turn to that subject tomorrow. But first, I want to address the last of Mr. Blowhard’s comments. You know – advising people, both on the right and on the left, to steer clear of a career in literature or the arts altogether, because “It’s likely to be a very hard one…. Money is scarce, success may never arrive, frustration and disappointment are inevitable, breakdowns and suicides aren’t uncommon.”
All true. But I wonder. Does one really have to be an author or artist to have a tough time in life? There are lots of waitresses and dock workers and miners who have it tough. Money is scarce for many people, in and out of the arts. Success, the definition of which varies from person to person, may never arrive for anyone, regardless of chosen profession. Frustration and disappointment are indeed inevitable…to any person living on planet Earth.
Mr. Blowhard asks why anyone would opt for the hard way in America, and I must say I was little surprised by that (entirely rhetorical, I presume) question. The artists who have surrounded me my whole life – authors, musicians, magicians, actors – didn’t opt for their life. They do what they love. No, that’s not true. There’s less choice than that, even. They do what they do because they can’t not do it.
Think of Poe. Living in squalor his whole life. Why didn’t he just become a grocery clerk, one might ask? Or a banker? At least then he would have been able to pay his rent. But that’s precisely the point. Poe, like any real artist, loved being an author, loved his macabre visions and his ability to spill them onto paper, more than he loved his rent. More, in fact, than he loved anything else, including his life.
Likewise, Ovid loved his verse more than he loved the Eternal City which nourished him. Loved his art more even than his freedom, which he lost when Augustus banished him to Tomis on the Black Sea for some mysterious crime perhaps relating to his verse. We owe a debt to every artist, who, like Ovid, chooses their art over their own comfort.
When I asked Philip Terzian, a Pulitzer finalist, if he would have any advice for an aspiring conservative author, he had a very different view than Mr. Blowhard. “Art is about struggle – use the friction,” says the Books and Arts editor for The Weekly Standard. Then he pointed out that, even if the literary establishment is repressive from a conservative standpoint, great literature can, and often has, emerged from repressive circumstances. “Comfort spoils the creative impulse,” says Mr. Terzian, who then points out that a lot of the literary set who toe the liberal line and get all the right grants and tenure end up producing junk.
In the end, advises Mr. Terzian – “Do what you love.”
[Ed. note: You can read a new chapter of this eight-part series every Saturday and Sunday morning. Part one can be seen here. Part two here.]
Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Pajamas Media. He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.” His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.
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