HIGHBROW, LOWBROW, GENRE, SHMENRE
(AND THE WALLS COME A-TUMBLIN’ DOWN)
By John Skipp
Dear class –
Today, I thought it might be nice to slap the living shit out of some stupid ideas that have annoyed me for years, and hobbled us far too long.
They’re the same stupid ideas that Dave Wilson and the Tems grappled with, in their very smart essays that led off the month here at good ol’ SU.
And they function like the sand bags on the ballet dancers in Kurt Vonnegut’s classic short story, “Harrison Bergeron”, wherein all human excellence is systematically squashed flat, in order to make all things, all people, and all experiences nightmarishly “equal”.
They are:
STUPID IDEA #1 – THE WAR BETWEEN ART AND COMMERCE
STUPID IDEA #2 – THE WAR BETWEEN HIGHBROW AND LOWBROW
STUPID IDEA #3 – THE WAR BETWEEN GENRE AND MAINSTREAM
They’re three big dumb bastards, and they all rush in at once. But since I can only smack one ugly mug at a time, let’s take them in order, shall we?
STUPID IDEA #1
Art, as I understand it, is creative expression. It takes many forms, means different things to different people. But it’s all an attempt to evoke some feeling, communicate some vision, capture a moment, provoke a response, do any or all of the things that art is presumed to do.
Commerce, as I understand it, is an exchange of goods or services for the currency of choice.
What makes “Art Vs. Commerce” a stupid idea is the notion that art isn’t worth money. Only dumb shit is worth money. Which just patently isn’t true. (Ask Dali and Picasso. Oh, wait! You can’t. They’re dead.)
STUPID IDEA #2
Yes, there’s clearly a difference between the high-flung gallery and the low-slung gutter. And yes, they define themselves in opposition to each other, in a kind of perceptual class warfare. The Illuminated vs. The Great Unwashed. Or, conversely, the Snooty Elite vs. The World-Weary Grunt Who Knows The Score.
But if you take a step back and take in the big picture, BOTH OF THEM ARE IN IT. They do not exist in separate universes: no matter how much they appear to; no matter how hard they try. They form as much of a continuum as the black and white halves of yer basic Tao symbol.
They are flip sides of the same twirling coin.
And that twirling coin is us, in fullness.
Yes, our loftiest concerns and our basest realities can often seem pitted against each other, like Jekyll and Hyde.
But the point of that story was that they were both the same guy. And that the schism WAS the problem, because it yanked both sides out of proportion.
In other words, the stupid idea is not that high and low are different. The stupid idea is that they need to be at war. That they are mutually exclusive, somehow.
That they cannot be commingled into an all-encompassing – and altogether more accurate – worldview that I like to call “The Third Brow” perspective, with something like maximum impact.
Which brings us, neatly, to…
STUPID IDEA #3
Last time I checked, the “mainstream” of popular culture was made ALMOST ENTIRELY OF GENRES: types of stories, types of music, types of whatever delivery system you want, that somehow stood out and attracted the people who really like those sorts of things.
And just to be absolutely clear about this: “coming-of-age” novels and “relationship” novels and “embittered college professor” novels are every bit as much genre confections as romance, mystery, or horror novels. They’ve got sets of rules and expectations. They have customary tropes.
But what often sets the “mainstream” apart from the rest – in ANY genre – is its ability to simultaneously…
• deliver on the expectations of their core audience, and
• TRANSCEND AND EXPAND UPON those expectations, in ways that get the core audience so excited that other people wanna know about it, too.
If you manage to get any audience at all, you have formed a sort of cult.
And if the cult gets big enough, you just might wind up “mainstream”.
Mainstream is a function of commerce. It’s a numbers game. And all kinds of weirdos – which is to say, genuine artists — have stumbled into it, either accidentally or on purpose.
Was the afore-mentioned Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. a mainstream artist? Why, yes, he was. He sold shitloads of books, to both rich and poor alike. Was he highbrow? Yes. Was he lowbrow? Yes. Was he genre? ABSOLUTELY: first as a “science fiction” writer, until he carved out his own unique turf so successfully that he became a genre unto himself.
So what was the point of all this?
1. “Art vs. Commerce” is bullshit. There are genuine artists who make very good money. And there are cynical hacks beyond counting who will never make dick. So selling out your talent in the hopes of a big score is no guarantee of anything but ultimate self-loathing. Do not kid yourself on that. And for fuck’s sake, don’t use it as an excuse for creating anything less than your best.
2. “Highbrow vs. Lowbrow” is a ridiculous, short-sighted, self-limiting waste of time and everything else. If you don’t integrate both into your life and work, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom you make blinder with every myopic step you take.
3. “Genre vs. Mainstream” is dumbass because Genre IS Mainstream, the second it goes beyond its standard tropes to engage larger swaths of the entire human race. Usually through things like extraordinary talent, effort, empathy, ambition, and – get ready for it – a willingness to kick your audience’s ass in some sort of delightful and meaningful way.
Most of my art/cultural heroes have succeeded BECAUSE they went way the fuck out on the limb, not because they shied away from it. I’m talkin’ everyone from Dr. Seuss to The Beatles, Frank Zappa to Harlan Ellison, Thomas Pynchon to Tom Waits to Quentin Tarantino, Stanley Kubrick to Neil Gaiman, Charles Dickens to Stephen King.
IMPORTANT FINAL NOTES: Your audience is made primarily out of people who are either very much like you, or fascinated by people very much like you.
If you deliver the best work you possibly can, you are very probably making art.
If you make a point of identifying and connecting with your audience, there just might be some commerce going on.
If your work has depth and skill and sincerity, your audience might be bigger than you think.
And if nobody likes your work, you might wanna look into that.
Your homework for today, should you choose to accept it, is to take a good hard look at what you’re doing, what you love, what you hope to achieve, and what those things actually have to do with each other.
Then – if you’re REALLY gung-ho – steer your battle plan accordingly.
And don’t let imprecise paradigms (a.k.a. stupid ideas) limit you or weigh you down, like sand bags on a ballet dancer.
If you’ve really got something to offer, then there are people waiting for it.
Give it to them. Give it to yourself. GIVE IT UP.
At the very least, you’re doing something you love.
And when you tally it up, in the course of your life, there ain’t much that counts more than that.
Although money is very nice, too.
Yer pal/instructor/fellow pilgrim,
Skipp
Related posts:
- Steve & Melanie Tem: THE GENRE THING
- The Genre Dilemma
- Sprinting, Catching Your Breath, and Further Ruminations on Genre
- A Rumination on Genre
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Comments
My old college over here in “lit’trary” NY had a track for writing majors with a focus on various “literary genres” - religious novel, political novel, etc. I guess they were more honest back then (although no sf or horror - the New Wave was still new back then).
Very nice, Skipp. It’s heartening to see certain of these bitches slapped to orgasm, without pauses.
And money is nice, yes.
Glad you bitch-slapped some of these dumb ideas. Shakespeare put highbrow and lowbrow in his plays to appeal to a diverse audience. And the plays are better for it.
You’ve gotta write what you want, what is important to you, but I can’t imagine never taking into consideration how your audience or readership will react to what you do. Maybe Dave’s Butterfly artist would be that way, but not me.
Still, I might change.
And thanks for noting that mainstream is often just various genres, defined in somewhat different ways. Unless it’s Finnegan’s Wake perhaps.
Dear gang — THANKS!
Nearly 15 years ago, I shudder to realize, I wrote an essay called NO EXCUSES for Gauntlet magazine. And one of the central premises was this:
If you can find it in a mall, IT’S MAINSTREAM NOW. No matter how lofty or transgressive or otherwise outsider it might originally have appeared to be.
So yeah, even FINNEGAN’S WAKE is mainstream highbrow literature. And though I’ve never read it, I get the impression that it’s as unafraid as Shakespeare to dive deep into the pit.
As for audiences…
I think writing a book where you don’t care about the audience is like having a conversation where you don’t care what the other person thinks. That’s not communication. That’s a party of one.
Nothing against parties of one. But they have notoriously low attendance.
Yer pal,
Skipp
I enjoyed your article, and I agree with your viewpoint. I can see where some people who consider themselves elite will not agree they are the same as a world weary grunt. That’s why there are always so many arguments in the writing field.
Dear gang –
This was posted on the lively horror website Shocklines, by Bob Booth (also known as “Papa Necon”, vis a vis his role in the annual Necon convention). I begged him to let me post it here, cuz it’s so very well put,
He said yes. So here it is!
Yer pal,
Skipp
————————-
Just a few random thoughts on this subject. At Necon this year we hosted a panel at which some of the panelists wanted to “destroy” the horror genre to make room for art. So here goes:
1. Art vs. Commerce. Shakespeare, Dickens and Hemingway (among others) wanted to (and did) make a buck. That was their prime motivation. That they also produced great art is almost beside the point.
2. Highbrow vs. Lowbrow. Poe published in newspapers, not Harper’s magazine. Lovecraft published in Weird Tales, not the New Yorker. Jim Thomson, David Goodis, Philip K. Dick, and James M. Cain published paperback originals, not hardcovers. Chandler and Hammett published first in Black Mask. Charles Brockden Brown published cheap Gothics. All are now reprinted perpetually in the Library of America, the unofficial “canon” of American Literature. Their books stand side by side with Faulkner, Hawthorne, Stein, Steinbeck, Henry James, etc. The moral is, if you’re good eventually a graduate student seeking a thesis will find you, though maybe not during your lifetime.
3. Mainstream vs. Genre. Is Name of the Rose a mainstream novel or a mystery novel? How about all those cheap romances that Jane Austen wrote? Is Italo Calvino SF? Borges fantasy? The point is, if you think the genre label will hold you back, don’t submit your stories to Cemetery Dance and your novels to Leisure. If you’re good enough Playboy or the New Yorker will publish your short fiction and Knopf or Scribers will publish your novel.
It IS true that you might not be discovered during your lifetime. That sucks. But think of Malcolm Lowry or Franz Kafka. In any creative endeavor (writing, painting, sculpture, drama, music, etc.) some folks never get discovered (though worthy) and some don’t get discovered until after they’re dead. That’s just the roll of the dice. If you have something to say, then say it. Someone will get the message, or maybe not. In any case it is not the fault of Stephen King or Brian Keene or Richard Chizmar or Dan D’Aura. Maybe, just maybe, you aren’t good enough.
Bob Booth
Great article, Skipp…inspirational as always. And I love this comment: “If you can find it in a mall, IT’S MAINSTREAM NOW. No matter how lofty or transgressive or otherwise outsider it might originally have appeared to be.” Bravo!
Hear, hear! Why does infighting seem to be an absolutely necessary component of any gathering of artists? As you say, we’re all in it.
People getting along is difficult enough without making shit up to fight about.
Dear Mark — I suspect that many people prefer fighting to writing. It sure is one hell of a lot easier!
Dear Michael and Allyson — THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Yer pal,
Skipp
The gonzo philosophizin’ never gets old… *golf clap*
My deep thought for the issue under discussion is that whenever it comes up I always remember Walt Kelly’s “Pogo.” You’d have to work pretty hard to find something more mainstream, commercial, and lowbrow than a syndicated comic strip about swamp critters with nonsensical vocabulary and thick accents… and yet every panel was an artistic masterwork, the writing was some of the deepest and most well thought out of the modern age, and the total package trancended genre right up into the realm of pure magic.
“We have met the enemy, and he is us,” has got to be one of the greatest lines ever written.
And one of the truest.
Dear Mister Pitts — You will find few who’ll argue with you there, my friend!
Another genius who took funny talking animals to a whole ‘nother level was Robert Crumb. He went from the farthest reaches of the weirdo hippie underground to become internationally revered. Nice work if you can get it!
And Robert Williams — also from the ZAP COMIX era — firmed up his legend with the “Zombie Mystery Paintings”, which drew equally from garish circus freak banners and the finest of fine art technique. He’s a guy who lists Rembrandt and Big Daddy Roth at the top of his pantheon.
And now his art magazine JUXTAPOZ is an international showcase for Third Brow visionaries.
He’s also credited with the great line, “I will probably die from paint-related chemicals. You can’t BE more of a fucking artist than that!”
Yer pal,
Skipp
Amen.
I like especially the pointing out of “LitFic” and other sort of books that are considered “lit’trachure” and “mainstream” to be nothing more than a different sort of genre masquerading as something more…
Whack ‘em again.
Dave