[spellbanisher]

The distinction between art and entertainment has to do with intention; if a writers intention is to achieve some higher truth what he is doing is art. If a writer is only trying to entertain and provide pleasure, what he is doing is entertainment. Whether a work of art is any good or not is up to each individual reader. The only objective measure of any work of art is time. Note artistic and profitable or popular are not mutually exclusive. Shakespeare is the best selling author of all time. Mark Twain was one of the best selling authors of the nineteenth century, and in fact was a literary superstar even during his own time. Hemingway also did all right; he never had a multi-million seller like Stephanie Meyers during his lifetime, but almost all of his novels sold several hundred thousand copies worth. Still, its harder to sell well if you're not catering your works to the general tastes of the reading public. There are ways around that though. For instance, James Joyce was able to use controversy to sell his novels. I like Ursula Leguinn says about art: “art tries to express what cannot be expressed in words, literature tries to express in words what cannot be expressed in words.”

I think the cry of “snobbery” and “ivory towers” is the retort of egotistical people who have nothing to say yet want to be recognized for saying something: “Anything I write is good, as long as people like it. Anything I write is gold, as long as people buy it. Anything I write is wise, as long as people read it. Anything I write is true, as long as people believe it.” When I make a distinction between art and entertainment, I do not so with the mind that one is good and the other is bad. I simply say that one strives for truth, and the other does not, and that is true.

Whether you believe there are truths to be strived for, or that truths are worth striving for, is a matter of personal philosophy. One philosophy says that either there are no truths, or that one cannot find truth in art. This philosophy says that the highest goal in life is pleasure, that pleasure is the measure of all things good. You could call it hedonism; I won't call it that, because when I say that this philosophy is about pleasure I don't mean personal pleasure. An author who toils for thousands of hours to produce works that will be pleasurable for his readers is not living for personal pleasure. He desires to give pleasure to others, and there is nothing wrong with that pursuit. In terms of market and profitability, I don't think that these books can ever compete against movies and television for one simple reason: reading requires work. It requires that a person take abstract symbols on a page and translate them into entire worlds in their heads. Reading is an interactive process, whereas television and movies require nothing of the reader. It is much easier to plop oneself down on the couch and watch tv then it is to pick up a book and start building worlds in your head from words on a page.

The other philosophy believes that there are truths that we will not apprehend just by going about their lives. This philosophy believes that art can ennoble the soul, that if we are willing to work we can achieve states of aesthetic bliss that transcend the petty emotions we go through from day to day. This philosophy believes that art can shake us from complacency, stir us and lift us up. This philosophy believes that art can create beauty where there is barrenness, meaning where there is meaningless, knowledge where there is ignorance, insight where there is blindness, awareness where there is oblivion, life where there is mere existence. It is a belief that there are higher things to strive for, higher truths, things above and more important than what is in our our minds. If this sounds religious it is because there is an element of religiousity and of mysticism in art. Yes, art is difficult and it often requires work. The artist builds mountains from whose tops we can look down and see things from a higher and wider purview. But to get to the top of the mountain you have to climb. Things outside the worlds we live and hide in are always inscrutable to us. The language of truth is not our native language nor is it one we speak and hear everyday. But people who believe in art think that it is important to venture out our tiny worlds everyday, to expand our spheres of existence, and sometimes that means getting lost in alien lands.

I do not believe one philosophy is right and the other is wrong. I believe we are free to make whatever choice we want to make. I believe in what I have called art, but I accept the legitimacy of those who have a different philosophy as long as that philosophy is not destructive unto others. But lets not call a rabbit a duck. Lets not try to have it both ways; to, on the one hand, repudiate what I have defined as art, and then on the other, to say that entertainment is art. Entertainment provides a pleasurable experience, but I think art can provide a more enriching experience.

I think one example of the power of art is Michelangelo's David. The David is more than a statue of a naked man; it is the affirmation of a new way of seeing the world, a challenge to the medieval mindset that man was a fallen, dirty, nasty creature, and that the body and material world is a cesspool of sin and depravity. The David proclaims a new era in human consciousness; it proclaims that man is beautiful, that man is divine, that the naked body is not something to be ashamed of or disgusted by but something to be admired and adored, that the physical body and world is just as wondrous as the immaterial soul and universe. Michelangelo's art helped contribute to a new reality that people would live in for centuries to come.