What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Ursula Hennessey writes about her disappointment on learning that Richard Thomas was participating in the sexual revolution while portraying John-Boy Walton, prompting Andrew Klavan to write in turn that Mel Gibson, now given to anti-Semitic rants, and Roman Polanski, given to statutory rape, have both produced fine movies. "We have to learn to celebrate the artist's creation as a gift from God," Andrew concludes, "and leave the artist himself to his foolishness, imperfection and inner darkness."
Well, okay, I guess, but let's not understate just how hard it can be to celebrate the way God goes about distributing those creative gifts. I mean, really. Why could John Kenneth Galbraith write better than Milton Friedman? Why does Christopher Hitchens write better than Mother Teresa? Why were Paul Newman and Marlon Brando better actors than John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart? The bad guys have Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and John Irving. Our side has Tom Wolfe. That's three to one. When it comes to the arts, it's almost as if God wants the good guys to start from behind.
When--or, rather, if--I get to heaven, I intend to take this up with the Almighty. In the meantime, Ursula and Drew, I have only you. What are we to make of this?
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Jul '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Mark Steyn writes better than Christopher Hitchens. Count Tolstoy and Charles Dickens wrote better than Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and John Irving. The defense rests.
May '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
...and the good guys have Rob Long and Mark Steyn and Peter Robinson and Claire Berlinski and Bill McGurn and...
All in all, I think our side is pretty well armed. But then again I'm biased.
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Peter, what if the Almighty says, "I'll see your Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and John Kenneth Galbraith, and raise you one J. S. Bach?"
Jun '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
If I was being arrogant, and a bit mean, I'd speculate that for some people, like Gore Vidal, life on this earth is the highpoint--give 'em a great American novel, what the heck--and others achieve their creative peak later, in eternity. That's if I was being presumptuous and rather un-Christian.
Jun '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
My guess is that the Big Guy rested on the seventh day and found his creation perfect but boring. So He gave mankind free choice and an apple tree. Given His reputation for omniscience, I can only conclude the entire episode was a set-up.
Jun '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
We're better writers for sure. And even if we're not, we're better looking...so. You can't have it all.
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
This topic is endlessly fascinating to me. I suffer doubly because I always wanted to be creative, but was nothing more than average. Average painter, average musician, below-average poet, horrendous singer ... the list goes on. My liberal artiste friends would say I'm too rigid. Too religious. Too into routines and schedules. Not "free" enough. Not "brave" enough. After all, these are folks who insist they do their best work when high. And maybe they're right. I wouldn't know, would I? I'm not artsy enough to know. Isn't it fun to think that liberals crave freedom to be great in art, but conservatives crave freedom to participate in a great society?
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Nope. That's three to ten.
Jun '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Someone once told me that works created for the praise of man, no matter how exquisite, how perfect, how wonderous - such works pale in comparison to the simplest gifts created out of a humble heart for the glory of God.
As someone who longs for those gifts in the creative arts, and yet lacks them, I wrestle with this. In the end, though, I choose to enjoy the creative gifts of others - but endeavor to put the praise where it rightly belongs - to the Giver of those gifts.
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Can't think when I've enjoyed a thread so much--all this is both profound and delightful. (And thanks, Felicia!) And maybe--I hope--Etoile du Nord is onto something. Given a few million years in eternity, maybe I could write as well as, oh, John Updike. (Dickens and Tolstoy would take a few million more.)
May '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Ditto on all the names mentioned. We also have George Will, P J O'Rourke, Charles Krauthammer, and that's just in commentary. I would also argue that Vidal and Mailer, and Irving don't stand up--they're really not that good. Likewise Picasso, one of the biggest scams perpetrated on the "arts" and Jackson Pollack, among others. The arts academy--like the universities--has been taken over by a self-proclaimed high-priesthood that have been telling us what we should like and it's often twisted and just plain wrong. Ursula touches on the insecurity many feel in the face of these wildly self-confident artistes who use intimidation to convince us that we don't understand their "genius." Trust your eyes! Stuff that looks like crap really is. Same goes for unreadable "great" literature.
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Nice, Caryn. Philip Rieff, my favorite social theorist, didn't like Picasso either. And he wrote what's currently my favorite line about conservatism and artistic genius: "In every culture, the best are those who know they have dreamt what the worst do."
Jun '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Peter: Here's one more from our side, C. S. Lewis. His Abolition of Man should be read by all conservatives. Here are a few sentences on the ironies of the modern world, where we destroy things like like honor and loyalty and the work ethic, yet at the same time demand that we all continue to work hard for, among other things, abstract concepts like "reason":
“One can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ but demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
The last two sentences are sublime, and true!
May '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
At the risk of shooting a dead horse (the premise that the Left somehow has a lock on good writers), I give you C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and (in a lucid moment, with what for me is the quintessential conservative essay, Harrison Bergeron) Kurt Vonnegut.
Jul '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
....Moses, Solomon, Paul....
May '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Yes, because "We" is always better than "Them"
May '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
This is one of those classic "short-run v. long-run" issues. What looks great and talented in meaningful ways today does not necessarily obtain later. Plus:
1) I agree with Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson that God doesn't care whether we are Republicans or Democrats, even though people like me are convinced that philosophically, to quote PJ, "God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat"- and
2) God is the ultimate lassez faire free-choice enthusiast. The gifts are randomly distributed, and He leaves the subsequent decisions up to us. Being fallen humans, we mostly make bad choices, and in the aggregate, we trend toward the wrong direction.
May '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
When my sister was in Trinidad, she mentioned to a local that she was a Texan and he responded by asking if she knew John Wayne. Newman and Brando might have been more versatile, but John Wayne is the most revered figure in all of film history. He is known beyond his generation and throughout the world. I believe it was Denis Leary or Dennis Miller who once joked that John Wayne was America's greatest president. The joke could only have been made about Wayne.
The greatest works of art are often simple. Beethoven's "Ode to Joy", Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Michelangelo's "David", Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and so on. The details are vital. Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" and the themesong for the cartoon Inspector Gadget are different by only a couple notes. But what separates the art of the pious from the art of the proud is humility. It's a simple, intuitive understanding of life which clears away the clutter and reveals the essence of who we are, what we are meant for.
Jun '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
Odd coincidence: I just unloaded an autographed Picasso lithograph received as part of an inheritance. Somebody paid me $250 for something that looks like it was scrawled on a cocktail napkin in ten seconds. Picasso was definitely cashing in on his undeserved fame.
May '10
Re: What's the Big Guy Upstairs Think He's Doing
How far back are we talking about?
G.K. Chesterton is always good value and Dorothy Sayers. Both wrote fiction and non-fiction.