Quote For Today

[Dave Monroe]

... speaking of Nazi aesthetics, "degenerate" art (and someone was kind
enough to give me a ticket to the reconstruction of that Nazi
"Degenerate Art" show that made it to The Art Institute of Chicago
several years back), and, er, Philip K. Dick, reminds me of one of my
favorite moments in my favorite PKD novel, The Man in the High Castle,
where the Swedish businessman, Baynes (an undercover Jew posing as a
Nazi official posing as a Swedish businessman, right?  And note that
Baynes' real name is Wegener.  One Peter Wegener was, of all things, a
Nazi rocket scientist, see his The Peenemude Wind Tunnels: A Memoir.
Peter's father, Alfred, was, interestingly, also the father of plate
tectonics) discusses aesthetics with the Nazi next to him on the
intercontinental rocket:

    "Afraid I do not care for modern art," Mr. Baynes said. "I like the
old prewar cubists and abstractionists. I like a picture to mean
something, not merely to represent the ideal." He turned away.
    "But that's the task of art, over the sensual.  Your abstract art
represented a period of spiritual decadence, of spiritual chaos, due to
the disintegration of society, the old plutocracy. The Jewish and
capitalist millionaires, the international set that supported the
decadent art. Those times are over; art has to go on--it can't stay
still."

... er, p. 32 of whatever ed. the guy who put this online used.  Got
lucky there ...

But reminds me, speaking of V. as well, Mafia Winsome, and, thus, gasp,
Ayn Rand, if you ever have to deal with any of those so-called,
self-styled "objectivists" (who've ruined the word "objectivism" for
fans of William Carlos Williams and/or the Neue Sachlichkeit), do point
out how that perfectly characteristic Nazi response sounds an awful lot
like Rand's own aesthetics.

Anyway, a few interesting sites that came up as well whilst I was
searching for that passage:

http://www.msu.edu/user/carterca/dick.htm

http://jamiro.mtx.net/pkd/reality.html

http://www.philipkdick.com/articles/chapter-three.html

... the last is apparently a chapter from ...

http://www.philipkdick.com/articles/barlow.htm

But now I notice that I accidentally posted my notes from Felicia Miller
Frank's The Mechanical Song both before I'd completed them and before
I'd broken them up into a couple of more manageable units, so ...