Politics vs Art

[Keith Davis]

It seems to me the focus is larger than just politics, as suggested by David Morris, but the politics is a convenient medium through which the larger focus can be expressed.
That doesn't change the fact that there is scathing indictment of the political processes at work, and the manipulation of perception of those processes and their results, which in turn (return) mirrors the internal conflicts inherent (vice) in our existence as self-aware, more and less, beings.

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> On May 1, 2016, at 8:38 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> I don’t see how anarchist golf was much more than a bit of fun with the idea of anarchism. It was funny to me and sandwiched inside weightier and darker themes as comic relief, Poinstman of the knights of the sacred toiled bowl, a youthful pig god running amok in the green hills od postwar Germany.
> 
> Also the question of whether GR is overtly political is less clear to me than to you. My first reading was similar to my current reading and that   includes the fact that GR is the most politically confrontational work I have ever read. It challenges core myths about the uniqueness of WW2 as a good war, an heroic fight to end fascism. So much of the moral justification of the wars by the western powers since ww2 have hinged on that myth; so many assaults on liberty and self-determination have been promoted as ww2 style heroism. It hasn’t stopped; the language of heroism and sacrifice get louder and louder as it becomes less and less applicable, the hypocrisy harder to hide. 
>  I see ATD, M&D and GR as satiric masterworks which mock our self aggrandizing cultural stories, each book exploring key facets of cultural myths and history along with  personal stories of how those myths play out on a human scale . 
>  I have a hard time seeing the overtness of political ideas in ATD being different or more direct. My experience is one of layered artfulness that seems well seasoned in the sage flavors of experience and depth.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Apr 30, 2016, at 2:38 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> The politics of GR are rich and complex, and indeterminate, because its indictments are of the structure of everything, not just political.
>> 
>> When the anarchists were playing no-rules golf in ATD, all I could do was wish I hadn't read that.
>> 
>> David Morris
>> 
>> On Sat, Apr 30, 2016 at 5:37 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Not for the first time, do Morris and I disagree about Against the Day. I think it is far better
>> than I think he does; and "the politics' is essential to it----but the 'overt' politics are not even close 
>> to what Kirsch says the author's political vision is in Against the Day. 
>> 
>> And the politics in Against the Day is far less 'overt', I say, than 'the politics" of GR, which are 
>> positively In- Our-Face (if we look up) yet not a detraction but a raising up of GR to Art. 
>> 
>> On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 12:25 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The politics in ATD was often a detraction from the art.  Overt politics tends to do that.
>> 
>> David Morris
>> 
>> On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 10:35 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Adam Kirsch, an estimable critic in general, is on record dissing Against the Day because of its bad politics---violent anarchism, domestic terrorism, the authors' positions, etc.....as he misread it. 
>> 
>> On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 11:05 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/books/review/can-a-book-with-bad-politics-be-a-good-book.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbooks&action=click&contentCollection=books&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront
> 
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