Because, perhaps, her primary intention (here at least) was not to connect with the audience. Artist, heal thyself!
Another example, this time in the other direction. Films by Almodovar. Someone did me the wrong of explaining that every time something bad or traumatic is about to happen in one of his films, you will see that the scene is filled with red items. Red car, red shoes, red dress, red, red, red. Now I cannot enjoy Almodovar films because I spend my time looking for the freakin' red things! I am an investor in the story. That is my mode of interaction in the transaction. Me, personally. I can no longer invest in his films because I am looking at the trees and missing the forest.
It all depends on the reader's expectations when they choose a work of fiction. For people who do not care to reflect critically on the intentions of the writer, I would say a challenging novel is not for them. Ambiguity of a certain type is the most morally thought provoking as it doesn't provide a spoon fed answer. The reader is left with some open ended questions, typically regarding the overarching 'message' of the story rather than technical plot issues. I'm not saying that a deliberately ambiguous conclusion isn't at times a soft option for a poorly conceived message. There will always be those who feel aggrieved if they do not have a nicely tied up ending. Equally, there are those who come away from books and movies like that feeling like they have learned nothing. I do agree though, in some instances, that when an author has to answer calls to explain himself/herself, that they have failed to convey their intentions. Usually, this is when the answer after closing the book is "what on earth was that all about?" rather than "Hmmm. Interesting ending!"
Well, I enjoy readily understandable stories/novels/music/movies, but I am intrigued, fascinated, excited by goodworks whose full meaning/beauty might not be so apparent to me at first. I am willing to go that extra mile and do the research to fully comprehend its beauty. The reward I get in return is so much sweeter. Note that I have stressed the word 'good'. The way a story is told, a song is sung, or a movie is made, is the factor that decides if I should go the extra mile or not. Before I watched the movie 'Schindler's List' my knowledge about the holocaust was limited to 'Some people killed in Second World War', but after watching it I was so moved that I just had to know all about the holocaust. When I watched it again, armed with all the knowledge, I enjoyed it twice as much as I enjoyed it the first time. Oh! The reward was so sweet. I don't think you would have bothered to read the story behind the song even when someone show it to you if you don't enjoy listening to it in the first place.
That's probably what she was doing with that song. Who is this "audience" everybody keeps talking about? Some posters here seem to think it means everybody; that if a work of fiction isn't understood by everybody who reads it, then the author hasn't done his job and is therefore a lousy writer, or at least an unforgivably pretentious one. But, clearly, writers are writing for different audiences, and often one writer writes for different audiences in different works. Writers like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling write for very broad audiences. Highly-literary writers write for smaller audiences. Some writers, possibly including people like Kafka and Emily Dickinson, wrote mainly for themselves. If their work satisfies them, it's successful. The approval, or even the understanding, of others is not required - those others are not part of the audience. Writers of difficult "art novels" are aware that what they are doing is not going to appeal to most readers and they've accepted that. But it doesn't matter to them (at least, not too much), because it's more important to them to get the work written. James Joyce was keenly aware, I'm sure, that hardly anybody was going to read Finnegans Wake, but he was willing to spend seventeen years writing it anyway. Wreybies, Joni Mitchell was probably not trying to be obscure in writing her song. It was about something deeply personal to her and I assume that she wrote it in a way that was most meaningful to her. Whether you or anybody else fully understands it was not a consideration, I guess.
Sunday night, I saw an interview of Edward Albee on a local cable station. At one point he was asked which of his works was his favorite, and he replied that he really couldn't answer that, because his writings were like his children, and he tended to be very protective of the more vulnerable ones, the ones that weren't widely accepted. "If someone loved 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf'", he said, "then they may want every play I write to be just like 'Virginia Woolf'. But I would react by saying, 'Why not put on one of these other plays, and see what I was trying to say there?'"
If you write for a living, then you are employed to write what the consumer wants to read. If you write to express the ideas and creative essences within you soul, then you are an artist.
What matter to whom? And when? And why? Etc. You can wring the subject in a thousend ways but... But most times when people think they art is misunderstood, they just bad at it and making up excuses for them-self. If you audience doesn't get you, and doesn't appreciate you and isn't all that impressed it most likely because your bad at it.
Also, isn't art about hinting at the truth without ever saying it directly? The simple truth is often either banal or intolerable to the listener. That's why we have metaphors, symbolism, parallels -- and dialogues where the unspoken word is infinitely more powerful than the spoken.
Exactly I totally agree with FrankB. It is up to the writer to use his/her skills to communicate with the reader.
I don't think anyone really disagrees with that statement, but ideas can be communicated in any number of ways, some of which will work, some of which won't. It's not as simple as communicate or don't communicate, it's finding the appropriate way to communicate something to an audience. This is where style comes in, and where the author's intent may differ from the audience's reaction. By the very nature of language, writing is always communicative, even when it's utter nonsense, Dada-style. So really, the statement that a writer must communicate is pretty meaningless; whether you want to or not, if you are writing, you are communicating.
It greatly depends on intent, even when audience reaction is all that matters to you. Then that is your intent. When a piece of writing fails, in my mind, is when it has a specific intent and that intent is not carried through. If Obama held a speech that somehow made 10.000 people start voting Republican, then it would be hard to argue that the speech was not a failure in communication. If his only intent with the speech had been to distract people from their daily worries for 10 seconds, then a Dada poem would have sufficed. So yeah, having the outcome align with your intent is probably what defines success or failure. EDIT: If this still doesn't place me comfortably between two chairs, then my own intent of the post has not come through, and it can be considered a communication failure. If you, as a writer, has no specific intent except to keep people's minds occupied for a period of time, then any kind of writing, even randomly jumbled letters can be considered a success.
So we're agreeing that it's about communication and therefore looking at the audience's reaction is the important side? This whole debate's been about reactions and stuff. Only a few people have touched on the artist's intent, without mentioning how it affects people too. Though, the artist's intent *is* to affect people, so I guess the two are actually intrinsically linked. I remember I got all tangled in this when I studied literary theory in my first year at university... Gave it up because I found it so loopy and arguing for the sake of having something to talk about.
More than anything, and for those members who have not yet had the chance to study concepts of literary theory, this discussion does bring to the table the idea that the approach taken in not just the writing but in also the reading of a given work is not a static, singular thing. There are choices. As a writer, the knowledge that these choices exist is not something to be ignored. You don't have to agree with one camp or another. In fact this is a case (IMHO) where playing both sides of the fence is to your (the greater you/r) advantage.
One other old saying that bears repeating - what's good isn't always popular and what's popular isn't always good.
Anticipates the never-ending discussion of what constitutes as "good" and whether it's not just arbitrary.
True. But what is considered to be "good" usually comes about over time and with careful consideration and study. We may not be able to define it, but we recognize it when we see it. And, of course, reasonable people can disagree. One additional thought - I always think of really excellent writing in terms of whether it continues to move me or enlighten me and stay with me long after the initial reading. I often think of Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" that way: "Man is not made for defeat; he can be destroyed, but never defeated." Nothing arbitrary about that!
In my opinion the audiences reaction is all that matters. The only true way for an artist to fail is if they invoke nothing from others.
The other night, I was visiting my parents and we stayed up late watching "The Fountainhead", and it is interesting to come back to this discussion after that. Leaving aside Ayn Rand's corrosive philosophy and how that colored her thinking about the question, her character Howard Roark would have said that the above sentiment doomed the artist to only create what would sell, what would appeal to the masses, and that such could only doom the artist to mediocrity. There is truth in that. After all, think of those we regard as the greatest creators of all time - Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Beethoven, et al. Surely they understood their art better than their audiences could have. The best artists push their audiences to new perspectives and new experiences, and it is human nature to resist being pushed. We rely on those of us with genius to point out what is possible; that in turn requires taking risks. Polonius warns Laertes to "remember, to thine own self be true." That rings true with the creative mind.
If Shakespeare hadn't appreciated at least one member of his audience he would have lost his life He had to take that into account. Also he learned his craft he was an actor before he became known as a playwright. The whole nature of his plays show how carefully he did consider his audience when writing - there are elements written in for men of all classes and education to enjoy. The deep beautiful soliloquies, alongside love stories, with the dirty jokes and the porter peeing in the corner, he included slapstick etc Shakespeare did not just consider the rich or the learned when he wrote his plays. Shakespeare was the writer of the popular TV show for his day. For us in 2010 he involves some education to read but not much I have a seven year old that loves midsummers nights dream in cartoon form etc Because his work does have a story it can easily retold so a child can follow it. So can Jane Austen or Jane Eyre.
But both Shakespeare and Da Vinci were popular artists in their own time (I don't know about Beethoven). In fact, Shakespeare wasn't really appreciated by the intellectual elite until long after his death.
Shakespeare didn't gain his reputation until Dr Samuel Johnson wrote his biography almost a century after his death, calling him the greatest writer ever to have lived. And Shakespeare makes an interesting case in this argument. On the one hand, there's no denying that his plays are (or at least, were) easily accessible and entertaining, written with the audience in mind as much as for himself. His sonnets, on the other hand, are completely different in this respect. They're intensely personal, most of them referring to particular people and are apparently mostly autobiographical. Whether he intended for them to be so widely published in unclear, and they certainly weren't written with a mass audience in mind.
Both of the above posts (Elgaisma and Islander) miss my point...one does not have to be popular to be a genius, nor unpopular. But one does have to be committed to what he is doing, regardless of how it may be received, or else he clings to what is safe. And clinging to what is safe yields mediocrity. Tchaikovsky wrote the "1812 Overture" because he was commissioned to write it, and, while it is enjoyable in its way, it cannot be considered a great work. Tchaikovsky himself said that it wasn't very good. On the other hand, his first piano concerto was "unplayable" - that is, too difficult for the pianists of the day. Tchaikovsky didn't care, and I recently heard it played -- brilliantly -- by a 12 year old.
I'd mostly agree with that, although with the caveat that even works that remain in the confines of "safety" may be genius. Consider, for instance, the work of Michelangelo. No one would deny that he is a genius painter, still a strong candidate for the best that ever lived, and his works are mostly works of unquestionable genius. Yet there is nothing particularly revolutionary about them. In terms of style, subject matter, technique, the work is very typical of art of the time, and is simply a refinement of technique. What he was doing was completely "safe", yet the work transcends the mediocrity that would mar other similar painters by virtue of its flawless execution. Safe-done-well can be just as effective as revolutionary-done-well.
