Sunday, April 08, 2012

Mr. Difficult

Been thinking more and more about this essay by Jonathan Franzen. In it, he breaks down the reader-writer relationship into two models: The Status Model and the Contract Model --

"the best novels are great works of art, the people who manage to write them deserve extraordinary credit, and if the average reader rejects the work it's because the average reader is a philistine; the value of any novel, even a mediocre one, exists independently of whether people are able to enjoy it. We call this the Status Model. It invites a discourse of genius and art-historical importance."

On the other hand --

"In the opposing model, a novel represents a compact between the writer and the reader, with the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience. Writing thus entails a balancing of self-expression and communication within a group, whether the group consists of Finnegans Wake enthusiasts or fans of Barbara Cartland..."

...to an adherent of Contract, the Status crowd looks like an arrogant connoisseurial elite. To a true believer in Status, on the other hand, Contract is a recipe for pandering, aesthetic compromise, and a babel of competing literary subcommunities."


The essay goes on to examine William Gaddis, one of Franzen's literary heroes, and the embodiment of a Status writer. He discusses "difficult books," ones that are clearly geared toward challenging the reader, basically the postmodern fiction movement - Pynchon, DeLillo, these type of writers. In the end Franzen rejects Gaddis' Status model in favor of the Contract model, ultimately calling out his hero for "serving a fruitcake he wouldn't himself eat."

I think this breakdown is rather brilliant and goes a long way to explaining divergent literary views. I think it applies rather well to movies as well -- to put it simply -- the Contract folks would be Hollywood, BBC, TV, etc and the Independent filmmakers would be Status.

And it also helps me understand the movie that most puzzled me last year -- Tree of Life. At my core, I know I am a Contract movie person. I think most people are. As difficult as it is to take Status authors seriously (outside of college English departments, I mean), it is even more difficult to take Status filmmaking seriously, because of the vast industrial apparatus and cost to getting a movie made and watched. Tree of Life was the ultimate example of a Status movie - difficult, challenging, and daring to be accepted only on it's own terms, rejecting any Contract with the audience to clarity, narrative, story.

A movie I didn't watch, which I imagine to also be a Status movie, is Lars Von Trier's Melancholia. I wonder if Von Trier and Malick actually watched each other's work. I wonder if they enjoyed each other's movies? I rather doubt it. I'd be willing to bet they each liked Moneyball and Crazy, Stupid, Love better.

4 comments:

andy v said...

Maybe I am remembering this essay differently but doesn't Franzen essentially say "The Recognitions" was one of his greatest influences and that he titled his breakthrough book "The Corrections" in honor and acknowledgement of Gaddis' novel? And while Franzen may choose to adhere to the idea of a Contract writing paradigm how then does one reconcile the immense impact so called Status books/films have had time and time again on writers be they Contract or Status adherents themselves?

Greg said...

oh, definitely. gaddis is one of his heroes. and the essay even begins with a defense of the status writer because he starts with an angry letter from some woman who didn't like his attitude on oprah and thought he was pretentious, etc, etc.

and there are some novels he mentions that fall in between - war and peace; maybe crime and punishment that seem to manage to both be "of status" and page-turners.

i think the reconciliation has to do with an acknowledgement that both sides tug at all book lovers and authors to one degree or another. there is nothing more maddening, i think, than loving a book or a movie that the rest of the world doesn't and it just feels like "they don't get it." and what one is appealing to in such a scenario is status.

but, i interpret his essay to ultimately being about choosing one side or the other as a writer. and it seems pretty clear with franzen's work that he has rejected the gaddis, pynchon, delillo style in favor of a different one - more sprawling, narrative and character driven, etc. i suppose you can be influenced and even love the work of someone like gaddis (although he doesn't like any of his later work), and still not seek to emulate it.

Charles said...

Does "of status" necessitate a certain level of incomprehensibility? That a writer is somehow compromising his/her truest artistic instincts if the writing is immediately understandable? "Of Status" seems like a silly term - as if the writer is creating the work with status as their prime concern.

I'm always interested in the underlying assumption that an artists makes a conscious decision at the beginning of a work as to how "accessible" that work will be to the world at large.

When i think of the greatest (and most influential) artists of the 20th century - i can't imagine Picasso, Joyce, Faulkner, Dylan, TS Eliot or the like worrying too much about this stuff as they began.

Greg said...

did you read the original post? franzen uses "status" and "contract" to define kinds of fiction writers. all the artists you listed would fall under "status" artists - those whose work matters in the context of certain traditions - whether it be folk music, poetry, modern art, or postmodern fiction. (dylan and faulkner might be more in-between than the others)

i think one counterpoint franzen would make to your post is - how can you say ts eliot and james joyce are the most influential writers of the 20th century if 95% of those who speak the english language are totally unfamiliar with their work and couldn't slog through it even if they wanted to (which they don't). he would argue the writers of the simpsons and someone like ayn rynd are much more important and influential.