'Hear, hear', as they say across the tables: here.

If I remember right the original print of 'Paradise Lost' was 1000 copies
two-thirds of which were 'pulped'. I always like to imagine William Blake
applying for funding from an Arts Marketing Board. To add a widener, the '
audience-oriented model
of art' is also affecting the circulation of literature via the libraries,
where Simon Armitage or Barbara Cartland are abundant in their charms but
insignificant flat-earthers like Arno Schmidt or Heiner Muller increasingly
invisible.

Dana Gioia's essay mentioned by Chris Hayden contains the unintentionally
amusing statement that it has never been easier to earn a living as a poet,
which may be true of the context of suburbanite tenured pseudo-poets he is
discussing and of the circus but newly generated over here but which one has
to regard with astonishment in the wider world. I think he ought to have a
conversation with someone like Alison one day, a very serious conversation.

 As I speak the BBC is broadcasting a programme airing the work and views of
Roger McGough and Wendy Cope.
The cutting edge of British culture.

david


----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2001 11:17 PM
Subject: Re: space fat/some quick, loose thoughts


> Gillian wrote:
>
> >Accordingly, I am very
> >glad for the new emphasis at OZco on Audience Development. Some of their
> >initiatives have been quite good, others seem to be naive.
>
> I don't know how much you have to do with the end of things where people
> are attempting to inform others about their work, Gillian. There seems
> to be this expectation among some in the Oz Council that "marketing" will
> solve everything, and that as soon as the populace at large knows how
> fabulous, exciting etc etc some work is, they'll rush out with their
> dollars in hand and buy it. There is apparently some great unplumbed
> pool of audience out there.
>
> That sadly is a complete mirage. There are some art forms here which are
> only ever going to attract small audiences, no matter how brilliantly
> they are executed. What bothers me is that this small audience, no
> matter how committed it might be, is by virtue of its smallness
> considered worthless. This is where the insane economic model of
> "growth" begins to be very damaging. Large audiences are not in
> themselves a virtue; there are experiences available between a small
> audience which might have value in themselves. At this point that
> mindset begins to seem very like censorship. The audience-oriented model
> of art takes no account of the staying power of great works, many of
> which sold very badly in their time - Paradise Lost, for instance, is
> still selling centuries later, despite going nowhere near the bestseller
> lists when Milton wrote it - nor of the fact that _none_ of us know which
> works which will stay, and which won't. Eliot was quite serious when he
> wrote, after a lifetime of writing poems, that he had no idea whether
> he'd been wasting his life or not.
>
> Of course, by saying they were "flat earthers", I meant Samuel Beckett et
> al took no notice whatsoever of any "potential market".
>
> >I've just submitted a tender to OZco for a $140,000 research project to
> >measure the effectiveness of the program in the first year. I asked about
> >Key Performance Indicators and long term effectiveness measures. But none
of
> >that has been articulated yet. The $5mill program is a poorly formulated
> >knee-jerk reaction. And so is the evaluation of it. Still, I figure that,
> >given that the funds are allocated, I could do some good with the
$140,000 -
> >plus it would put food on the table for a while. My pact with the devil.
>
> It's difficult not to point out that (so I will) $140,000 is way way more
> than any of the annual grants available to writers, which top at about (I
> think) $40,000. It's a sum which would run a small theatre company for a
> year. And this $5 million which is being spent on this "poorly
> formulated" program is $5 million which does not go to publishers,
> writers, and so on, to actually _make_ art.
>
> I know the arguments for marketing, and am not against it per se. But in
> bureaucratic/corporate cirles it has a kind of magical aura, and is a
> dominant orthodoxy, I think at the expense of what is actually supposed
> to be being "marketed", especially as far as art is concerned. The
> underlying ideology of that bothers me deeply.
>
> Best
>
> Alison