A Conservative Journey Through Literary America – Part 7: A Question of Temperament
by Matt PattersonIn our interview, Michael Blowhard had this to say about conservatives and their temperament: “Conservatives are often practical, non-theoretical people with an aversion to flossiness and silliness. And the American literary world as it’s currently constituted is pretty damn pretentious and silly.”
My musician friend Martin has similar thoughts. He feels a vast gulf separates the liberal and conservative mind. He describes conservatives (again, generally) as serious in thought, and more apt to value personal responsibility and spiritual-based morality, while artists, he says, tend to have, and maybe even need to have, more lax work and personal ethics. Creative people, he tells me, want to push the envelope, move beyond the status quo, an attitude which they tend to apply to all aspects of life. Again, it comes down to messiness. Conservatives don’t like a mess; liberals love ‘em.
The lifestyle of Bohemia is a prefect example – late nights, sundry substances, many partners; these and other staples are less likely to tempt the conservative temperament by definition.
But even granting that conservatives are temperamentally less inclined to participate in the Bohemian lifestyle, it is a vile (and destructive) myth that Bohemia and artistry necessarily go hand in hand. Many writers and artists, many great writers and artists, have lived stable, relatively tranquil lives consistent with the conservative temperament.
There are no tales of debauchery or overindulgence surrounding Virgil’s life, for example. Instead, the man who authored the Aeneid seems to have been a shy man given to study and composure. Then there is Shakespeare. The scant evidence of his life, mostly legal and church documents detailing births, baptisms, financial transactions, etc., show zero taste for Bohemian recklessness (leaving aside the question of the autobiographical nature of the sonnets, on which topic there is much disagreement). By all appearances, the Bard seems to have been an eminently stable and sensible family and business man, who by his death had managed to amass a healthy sized estate to bequeath to his children and grandchildren.
And it is important to remember that, while conservative temperament and conservative politics often go hand in hand, they do not always. Nor do liberal politics necessarily flow from liberal temperament; there are those rare souls who contain within them both the philosophical love for the free market as well as a liberal temperament given to personal messes and artistic extravagance.
So temperament, while a factor, need not be a determinative one. Perhaps the rest of the puzzle comes down to values.
Conservatives do not value art less than liberals. But it does seem that they value art in a different way. Conservatives tend to put art in perspective, putting it quite sensibly after things like family, God, and country. In other words, conservatives are less likely to value art in that all consuming fashion necessary if one is to devote one’s life to the pursuit. The result, of course, is fewer conservatives than liberals gravitating towards a profession in literature and the arts generally.
Tomorrow we will examine possible solutions to this conundrum, and conclude the series.
[Ed. note: You can read a new chapter of this eight-part series every Saturday and Sunday morning. Previous chapters –Part one, two, three, four, five and six.]
Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Pajamas Media. He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.” His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.
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59 Comments
Not all of us who are conservative come there via the need to support tradition and spirituality of God. Some of us come t this point from the contrarian desire to be in control of our lives. This is the Conservative/Libertarian split on social issues that I think is the real delineation between "conservative" types. I don't believe anyone with a good heart is a 'socialist'. Myself I have always fallen right on the line between Conservative and Libertarian on the Libertarian political test. I don't know why, exactly.
I think that the work ethic part is true, in order to take care of yourself in this world you have to develop one but I am not sure that is opposed to liberals although it is opposed to the 'bohemian' mindset you speak. I believe that conservatives can o fall into the mess of the "Parte`" lifestyle as easily as the bohemians and can also be very creative. I think we "work" hard and "Play" hard.
So I will have to think more on what you have said to determine if I disagree or not. Very thought provoking post.
[...] In our interview, Michael Blowhard had this to say about conservatives and their temperament: “Conservatives are often practical, non-theoretical people with an aversion to flossiness and silliness. And the American literary world as it’s currently constituted is pretty damn pretentious and silly.” My musician friend Martin has similar thoughts. He feels a vast gulf separates the liberal and conservative mind. He describes conservatives (again, generally) as serious in thought, and more apt Original post by A Conservative Journey Through Literary America – Part 7: A Question of Temperament [...]
I doubt I'm alone in the fact that I'm taking the arts more seriously now that I understand it's the primary buttress of the fascism rapidly emerging in our country. It becomes a serious pursuit when it's the best possible weapon against our enslavement by the state, and it clearly is. A good movie about Obama's life that doesn't leave out the crummy parts would do more to save our way of life than anything else I can think of. The entertainment cartel that is in place now is the main reason something like that is very very difficult to make happen, as we all know.
I'm just a self-employed IT consultant from the Midwest and I could never see myself throwing all my energy into the trivial and anti-moral art that I see being generated by the vast majority of artists. But it stops being trivial when you make things like the miniseries John Adams. Then it becomes a pursuit more noble than anything else I can name.
In my experience a vast number of conservatives come to conservatism because they understand that intrusive government is bad, and that it is nobody's business what people do with their own lives.
We are all different and we should respect those differences, and the happiest world is one in which the government doesn't try to make us all the same.
Liberals, on the other hand, love to believe that everyone thinks like they do (or should think like they do). Thus, they love to tell others how to live their lives. Which of course brings us to the old adage that those who seek power are the very people who should never be given power.
The ideas put forth in this "chapter" tend to be somewhat abstract and, as such, are hard to quantify. I remember taking the Briggs-Meyer personality test when I was in the corporate world and think it would be really interesting if we could get Big Hollywood to run one. We obviously have loads of conservatives as regulars at this site and even some "lefties" who are honest in their beliefs and not just "trolling." The results would, I think, be fascinating.
Like Individualist, I very much value creativity and am absolutely 100% into self-reliance and liberty (as well as national defense) but am much more inclined to live and let live on social/cultural issues although I get more "old school" as I age. I am even pro-choice, while not advocating abortion although a discussion of that is way too complex for this post. Thanks for the post, I suspect we will have some really great comments and discussion.
Great comments. I also think liberals tend to feel so much of the good life we have created in this country is due less from individual talent and effort than being good fortune or an "accident of birth." As such they suffer from "guilt." While I don't totally dismiss a certain validity that the "pursuit of happiness" is a rougher road for some than others, ultimately one still has to assume personal responsibility for one's lot in life. There is no question that less intrusive government (e.g. free market capitalism) raises the quality of life for everyone where socialism spreads the misery around equally. Maybe there is something to the "starving artist" being true to his muse instead of going for so-called commercial success, however.
I dunno…Shakespeare sure wrote his drunks and tavern scenes quite convincingly. He must have done a lot of…research.
Another example of a genius who led a stable life: Jane Austen.
The idea of an artist who is 'bohemian' and crazy and messy, 'breaking the boundaries of morality' and all that, is a late 18th century romantic one, dating from Byron and Shelley. I would agree that an artistic temperament is different from a business one, but a sloppy lifestyle is not going to produce much in the way of great art. Artists who don't consistently work at their craft are not going to develop into anything more than mediocrities, no matter the level of their inherent talent.
Matt,
As an enthusiastic reader, my biggest pet peeve is Chick Lit. Talk about vapid! I got talked into reading "Lovely Bones" and was recently depressed by a woman who described it as interesting and many layered. I asked her if she ever read Vanity Fair but, alas, just the magazine not the work of art by Thackery.
I've enjoyed this series, but this installment was a bit silly. In short, it was a rehashing of stereotypes, some valid, as so many are. But what does that have to do with anything? Like Tennessee_Jed and Indivdiualist, I'm a staunch believer in personal freedom (if I can be called anything, it would be Objectivist), but there are still aspects of bohemian life I enjoy, including – yes – jam bands, Birks and reusable shopping bags.
Conservatives value structure, and so long as we live in an artistic world that is dominated by post-structuralism, Conservatives will continue to produce work that is mocked by critics and remembered years later, while those who eschew structure will continue to produce "crap" (nod to Ben Shapiro on a sweeping indictment of an ethereal form) that is celebrated by critics and ignored by the public.
See also: the films of von Trier, Finnegan's Wake, Western sitar recordings, et al.
Conservatives do not value art less than liberals. But it does seem that they value art in a different way. Conservatives tend to put art in perspective, putting it quite sensibly after things like family, God, and country. In other words, conservatives are less likely to value art in that all consuming fashion necessary if one is to devote one’s life to the pursuit. The result, of course, is fewer conservatives than liberals gravitating towards a profession in literature and the arts generally.
I thnk you have nailed it.
I'm a lot like you, Individualist. I always come out as conservative with strong libertarian tendencies on those tests. Part of me says "wouldn't that be a fun thing to do?" and the other part is saying "yeah, it's fun now, but what price will you be paying for that fun later?" I guess I came down to saying, "Im going to be creative, within bounds." For the 98% of us who are not geniuses, creativity without a modicum of discipline usually leads simply to chaos.
Great artists is a person with Talent who works at their Art while existing outside the terms 'liberal', 'left', or 'conservative.' Which is why politically oriented 'artists' make such lousy product: they are just not good artists. Also, a "Great Artist" knows about business. There is only one such artist that did not: Van Gogh. Otherwise, Great Artists know how to get contracts from very wealthy/powerful entities. In Film? Mel Gibson . In Sculpture? Michelangelo (who could make an agreement with a Pope). In Music? Mozart. (No, Mozart was NOT buried in a pauper's grave because he was poor…).
Today, great visual artists are working in advertising, and film, ie, where the money is. Because, the world values art of all kinds, and is willing to drape artists in diamonds and fur and mansions.
also, mixing politics with art is (in a metaphor stolen from the Great Mark Steyn), mixing sh##t into ice cream.
heathermc is correct; the artist as bohemian is a late 18th cent. concept.
It is a very very serious problem that conservatives do not value, buy, or otherwise patronize art. Art has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Left. It has slid off into propaganda and dominates all venues.
Gerturde Vanderbilt Whitney started the Museum of Modern Art, with all its cynical foibles. Her great-nephew Anderson Cooper now pontificates on TV. A segue from modern art to TV — when you have TV who needs art anymore. Evidence of the takeover by the left of art and communication — in two generations of the same very rich leftist family.
Conservatives have been jeered at in art and lit. so much they now instinctively avoid it as one avoids stinging nettles. Also art and lit. (drama, film) is heavily subsidized by taxpayer money.
Conservatives — or perhaps normal people — don't know what to think about art anymore. The Lovely Bones is a good example. Praised to the skies. It was a lousy piece of writing but it had teenage sex in it.
I have had to split my comment in half, per the automatic comment nanny.
As I have said before here, we desperately need conservative critics who will speak truth to power as it were, and this more than anything will encourage young witers/artists who are confused and doubtful about that thing called quality, because of the praise lavished on inferior work.
As far as literature goes, young writers are heavily influenced by the confessional style, women by the chic Lit style, and they imitate. So it is being young and unsure.
Conservatives must once more begin to patronize and purchase art/lit and not be afraid of it. We have absconded (driven away by stingng nettles) the field and abandoned it to the statists, to State Art.
the Last Word:
We need conservative critics.
It's odd, isn't it, that "Art" has become the plaything of such a tiny elite? Michelangelo's David was an occasion for a city wide celebration. The great Cathedrals were centres of business as well as worship, and were decorated in a manner that spoke to the aesthetic and religious responses of a wide range of people. Their decorations (windows, sculptures, paintings) were financed by bourgeois and aristocratic money. Charles Dickens' stories were best sellers.
I have decided to my own satisfaction that a lot of very good art (stage and visual) is occurring on a local basis, very often in the guise of 'tourist' items. It is true that local (ie, non NY/LA) artists are very often well looked after by their local sponsors and supporters.
Funny – I was just explaining this to my teenage daughters last week: "There are a lot of temptations we face in life, and a lot of things that might feel good – or seem to – at the time. But for far too many of these things, there is a price to be paid later…"
But then – the idea that there's a streak of arrested adolescence in self-indulgent people is not much of a surprise, is it?
===It is a very very serious problem that conservatives do not value, buy, or otherwise patronize art.===
It’s a ridiculous assertion. It’s analogous to Conservatives criticize Hollywood therefore they don’t go to movies or buy DVDs. Conservatives appreciate art as much as liberals and frankly have a higher appreciation of art. Liberal degenerates pass of smearing feces on a portrait of the Virgin Mary and submerging a crucifix in urine as art. Who hasn’t purchased some sort of artwork?
Reminds me of an exchange in "The Music Man":
Marian (The Librarian): "Wouldn't you rather your daughter read a classic than *Elinor Glyn*?
Mrs. Shinn (The Mayor's Wife): "What Elinor Glyn reads is *her* mother's problem!"
It does not have to be a transgression of boundaries. It can be a building up of something missing. J.R.R. Tolkien felt that England was lacking the kind of mythos that the Scandinavians had, hence LoTR. He was not that impressed with the confusing mish-mash of Arthur, and his Ents were an attempt to out-do Shakespeare in Hamlet.
As to temperment and personal life, I've done SF stuff, but in my personal life, the Ladyfaire is the one who programs the DVR. I can feel like a rising wave the influence of my ways on my writing, tho'. It is harming my SF writing.
"Artists who don't consistently work at their craft are not going to develop into anything more than mediocrities…"
With perhaps one exception out of a thousand, you are correct. Unfortunately, a lot of mediocre work is praised as excellent!
We also tend to like art that looks like it took effort, like it required study and work. I wonder how many conservatives believe that splashing paint on a 10X20 canvas qualifies as worthy of praise. Probably not too many.
Also, I think we tend not to like ugly art.
So much art isn't really thought provoking – it's just ugly trying to be meaningful. Does anyone here have patience for that?
Well now, you see, it was promoting a healthy attitude toward sex. We don't want our kids to be weird about sex, to think there's something wrong with having sex! Blah blah blah blah blah.
Oh, now you're just being culturally insensitive. In some countries, it's customary to use dung for paint! Why can't you accept that as art? You must be very narrow-minded!
(In case you were wondering, yes, it did hurt to type that!
Noooo, stay strong! Most of the epic tales of humanity and the great things we can be are of the fantasy/sci-fi genre. People still want to read these works because they want to believe that we are more than just smart monkeys.
If your daughter doesn't think your advice is sound, or that you don't get what's cool, just tell her that somewhere in Yankeeland, there's a girl in her mid-twenties who is SO glad she stuck to her beliefs. It's easy to see how foolish poor choices are when you look at the things that people suffer from them! Besides, saying no to drugs and sex is the best way to be a rebel.
Shakespeare got his much-older girlfriend pregnant before marrying her, then abandoned her & the children to live with his father's family while he went to live in a room over a tavern in London. Charles Dickens had no problem keeping his wife & family in near-poverty while touring the world with a variety of 'lady friends'.
Much better examples are C.S. Lewis & J. R. R. Tolkien, both of whom lived what is being called here the conservative life. Neither were given over to bohemianism, unless you consider their writing group bohemian.
And then there's Albrecht Durer, whose wife ran the family art business: selling prints of his works, while he taught students, created gorgeous work, and did various scientific studies.
You mean we're more likely to enjoy French impressionism, than most modern art? *shocked gasps*
"and conclude the series."
I'm not what would be called cultured. I can fake it for a girl, but that doesn't mean I'll enjoy the fakery. But I've thoroughly enjoy your series, so, if you have more good stuff to profer, please do so.
Not that anyone cares, but I'm an INTJ on the Meyers-Briggs personality type.
"and conclude the series."
I'm not what would be called cultured. I can fake it for a girl, but that doesn't mean I'll enjoy the fakery. But I've thoroughly enjoy your series, so, if you have more good stuff to profer, please do so.
Not that anyone cares, but I'm an INTJ on the Meyers-Briggs personality type.
The problem is that "art" is what the bohemian types say it is which is why we call foul-mouthed rappers, artists.
Oh.
I thought it was because you can't rightly call them "musicians"…
;^)
(Please note the "winking smilie" above before deciding to feed my head to the Rancor… )
Matt,
I pretty sure that you don't want a litany of conservative authors but let me mention one of my favorites:
Thomas Hardy.
Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and my favorite, Jude the Obscure are masterfully written stories of heroics and failed heros. I think that it the essence of the conservative message.
He also wrote poetry and one of my favorites is interpreted a a child's poem but it is not:
Waiting Both
A star looks down on me,
And says: "Here I and you
Stand each in our degree:
What do you mean to do,–
Mean to do?"
I say: "For all I know,
Wait, and let Time go by,
Til my change come."-"Just so,"
So mean I."
How do you turn out a master? Not with a government program..that is for sure!
I am writing a comedic SF novel of a dimension where we are just smart monkeys because Darwin makes sense there. Its a world where airplanes come from the Great Kansas Tornado Alley Junkyard, and women are dumber than men, and Hitler is an honored world leader at a hundred plus, and people who live in the country are ubermenschen and city folk are degenerating back toward apes. But its not Real SF which is more what you and I were discussing. I'll see what I can do as I like the Great Stories more than the comedies myself. I hope this one comes out as a conservative Hitchhiker's or Pratchetterian, but I'll settle for fairly funny.
"Creative people, he tells me, want to push the envelope, move beyond the status quo, an attitude which they tend to apply to all aspects of life."
That's mostly a modern/post-modern thing. Yeah, romantics put a premium on originality, but I think we overplay that in hindsight. For most of history, artists have been obsessed with tradition. They copy eachother endlessly. Witness the fact that no new "form" has risen in the high arts in the last 200+ years. Writers still use the novel, however garbled the narrative of point of view; painters still use landscapes and portraits, however absent is perspective; composers still use sonatas, operas, and overtures, however dissonant are the sounds.
Not that they don't try. But what they put forth as all new forms are either completely formless (see: abstract expressionism) or stuff nobody wants to repeat (see: I don't know, a guy peeing on a hamburger wraper). They aren't as clever as they'd have you believe…
…Anyway, it is not altogether the job of the artist to contravene convention, or whatever. They can, and do. But for every settled truth they upset, they simultaneously preserve some other part of the culture. Painters who attack religion also push multiculturalism, for example. Liberalsim is part of the culture they're overturning, after all, isn't it?
"Not all of us who are conservative come there via the need to support tradition and spirituality of God."
It doesn't have to be religion, but in order to be conservative I think you have to be supporting some tradtion. Otherwise, what would you be "conserve"-ing? If it be the tradition of liberty and personal responsibility, fine. That's a tradition.
In art school I thought I saw a correlation: the less discernable skill demonstrated by an artist, the more likely the artist's work would be blatantly and hamfistedly political. It seems that there are many who are willing to make a statement, but few who possess the skill to do so artfully.
As an artist, I think that every work has some degree of 'statement' within it; I think this is unavoidable when creating an artistic expression. 'All art is propaganda' is the conclusion I've come to – I have yet to see any work (except, perhaps, for strictly commercial work such as logo design, though perhaps a graphic designer may argue with me) that didn't espouse a particular view of the world, that showed no sign of a philosophical foundation. It's just that some people seem to be far better at it than others. I still struggle with this.
I think I have to disagree with the opening statement here. I don't think artists exist outside of political terms any more than any other person does. I think that some artists don't place as much weight on their opinions as they do the quality of their art, and as a result I think that in many cases, these artists are more commercially/financially successful than others. But that's not always the case.
And certainly, my experiences in art school assure me that artists are almost invariably political people, and the majority of the time, they lean toward liberalism and have little good to say about conservatism, to put it kindly (though, admittedly, that might also have been influenced by the facts that most of my classmates were recent high school graduates, and that the art school in question was in a fairly liberal city).
I took the Briggs-Meyer test in college and my teacher told me that according to the result, I shouldn't have been there, which was weird. Can't remember the type. All I know is that at the time I was really into the problem of universals and was radical on the subject, determining that abstractions and generalizations don't exist at all, not even as concepts. That all truth was particular. Thus, I was probably forced to answer a good portion of the test differently than I normally would.
Frankly, I think this is at the core of the problem. Conservatives may have a negative view of The Arts (make sure to pronounce those capital letters), but I think this is primarily because art criticism has long belonged to those of a liberal bent. Our culture has been presented with a stereotype of what an Artist is and what constitutes Art (and gets those juicy government grants) by such individuals for quite some time, and it doesn't necessarily match up with what constituted those things in previous eras. As near as I can judge, our current view of the arts as a postmodernist indulgence of futility and praise of vice began with disillusionment with traditionalism amongst the artistic establishment following World War I, expressed through such movements as cubism, dadaism, etc., and progressing toward what is often touted in installations today as the pinnacle of artistic expression – your 'Piss Christ', etc. – or whatever gets the most attention based on its outrageousness.
In any case, I suspect that the liberal-minded art critic establishment is pretty well entrenched, and anyone attempting to buck it has his or her work cut out for them. Having said that, the internet has opened up avenues not previously available.
Not that I'm any kind of an expert. My specialty is decidedly 'low art', and there was always a friction between my kind and the Fine Arts people in art school.
Mel Brooks – The Critic
"This is cute. This is cute. This is nice…
What the hell is it?"
Women are less intelligent than men? Hooooo boy, you're gonna piss off a LOT of people with that! I wanna be there to watch. ^__^
"…because Darwin makes sense there" – LOL.
C.S. Lewis was so not bohemian, and while I haven't read anything about his writers' group, based on a particular scene from his unfinished story The Dark Tower, I would assume it wasn't. There's a scene in this story in which a group of men are watching something happening in another dimension/alternate reality via a movie projector, I think. It's pretty disturbing ritualistic stuff. When the lights come on, they find that someone else has joined their group. This man is elated to find himself among men who appreciate this type of art. The thing is, the other men are horrified at what they've just witnessed, and if that scene were art, it would have been crap.
Well, Lewis did have an unconventional relationship with the mother of a friend who was killed in the First World War. (There is no evidence of anything improper, but "unconventional" covers the bases, I think.)
Isn't there some controversy over whether Lewis or Hooper wrote "The Dark Tower?"
"heathermc is correct; the artist as bohemian is a late 18th cent. concept. "
I would agree with that. The arts were instructional or devotional and then the French changed all that. It happened in painting with the impressionists, in music, and literature. The Age of Reason was replaced by the Age of Feeling. And here we are.
Good history book: http://www.amazon.com/Leftism-Revisited-Sade-Marx...
[...] Conservative Journey Through Literary America, Parts Seven and Eight, by Matt [...]
I have no idea! I hadn't heard about that. The copy I picked up is credited to Lewis.
This covers most of the controversy:
http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i45/45a01201.htm
Basically, the charge is that Walter Hooper either wrote it or wrote around fragments that Lewis wrote. There's evidence from both sides.
Either way, Walter Hooper seems kind of hinky. He knew Lewis for a few weeks near the end of his life and pretended they'd known each other for years. Then when Lewis died, he swooped in and has lived off Lewis's work ever since.
tublecane
I don't deny the need for Tradition and I think the beswt book I have ever read on that subject is "A Conflict of Visions" by Thomas Sowell. I came to Conservatism via my healthy skepticism of Government. When I got there I found the values of Patriotism, Tradition, Religious Freedom.
At heart though I am an Individualist and I believe very strongly in Free Market Capitalism.
PS A liberal in St Augustine thinks we need a Tourism Czar to tell us what attractions should be approved by the Obama Administration. See below:
http://shermansmarch.blogspot.com/2009/06/capital...
"… Conservatives do not value, buy or otherwise patronize art." Exhibit A: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney did not found the Museum of Modern Art. She founded the Whitney.
"… Conservatives do not value, buy or otherwise patronize art." Exhibit B: Chris Ofili did not "smear dung" on a portrait of the Virgin Mary. He affixed dried, varnished lumps of it. Anyway, I'd think you'd be more shocked and outraged with the collage of pornographic ladybits all over it evoking the cherubim and seraphim.
"… Conservatives do not value, buy or otherwise patronize art." Exhibit C: DId you know that Indian Yellow oil paint is said to have originally been made with dried cow urine?
"… Conservatives do not value, buy or otherwise patronize art." Exhibit D: The Great Birnam wood goes to high Dunsinane hill in Macbeth, not Hamlet.
Are you saying that film is not an art form? What about photography? Digital video? All have arisen within the past 200 years.
But French Impressionism was considered radical (and the paintings ugly) when it first appeared…
I'm reading the article now. Now that I know about this controversy, I'll probably feel like I should play it safe and not reference that story as Lewis's, even though it could be. Roar.
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