Forrest’s Reviews > Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action > Status Update

[Note to self: The second full paragraph here needs to be quoted directly and fully.]

The idea that one should engage a work of art as if it was created and meant specifically for you is profound. This is the kind of appreciation that art deserves.

Ah, unchecked consumerism. The source of so many of our problems, affecting . . . art?!? Or, more properly, effecting artifice.

[Note to self] The last para about art and its referents, about what art is "about", and why it doesn't matter, seems to be a central thesis of this chapter. Quote it and dissect it.

Dostoyevsky and Flaubert's apparent contradiction of conviction versus creation is just what I feel when writing. I'm sometimes asked why I, a religious person, write horror. It's a good question, and I think it has to do with touching the numinous in a different way than my religious practice. Awe is a spiritual feeling and is often evoked through the horrific or the terrifying.

The art vs politics or, rather, art preceding politics notion is compelling.

I'm not a fan of the use of the word "rifts," though I think Martel uses it deliberately. But I definitely support the underlying concept.

. . . reality itself isn't nearly as smooth and logical as continuity clerks and script supervisors would like us to think it is. Life is full of strange occurrences, missing time, disappearances, synchronicities, and absurd coincidences, all of which . . . seem to be integral to life in this world. In a very real sense, to insist on "realism" is to insist on the unreal.

Great words of wisdom for writers.