On Style
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
The nature of our culture is such that if you were to look for instruction in how to do any of these jobs, the instruction would always give only one understanding of Quality, the classic. …The ability to see directly what “looks good” would be ignored.
The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of “style” to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes things all the worse. Now it’s not just depressingly dull, it’s also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized houses. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with stylized parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It’s the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don’t know where to start because no one has ever told them there’s such a thing as Quality in this world and it’s real, not style. (262-263)
At present we are also snowed under with a lot of stylishness in the arts–thin art–because there’s very little assimilation or extension into underlying form. We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly. (264)
Sep 23rd 2005
yeah–the result doesn’t “look good”–[or feel right]–
Sep 23rd 2005
I am duly depressed. This makes me think of writing cumbersome, faulty code and then tacking on an interface (uh, Windows?) as opposed to writing pure, speedy code from the ground up.
As a metaphor for society, it makes one sad.
Sep 24th 2005
I agree with both of you; and I do indeed view it as a metaphor for society–a society that lacks substance because it denies that substance exists.
Here I posit an attack upon theory itself–the textual web of meaning (the one with no center…) is the veneer of style. And it is damned.
Sep 26th 2005
“it wears me out….”
Sep 28th 2005
WAH WAH WAH! OF COURSE you’ll be depressed when you consider what Walmart pushes as either art of style.
And Style can only get you so far
Because no one is going to drive a car, no matter how stylish, if the thing doesn’t run (that is what we have museums for).
It all depends on where you look. Because there is a ridiculous number of fabulous artists out there who are passionately concerned (sans a hint of irony) with Truth and Beauty. And what Jesus says about looking and finding is true about art as well.
Mea Culpa
Its so easy to look at one aspect of “society” and make sweeping generalizations that leave the speaker feeling righteous and erudite. What is “society”? And as much I agree that things are terribly wrong (we are talking about humans, and it naturally follows that everything is wrong), pointing our fingers at a bogey that is neither easily defined nor capable of defending itself is a waste of time.
[she sweeps the Miterboard of Pretension off her head, takes a bow, sticks out her hand and introduces herself as "Camille." [she switches back to first person] I found your blog while cruising Ariel’s Sidebar.]
thank you for letting me throw in my 2 cents.
Sep 28th 2005
Welcome Camille! Feel free to give your 2 cents any time.
I’m not sure if Robert Pirsig was thinking of Walmart when he wrote Zen, so I can’t comment about whether he would loathe it or be impartial (judging by the rest of the book he might ride the fence).
The important value that Pirsig wants to emphasize is that of Quality, which is this undefinable entity that involves caring and skill and beauty and authenticity. This rant against style points to the fact that many people never take time to invest or search out things of substance, and that is a point that is hard to argue against. No doubt there are many Quality artists, many men and women who pursue and create things of substance–yet these are not the majority.
Pirsig is genuinely erudite, and the rest of the book doesn’t come off as righteous; though I understand that my selection of the passage would certainly give that impression.
>> pointing our fingers at a bogey that is neither easily defined nor capable of defending itself is a waste of time. < <
I think I take issue with this. Things that are not easily defined are precisely the things we should concern ourselves with. Naturally this concern should be bold yet humble, daring, yet not pompous. Secondly, the ambiguous nature of such things is a defence in and of itself. It cries out–”you don’t know me, ha!”–and demands to be reckoned with. If the added weight of “pervasiveness” is added to the equation you will find that the thing is really quite heavily defended; the status quo has the strength of titanium.
[nice to meet you Camille, I hope you come back:) ]