"Borderstalker" is certainly the most stylish term I've heard to describe the liminal ambassador-types who navigate several spheres. “Artists are instinctively uncomfortable in homogenous groups" feels correct to me, though I wonder if the following "means to help people from all our many and divided cultural tribes" reverie is better-suited to critics than artists?
In the book, he mentions how "borderstalker" is actually an Old English word from Beowulf: "mearcstapas." In the poem, it is in reference to characters who "lived on the edges of their groups, going in and out of them, sometimes bringing back news to the tribe." He mentions Tolkien's Strider in that passage, and I think Strider might be the best example of a borderstalker out there. The downside is that Strider had a hard time gaining the trust of the communities he was serving.
Yes, I agree the later passage is applicable to critics, but I also think artists themselves could fulfil that role, by commenting on their own works. Authors like Dostoevsky or Tom Wolfe were robust critics as well as artists.
I suspect the borderstalker identity only works if that’s your vocation/psychology. Otherwise, it could be utterly dislocating. Thinking of the Prophet Jonah as an artist. Strider’s destiny was to put aside the Ranger and become Aragorn. I think it’s one thing for Christian artists to feel like borderstalkers in the modern world but quite a different thing to make a virtue of it.
If art is weapon, beauty is its cutting edge. I live more in the world of literature, but it is the same there. If literature is a weapon, story is its cutting edge. Beauty in art, story in literature, are what get them through the door, on the wall, on the nightstand.
We seem to have seen an abnegation of this among fine artists in both fields. Unpopularity, the rejection of beauty and of story, become a calling card to a deep pocketed elite -- even more so it seems for art than for literature.
But if art is upstream from politics, it is the art that gets hung on the wall, the books that get piled on the nightstand, the shows that are watched from Netflix, that occupy that upstream position. Whatever beneficial effects the arts may have for heart, mind, and soul (and I believe they are many) can only occur if the art is consumed. If the artist has any kind of obligation at all, that obligation can only be met if they take seriously the obligation that the art should be received.
I complain that we have created a culture with a hole in the middle. Nihilistic elitism on one side, hedonistic populism on the other. The division is clear in literature, but I suspect it is no different in the art. This is why I look for the return of what I call the serious popular novel. I would not presume to name the equivalent prescription for art.
Have you read any of Tom Wolfe's novels? He wrote an essay called "My Three Stooges" which details the aftermath of his publishing "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and which makes some of the same points as you make, namely that art is no good if no one is encountering it. (The essay is published in his collection "Hooking Up"; I couldn't find it online.)
"Borderstalker" is certainly the most stylish term I've heard to describe the liminal ambassador-types who navigate several spheres. “Artists are instinctively uncomfortable in homogenous groups" feels correct to me, though I wonder if the following "means to help people from all our many and divided cultural tribes" reverie is better-suited to critics than artists?
In the book, he mentions how "borderstalker" is actually an Old English word from Beowulf: "mearcstapas." In the poem, it is in reference to characters who "lived on the edges of their groups, going in and out of them, sometimes bringing back news to the tribe." He mentions Tolkien's Strider in that passage, and I think Strider might be the best example of a borderstalker out there. The downside is that Strider had a hard time gaining the trust of the communities he was serving.
Yes, I agree the later passage is applicable to critics, but I also think artists themselves could fulfil that role, by commenting on their own works. Authors like Dostoevsky or Tom Wolfe were robust critics as well as artists.
I suspect the borderstalker identity only works if that’s your vocation/psychology. Otherwise, it could be utterly dislocating. Thinking of the Prophet Jonah as an artist. Strider’s destiny was to put aside the Ranger and become Aragorn. I think it’s one thing for Christian artists to feel like borderstalkers in the modern world but quite a different thing to make a virtue of it.
If art is weapon, beauty is its cutting edge. I live more in the world of literature, but it is the same there. If literature is a weapon, story is its cutting edge. Beauty in art, story in literature, are what get them through the door, on the wall, on the nightstand.
We seem to have seen an abnegation of this among fine artists in both fields. Unpopularity, the rejection of beauty and of story, become a calling card to a deep pocketed elite -- even more so it seems for art than for literature.
But if art is upstream from politics, it is the art that gets hung on the wall, the books that get piled on the nightstand, the shows that are watched from Netflix, that occupy that upstream position. Whatever beneficial effects the arts may have for heart, mind, and soul (and I believe they are many) can only occur if the art is consumed. If the artist has any kind of obligation at all, that obligation can only be met if they take seriously the obligation that the art should be received.
I complain that we have created a culture with a hole in the middle. Nihilistic elitism on one side, hedonistic populism on the other. The division is clear in literature, but I suspect it is no different in the art. This is why I look for the return of what I call the serious popular novel. I would not presume to name the equivalent prescription for art.
Have you read any of Tom Wolfe's novels? He wrote an essay called "My Three Stooges" which details the aftermath of his publishing "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and which makes some of the same points as you make, namely that art is no good if no one is encountering it. (The essay is published in his collection "Hooking Up"; I couldn't find it online.)
I haven't, but I'll look it up. Thanks.