Re: ah um

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Wed, 10 Mar 1999 12:03:44 +1100 

WILL HOCHMAN wrote:
> I think DDSBP is a great story about being an artist...only perhaps in
> reverse since the epiphany doesn't result in the masterpiece but a
healthy
> interest in American girls in shorts...it's the only one of the nine not
> to appear in the New Yorker, anyone know more about its unusual
publishing
> history or care to add an interpretation or two? will

Again, I can never understand why no one seems to like this story. Whereas
people rave about things like `Down at the Dingy', which I thought was
pretty minor. I love the tone of DDS - who, it must be admitted (and whom I
think would cheefully admit to himself) is a phony. In fact, I think the
story is about losing your phoniness, but in a completely different way to
how it is in TCIR. He joins the art school as an impostor and phoney, and
the Japanese teacher, and then the nun, begin to embody all that is sincere
and un-phoney. All the time, what is phoney is put up against what is
genuine - the dreadful works of the other students, the beautiful girl and
the medical trusses - I think it asks a question about art - is art real or
is real life real? DDS I think, like Andy Warhol, is attempting to live his
life as if it were a work of art or fantasy - after all he is practically
married to the nun in his mind before even contemplating she might be a
ninety-year old fossil. Maybe the message is: to know how to not be a
phony, you have to be a phony for awhile first. For me, the whole story
functions as a fantasy detour in which DDS learns to discern art from life.

BTW - the real Daumier, if you're interested to know, was originally a
satirical cartoonist and caricaturist in France (I think it was around the
time of the 2nd republic) who later turned to painting. Many of his major
works have a documentary quality that was unprecedented and quite
controversal - no one had before dared to paint homeless people on the
streets for example. (my favourites of his works is one called `The
Melodrama', which portrays a performance of Macbeth as seen by an audience)
So - interestingly enough his journey was sort of similar to that of DDS -
from an ostensible to a literal take on real life.

Read it again! Read it again!

Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST http://www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest