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December 22, 2010

Art: For Yourself or for an Audience?

My blogging strategy this week has evolved into showing you interesting things on the web to try to keep from taking up all my writing time with blogging.  Though I'm sorely tempted to wax poetic!

So, here's something really interesting:  the latest fiction podcast from the New Yorker:  Cynthia Ozick is reading “In the Reign of Harad IV” by Steven Millhauser.  What's fascinating is the discussion at the end with fiction editor Deborah Treisman. Do we create art for ourselves?  Or do we create art for an audience?  Is our responsibility more to the former?  Or to the latter? 

This is one of those topics I could go on and on about.  And I will ~ at another time.  I'll just say that I think the answer is both.  I don't think you can deny that the impulse to create art stems from a need to be heard, yet you also cannot deny that art is selfish and stems from the need to create.

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