“The novel insists on the existence of the part by exhaustively demonstrating the inability of any whole to contain it completely. A creek may have a mean depth of only six inches, yet still contain isolated holes that are, say, ten feet deep. The novel always tells the story of that man who drowned in a stream with a mean depth of six inches.”

–Michael Holquist, “The Gaps in Christology,” Dostoyevsky and the Novel

I think there’s a lot of power and insight in that quote–but I’d also add two qualifications, of very different types: one moral/aesthetic, one anthropological.

MORAL/AESTHETIC: The self-conscious belief that art (I’m not convinced that Holquist’s point should be limited to novels) is about the gaps, or the exceptions, can itself become a morally and aesthetically damaging constraint. Morally damaging, because this mentality can encourage art-makers to view themselves as a breed apart, advocates for the “exceptional” over against the majority. It can lead to a kind of “With genius, all is permitted” mentality; to contempt for or willful ignorance of the needs of the non-exceptional; and to an overweening resistance to arguments cached in terms of what most people need most of the time. Aesthetically damaging, because “art is about the exceptions” can be confused (in a sort of post hoc ergo propter hoc problem) with “if something is about the exceptional, it’s art,” or “the way to make art is to explore some weird exception.” No, bzzzt, thankyoucomeagain. “Exception”-based art, like “shocking” art, can become its own cliche and its own form of kitsch.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL: One of the reasons that this view of art can be spiritually and aesthetically damaging when wrongly understood is that it can suggest an inaccurate view of human nature. One of the startling things revealed in art is how “exceptional” most people are. The more people you get to know well, I think, the more you find that anyone is a fit subject for art, because everyone has some unexpected and illuminating strangeness, some Marianas Trench even in what appears to you to be a six-inch-deep life. Ulysses is a terrific novel (or whatever it is) that illustrates this point–if you need a novel to validate your experience, that is! That’s why contempt for “ordinary people” is false, as well as harmful to the contemptuous one. (And this contempt can provoke an equally false and perhaps equally damaging backlash, in which people adamantly proclaim their allegiance to the “ordinary” or the “bourgeouis” over against the artistic, the exceptional, or the marginal.)

PS: I got the quotation that provoked this post from The Rat–you think I read stuff like that?