EXCESSIVE PRAISE...CURB IT PLEASE
EXCESSIVE PRAISE. CURB IT!
If one reads a book , sees a play or attends a classical music performance it feels as though the calibre of talent reaches the rafters. Or so reviewers or social media informs us. Excellence and blinding talent are saturating the offerings performers, and artists are blessing this decade with . It is as though there is a tap in your home you pour a glass of water from it and instantly you become a genius. Wow! double maybe even triple wow here.
The great leveler are the nasty Book awards who proclaim the hundred of excellent books submitted by publishers are largely nonsense ,and grudgingly they will pull out five where an unknown jury will pull the plum out; much like finding that wad of cash under grandma’s mattress. Nobody knew grandma or where the mattress was. Who cares, the fat cat bank who funds this does’nt care either.
Lately there are sniper chats on all sorts of interviews called new media where some body yelled all book awards are scams. Heaven’s forbid the lush award rituals are threatened. All those cheap long dresses having the insolence to proclaim themselves ball gowns would rot in silly canadian closets and eventually head to thrift shops. Those slippery canapes and cocktails unconsumed? The show must go on.Charitable donations save your nasty tax bill so lets all play ring a rosies and chill.
If i may crave indulgence here and peek backwards at my school which ran like a military boot-
camp by catholic nuns there were annual competitions and prizes. i tried for one , lusting for the prize but more for the envy of my class mates and that sumptous gift my parents would give at home. Also the smug superiority of the twice crowned winner grated on my nerves. as the runner up i grumbled at the injustice at home both my parents assuring me that excellence was being rewarded and obviously i had missed the mark well there was always next year. I had to congratulate the winner with the sunniest smile in the world that was called sporting spirit. The fact that the dark thoughts i harboured of drowning her in the ancient and unused well in the corner of the convent garden was never to see the light of day. Tra La. Praise by the bushel crowns many competitors. Arcane concepts like Hubris, ego and narcissism are seldom mentioned.
So lets take a Nobel Laureate who would make one swoon in admiration. A Physicist or an inventor or Chemistry wizard whose brain cells are platinum coated and they fly to the heavens with their thinking, deducing and experimental activities here the praise is never excessive . Yet this is the top rung of human intellect. Mostly greeted by awed silence. The unimaginable achieved by often a modest, bespectacled person and not a social media peacock. After the world stage announcement and the presentation ceremonies in Sweden everything would fade away.
Recently, the recipient of dastardly excessive praise smothered a debut playwright. There i was in my third row stage center seat of $105 wanting to be greek and hurling plates not out of joy but despair. the play had a badly written ending and moments where the energy dropped. The very fact that it was a debut venture bestowed some sort of nonsensical aura and the result was poor. it is not the mission of the audience to shower excessive praise as a n confidence building act. The brow has been already wreathed in dodgy victory and we the duped audience have to be part of the conspiracy. what if i got up and said clearly i think the playwright needs to revise the ending to improve the quality ? Woulld I have been booed, hissed at and escorted out by security? So, The standard drops. But there is always X ?
History reveals that the ritual of apprenticeship a time honoured exercise often spanned years. The pupil studied with the master for years. whose hawk eyes and finesse never ever took a short cut. Michelang
elo was 24 when he sculpted the sculpture of David. He had haunted morgues and sketched cadavers. He had many trials but when he completed what is known as the finest sculpture in the world it is said he was not fully satisfied himself. The excessive praise came decades later. Had it come early the other masterpieces like the ‘Pieta” may not have followed.
I am an author used to having books reviewed. Excessive praise still makes me cringe . I believe in the august line of superb authors ahead of me . They are the cwho Star so to speak. Despite the shrill thrill of publicists and publishers , who watch the bottom line perhaps posthumous serenades will keep the standards and quality of any creative endeavour in its place.