The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art by Arthur C. Danto

This is a collection of nine essays. And like most collections of essays, some of them cohere better than others. Danto talks about “art” in all of them, but is he building the same case and driving to the same point in each successive one? It was frankly hard for me to tell.

Here are some parts of some of the essays, however, that I found thought-provoking.

Does Art Create or Reflect Reality?

Did jazz in any sense cause or only emblemize the moral transformations of the Jazz Age? Did the Beatles cause or only prefigure the political perturbations of the sixties -- or had politics simply become a form of art in that period, at least the politics responsive to music, the real political history of the world taking place on a different level of causation?

This seems like one of Danto’s central questions about art. Is it a force the society reacts to, or is it a result acted on by the force we call society. I’m not sure where Danto lands on the question, but my gut says that the choice is a false dichotomy. Art is and can be both -- it is one of the ways society comes to understand its force -- as exemplified in this amusing vignette:

In any case, as we know, even works intended to prick consciousness to political concern have tended by and large to provoke at best an admiration for themselves and a moral self-admiration for those who admired them. The cynical bombing of the Basque village of Guernica on April 26, 1937, made Guernica happen -- so it was not merely wit when Picasso responded to the German officer’s question, having handed him a postcard of the painting, “Did you do that?” with “No, you did.” Everyone knew who did what and why: it was an atrocity meant to be perceived as an atrocity by perpetrators who meant to be perceived as prepared to stop at nothing. The painting was used as a fundraiser for Spanish war relief, but those who paid money for the privilege of filing past it only used it as a mirror to reflect attitudes already in place, and in later years it required art-historical knowledge to know what was going on: it stood as a handsome backdrop for pickups at the Museum of Modern Art, or a place to meet a date, like the clock at the Biltmore Hotel, and it was sufficiently handsome in its grey and black harmonies to have ornamented the kitchen cupboard in a sophisticated apartment I once saw written up, where souffles were concocted for bright and brittle guests who, no more than the hostess, realized that gutted animals and screaming mothers agonized above the formica: it was painted at about the same time as Night Fishing at Antibes, after all, as Anita Silvers has observed, and uses the same sorts of forms as that lyrical work. So in the end it did about as much for the ravaged villagers as Auden’s poem did for dead Yeats or as Yeats’ poem did for his slaughtered patriots, making nothing relevant happen, simply memorializing, enshrining, spiritualizing, constituting a kind of cenotaph to house the fading memories, about at the level of a religious ceremony whose function is to confess the extreme limitation of our powers to make anything happen.

He ends on a rather dark note, but I think he makes my essential point. The bombing Guernica made the painting Guernica happen, but, for a time, the painting Guernica helped expose the bombing Guernica for the propaganda it was intended to be. Art helping society understand the mechanisms and outcomes of its own force.

Danto is a philosopher, so he has a philosopher’s understanding of art and is well schooled in the ways past philosophers have dealt with the subject. Plato, it seems, strongly felt that art was powerless, a reflection of power but not a power of itself. So, evidently, did Schopenhauer.

Schopenhauer had a considerably higher regard for art than any Plato shows in his philosophy, but in an important sense he agrees with his great predecessors in agreeing that art makes nothing happen in the causal order of the world. Its importance rather consists in its power to life us out of that order and to put us in a state of contemplation of eternal things.

But Schopenhauer raises an important point nonetheless -- at least in my mind. This power that art does have, this power not to cause things to happen but to lift us into a state of transcendental contemplation, is exactly why it has been oppressed by tyrants throughout the ages.

Art Is In the Mind of the Beholder

Schopenhauer also seems to support one of my own pet theories about art.

Genius, according to Schopenhauer, is the capacity for knowing the Ideas of things -- in the platonic sense of Ideas -- and for revealing these Ideas in works of art for the benefit of the remainder of mankind who, borrowing as it were the eyes of genius, may behold through these works what the genius beholds directly. “The work of art is only a means for facilitating this knowledge,” Schopenhauer writes, treating art as a cognitive prosthetic, a metaphysical window through which we may view the deeper realities, but which in no further sense has any cognitive contribution of its own to make at all: it is to be seen through, but not itself to be seen -- so the more transparent the better.

This, to me, is a pretty clear statement that art, contrary to a lot of the remaining discussion in Danto’s work, is neither a collection of physical media (paint on canvas, clay shaped and formed, etc.), nor a social construct that relies on cultural cues and taboos to be made manifest. Art, in its purest sense, is revealed knowledge in the mind of the observer. It happens neither in the gallery nor in the social conversation that surrounds it, but always and only in the space between the ears of the spectator.

But even Schopenhauer is not quite there. His apparent insistence on the “genius” intent of the artist, that there is an Idea that is being communicated through his work, is only part of the story. Yes, that can happen. The artist can have an Idea and the observer can recreate that Idea when viewing the artist’s work, but that isn’t required in order for art to occur. The revealed knowledge, whatever it is and whether or not it conforms to the intent of the artist, is what art is. This is why, in the anecdote related above, the painting Guernica continues to be art even after people forget the bombing Guernica that inspired it.

This is what I think. But I don’t think Danto agrees -- or at least doesn’t traditionally think about art in this context.

I believe we cannot be deeply wrong if we suppose that the correct interpretation of object-as-artwork is the one which coincides most closely with the artist’s own interpretation. Coinciding interpretations put us in different posture with regard to artists than undertaking to discover what their intentions may have been, nor is it as a thesis subject to the sorts of objections Susan Sontag raises against interpretation generally. For the interpretations she impugns only begin or can begin when the work of art is in place, established as such, and the interpreter begins to ponder what the artist is “really” doing or what the work “really” means. Hers is against a notion of interpretation which makes the artwork as an explanandum -- as a symptom, for example. My theory of interpretation is instead constitutive, for an object is an artwork at all only in relation to an interpretation.

From this excerpt it appears that Danto and Sontag have two different understandings about a “correct” interpretation of a work of art and, at least for Danto, that interpretation is necessary for an object (a painting, a sculpture, etc.) to be considered a work of art.

I say they’re both wrong. An object doesn’t need an interpretation to be art. Objects aren’t art. Art is the interpretation itself.

And speaking of philosophers, here’s at least one that seems to agree with me:

By displaying what is subjective, the work, in its whole presentation, reveals its purpose as existing for the subject, for the spectator, and not on its own account. The spectator is, as it were, in it from the beginning, is counted in with it, and the work exists only for this point, i.e., for the individual apprehending it.
-- G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 30 (DRAFT)

“Stay,” Eleanor said. “Where are you going at this hour?”

It was a little after eight o’clock. I’d already had two drinks at the board’s reception, and they were just about to be seated in the private dining room of the hotel’s five-star restaurant. The chef had a special menu prepared. I had gone back and forth with Eleanor six times on the phone making sure the sommelier had the wine pairings just right. But Mary and I had agreed that I would not stay to enjoy it. I had duties elsewhere. Now I turned to her for help, not knowing how to respond when the board chair put up a fuss.

“Eleanor, they’re setting up the registration desk tonight,” Mary explained. “Alan needs to check-in and make sure everything is going smoothly. It opens first thing in the morning.”

“Oh, poo,” Eleanor said petulantly, swirling her wine and pouting like a little girl. “Aren’t there other people who can do that?”

No, I thought immediately. We didn’t send any extra staff, remember? And the cost of my meal has already bought you another two hours in that suite of yours.

“There are other people working on it,” Mary said reassuringly. “But Alan needs to make sure things are on schedule.”

Eleanor looked unsatisfied with the explanation, but Mary rapidly switched gears.

“Besides, once the crew is finished setting up, Alan is taking them all out to dinner. Kind of a celebration for a job well done getting us ready for this conference.”

“Excellent!” Eleanor suddenly beamed, grasping me firmly by the hand. “Give them my personal regards, Alan. Everyone has done such a fine job. They deserve a night out before all our plans start coming together tomorrow. You’re taking them somewhere special, I hope?”

I had no idea where I was taking them. Until that moment I had made no plans to take anyone anywhere. I was pretty sure Mary wasn’t serious, just using the staff dinner as a handy excuse—or a lie, another lie—to get out of having to buy me a hundred and fifty dollar dinner. I gave her a questioning look and she confirmed my suspicion with a stern face and a shake of her head.

“Wherever they want to go, Eleanor,” I said, smiling. “For them, the sky’s the limit!”

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

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In the Dust of This Planet by Eugene Thacker

I’m sorry to say that this is a book without a single dogeared quote or comment from me.

Which is unexpected, given the author’s opening explanation in his preface. First, the stage on which the action will be set:

The world is increasingly unthinkable -- a world of planetary disasters, emerging pandemics, tectonic shifts, strange weather, oil-drenched seascapes, and the furtive, always-looming threat of extinction. In spite of our daily concerns, wants, and desires, it is increasingly difficult to comprehend the world in which we live and of which we are a part. To confront this idea is to confront the absolute limit to our ability to adequately understand the world at all -- an idea that has been a central motif of the horror genre for some time.

And then, the authorial intent of what will be presented there:

The aim of this book is to explore the relationship between philosophy and horror, through this motif of the “unthinkable world.” More specifically, we will explore the relation between philosophy as it overlaps with a number of adjacent fields (demonology, occultism, and mysticism), and the genre of supernatural horror, as it is manifest in fiction, film, comics, music, and other media.

How great does that sound? But then, the academic philosopher shows up, with all his constructionist terminology that obscures more than it elucidates.

However, this relationship between philosophy and horror should not be taken to mean “the philosophy of horror,” in which horror as a literary or film genre is presented as a rigorous formal system. If anything, it means the reverse, the horror of philosophy: the isolation of those moments in which philosophy reveals its own limitations and constraints, moments in which thinking enigmatically confronts the horizon of its own possibility -- the thought of the unthinkable that philosophy cannot pronounce but via a non-philosophical language. The genre of supernatural horror is a privileged site in which this paradoxical thought of the unthinkable takes place. What an earlier era would have described through the language of darkness mysticism or negative theology, our contemporary era thinks in terms of supernatural horror.

Huh? I wish I could say that I enjoyed the relatively short text that followed. Despite the numerous references to Lovecraftian stories and films, there was just too much to the academic present for me to truly understand what was going on.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 29 (DRAFT)

When the board meeting was over Eleanor took me aside. There was a reception starting for them in twenty minutes, and then a dinner, and most everyone else was hustling out of there to freshen up beforehand.

“Do you have a minute, Alan? I want to show you something.”

“Of course,” I said hesitantly, noticing that Mary, too, had heard Eleanor’s request and was stopping her movement out of the room. We both closed in on Eleanor’s location at the head of the table.

Eleanor was rearranging the materials in the stack she had brought with her to the board meeting. Tucking her agenda packet under a three-ring binder, she pulled out a copy of our conference program and began flipping through it.

“I don’t want to make a big deal out of this,” she said as she zeroed in on a page and ran her finger along a line of text, “but I thought I should call it to your attention.”

I exchanged a worried glance with Mary and then looked down at what Eleanor was indicating. She was on page 173, and I read along as she spoke.

“This session is comprised of three distinct presentation segments.”

Eleanor looked up at me and for a moment I tried to feign ignorance, looking back at her like I didn’t understand what she was driving at. Her stare became even more severe, the way my mother’s often had when as a boy I tried to escape responsibility for some wrong I had done. Knowing there would be no use bluffing her, I changed my pose to one of supplication and asked her silently for forgiveness.

“Now, don’t worry,” Eleanor said reassuringly. “With everything else you’ve been dealing with, it’s not surprising that something like this should slip through. Let’s just hope no one else notices it.”

She said it with such seriousness that I almost laughed, as if she had just uncovered some state secret that had accidentally been leaked to the enemy regime. What, I wondered, did she think would happen if someone else did notice it? Would they report us to the grammar police?

But Mary didn’t see any levity in the situation. “Thank you,” she said with a gravity that equaled Eleanor’s. “I can assure you that something like this will not happen again.”

And then Eleanor nodded magnanimously, closing the program book below us as if to signify the end of an ugly chapter. “It’s done and behind us, now,” she said solemnly. “Let’s not speak of it anymore.”

She smiled at me, a self-important and victorious thing, offered to me the way a general offers terms of surrender to a defeated foe. She had actually done it. I couldn’t believe it, but there it was. At some point since receiving her conference program two days ago she had gone through it to verify that every one of her three thousand meaningless changes had been made—of course finding the one I had purposely ignored in my moment of feckless rebellion. When had she had the time? Was she some kind of cyborg or something that didn’t need to sleep?

I smiled back, but inside I was screaming.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

One of the things I like about Maugham novels is that they generally take me some time to figure out. I’ve written before about how Maugham seems exceptionally skilled at merging theme to plot in his fiction -- letting one serve the other until they become almost indistinguishable from each other. In other words, it is only through the action of the novel that the message can be discerned. This is likely why is takes time to understand what Maugham is trying to say. One has to let the plot unfold before a judgment can be made.

In this case, the shadowiest of clues is giving my the novel’s title and its epigraph:

“...the painted veil which those who live call Life.”

It’s a line from Shelley, and in the context of the novel that follows it is clearly a reference to the comforts of an unexamined life, and the attendant risks associated with lifting it.

Our protagonist is Kitty Fane, the young and unserious wife of the older and very serious scientist Walter, who, growing bored while stationed in the Far East with her husband, demands more from life and has an affair with an attractive and erudite diplomat named Charles Townsend. When her husband discovers her infidelity, he forces Kitty to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic in rural China. There, stripped of the British society of her youth she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life.

In other words, to lift the veil.

Here’s an example of some of her soul searching, brought on by the contrast between her previous hedonism and the overpowering poverty, sickness, and death that surrounds her. In this scene, her husband Walter has himself just died of the cholera he worked so hard to cure, and Kitty is speaking to a fellow British traveler named Waddington.

“Do you think the soul is immortal?” she asked.

He did not seem surprised at the question.

“How should I know?”

“Just now, when they washed Walter, before they put him into the coffin, I looked at him. He looked very young. Too young to die. Do you remember that beggar that we saw the first time you took me for a walk? I was frightened not because he was dead, but because her looked as though he’d never been a human being. He was just a dead animal. And now again, with Walter, it looked so like a machine that has run down. That’s what is so frightening, And if it is only a machine how futile is all this suffering and the heart pains and the misery.”

He did not answer, but his eyes traveled over the landscape at their feet. The wide expanse on that gay and sunny morning filled the heart with exultation. The trim little rice-fields stretched as far as the eye could see and in many of them the blue-clad peasants with their buffaloes were working industriously. It was a peaceful and happy scene. Kitty broke the silence.

“I can’t tell you how deeply moved I’ve been by all I’ve seen at the convent. They’re wonderful, those nuns, they make me feel utterly worthless. They give up everything, their home, their country, love, children, freedom; and all the little things which I sometimes think must be harder still to give up, flowers and green fields, going for a walk on an autumn day, books and music, comfort, everything they give up, everything. And they do it so that they may devote themselves to a life of sacrifice and poverty, obedience, killing work, and prayer. To all of them this world is really and truly a place of exile. Life is a cross which they willingly bear, but in their hearts all the time is the desire -- oh, it’s so much stronger than desire, it’s a longing, an eager, passionate longing for the death which shall lead them to life everlasting.”

Kitty clasped her hands and looked at him with anguish.

“Well?”

“Supposing there is no life everlasting? Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They’ve given up all for nothing. They’ve been cheated. They’re dupes.”

Waddington reflected for a little while.

“I wonder. I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”

This, I think, is Maugham’s own philosophy of life coming through. I’ve seen it in too many of his other works to think otherwise. The life of the artist, struggling against the reality of his own death, and succeeding only in the struggle, not the in the achievement. But for Kitty…

Kitty sighed. What he said seemed hard. She wanted more.

“Have you ever been to a symphony concert?” he continued.

“Yes,” she smiled. “I know nothing of music, but I’m rather fond of it.”

“Each member of the orchestra plays his own little instrument, and what do you think he knows of the complicated harmonies which unroll themselves on the indifferent air? He is concerned only with his own small share. But he knows that the symphony is lovely, and though there’s none to hear it, it is lovely still, and he is content to play his part.”

“You spoke of Tao the other day,” said Kitty, after a pause. “Tell me what it is.”

Waddington gave her a little look, hesitated an instant, and then with a faint smile on his comic face answered:

“It is the Way and the Waygoer. It is the eternal road along which walk all beings, but no being made it, for itself is being. It is everything and nothing. From it all things spring, all things conform to it, and to it at last all things return. It is a square without angles, a sound which ears cannot hear, and an image without form. It is a vast net and though its meshes are as wide as the sea it lets nothing through. It is the sanctuary where all things find refuge. It is nowhere, but without looking out of the window you may see it. Desire not to desire, it teaches, and leave all things to take their course. He that humbles himself shall be preserved entire. He that bends shall be made straight. Failure is the foundation of success and success is the lurking-place of failure; but who can tell when the turning point will come? He who strives after tenderness can become even as a little child. Gentleness brings victory to him who attacks and safety to him who defends. Mighty is he who conquers himself.”

“Does it mean anything?”

“Sometimes, when I’ve had half a dozen whiskies and look at the stars, I think perhaps it does.”

Waddington cannot take the Tao seriously -- not unless he’s drunk and looking dreamily at the stars. Neither can Kitty. And in their places I would argue that neither can Maugham. Desire not to desire, it teaches, but the artist must desire to create, to achieve, to transcend, or he cannot be an artist.

In the end, The Painted Veil is a novel that flirts with eastern philosophy, but which doesn’t embrace it. In a final scene between Kitty and her lover Charles Townsend, she better summarizes the plight of man in her contempt of him and the very instincts that drove her.

“Hang it all, [Townsend said,] I’m not a stick or a stone. It’s so unreasonable, the way you look at it; it’s so morbid. I thought after yesterday you’d feel a little more kindly to me. After all, we’re only human.”

“I don’t feel human. I feel like an animal. A pig or a rabbit or a dog. Oh, I don’t blame you, I was just as bad. I yielded to you because I wanted you. But it wasn’t the real me. I’m not that hateful, beastly, lustful woman. I disown her. It wasn’t me that lay on that bed panting for you when my husband was hardly cold in his grave and your wife had been so kind to me, so indescribably kind. It was only the animal in me, dark and fearful like an evil spirit, and I disown, and hate, and despise it. And ever since, when I’ve thought of it, my gorge rises and I feel that I must vomit.”

He frowned a little and gave a short, uneasy snigger.

“Well, I’m fairly broadminded, but sometimes you say things that positively shock me.”

“I should be sorry to do that. You’d better go now. You’re a very unimportant little man and I’m silly to talk to you seriously.”

Indeed. In much of the society that Maugham writes about, there are many unimportant little men, for whom it is silly if we stoop to take them seriously. Although Kitty does not like what she sees after lifting the veil, at least she has done so and can move forward on whatever sounder footing she has found there.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 28 (DRAFT)

“Thank you for that report, Alan,” Eleanor was saying twenty minutes later, after my presentation and with everyone reconvened around the board table. “Are there any questions?”

“Yes, I have one.”

It was Paul Webster, the immediate past chair of the board, the man, I knew, that Eleanor has just taken the gavel from, his term as chair ending and hers beginning at the start of this very board meeting. Other than that, I didn’t know him at all. I hardly knew anyone on the board. Mary kept them very well insulated from me and the rest of the staff. All I knew about Paul was what he looked like—a gray-haired bureaucrat in a blue suit.

“Paul?” Eleanor said, acknowledging him as having the floor.

“It’s my understanding that two senior staff people have recently left the organization—Susan Sanford and Michael Lopez. Both of whom had significant responsibilities associated with this conference.”

Paul paused, as if expecting me to affirm the truth of his statement. I kept my eyes on him, but could see Mary fidget in my peripheral vision, purposelessly lining up her pen with the top edge of her legal pad. As she had instructed, I held my tongue.

“What kind of contingency plans have been put in place to deal with their absence?”

There was no need for me to defer to Mary by word or gesture. She began speaking immediately, as if this was a play that had been rehearsed.

“We’re on top of it, Paul. Alan had been very engaged with Susan and Michael prior to their departures, and has been closely directing their staffs since then. He’s done an excellent job preparing them for added responsibility here in Miami.”

Paul turned towards Mary, allowing me to look at her fully. “Did you bring any additional staff to help with the logistics?”

“Excuse me?” Mary said. She picked up her pen and began tapping it on the pad.

“You’re down two senior staff positions. It sounds like you have confidence in Alan’s ability to provide the appropriate direction in their absence. But what about feet on the ground? This is a big conference with a lot of details to coordinate. Have you brought any additional staff from that office of yours to help make sure things go smoothly?”

Good question, I thought, and then suppressed a smile as Mary’s eyes flicked towards me and I saw the momentary indignation burning there. I knew for a fact that we hadn’t—that the travel, lodging and meal costs associated with Susan and Michael’s attendance had been one of the items she had put on the chopping block to help make up the deficit created by Eleanor’s exorbitant needs. We had even discussed it. I had tried to take advantage of the opportunity Paul was describing, thinking I could have used one or two extra sets of helping hands, but Mary had swiftly vetoed it.

“We discussed it,” Mary said, looking now at Paul but tipping her head in my direction to indicate who ‘we’ was. “But finally decided against it. Alan believes we are adequately staffed, and I trust his judgment. He believes that any additional people we might have brought would have been too inexperienced with this meeting to be of much help.”

Paul turned back to me. “Is that true, Alan? There’s no one at the home office who could have helped?”

From across the table I could see Mary staring at me, as if mentally reinforcing her pre-meeting instructions. Don’t contradict me. Even when you’re telling outright lies, Mary? Is that really what you expect me to do?

“Alan?”

Bitch. Of course that’s what she expected me to do.

“That’s right, Paul,” I said with a smile that moved my lips but didn’t reach my eyes. “We have a lot of confidence in our existing staff to rise to the challenge. They’re ready for it. It’s going to be a great meeting.”

There wasn’t much more I could say, but I tried to add as much nuance to my words as I could. I wanted my tone to convey shades of additional meaning. To Paul and the other members of the board, I hoped the tinge of smarminess I had used would communicate that the decision not to bring additional staff had not been mine, that regardless of what Mary said now the decision had been hers and had been made over my objection. And to Mary, I hoped she would hear that I clearly knew what she was doing, that by positioning this decision as mine I knew she was setting me up to take the blame if anything went wrong. I couldn’t do anything about it. Open defiance in front of the board would have been suicide, and she knew it. So I’d muddle through and be the good little soldier, but I wanted her to know I was onto her game.

Whether either shaded message got through I was never able to tell.

“Excellent,” Eleanor said. “Are there any other questions?”

A few moments of silence passed, several board members looking my way but no one speaking up.

“Then thank you, Alan, for your report and for your efforts on behalf of our organization. You’re welcome to stay as we move on to our next agenda item...”

I nodded my head and listened as fifteen people turned pages in their agenda books. I burned a stare into the side of Mary’s face, but she refused to make eye contact with me.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

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Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

If you want to enjoy this book, don’t see the movie first. Because the movie spoils the book, and not just from the point of view of giving away the twist.

Palahniuk, I think, describes more effectively how the movie spoils the book in his Afterword, which begins with an encounter he had with a cowboy tour guide for a never-described “Haunted Tunnel.”

There, another step into the dark, the cowboy says, “The first rule of the Haunted Tunnel Tour is you don’t talk about the Haunted Tunnel Tour.”

And I stop. The rope still a loose sagging smile between us.

“And the second rule of the Haunted Tunnel Tour,” the cowboy, his whiskey smell says, “is you don’t talk about the Haunted Tunnel Tour…”

The rope, the feeling of braided fibers, is twisted hard and greasy smooth in my hand. And still stopped, pulling back on the rope, I tell him: Hey…

From the dark, the cowboy says, “Hey, what?”

I say, I wrote that book.

The rope between us going tighter, tighter, tight.

And the rope stops the cowboy. From the dark, he says, “Wrote what?”

Fight Club, I tell him.

And there, the cowboy takes a step back up. The knock of his boot on a step, closer. He tilts his hat back for a better look and pushes his eyes at me, blinking fast, his breath boilermaker strong, breathalyzer strong, he says:

“There was a book?”

Yes. There was a book. It is the book that the movie spoiled because after the movie everything became a kind of vulgar pastiche. As Palahniuk describes in great detail, after the movie…

...Donatella Versace sewed razor blades into men’s clothing and called it the “fight club look.”

...Gucci fashion models walked the runway, shirtless with black eyes, bruised and bloodied and bandaged.

...Houses like Dolce and Gabbana launched their new men’s look -- satiny 1970s shirts in photo-mural patterns, camouflage-print pants and tight, low-slung leather pants -- in Milan’s dirty concrete basements.

...The band Limp Bizkit bannered their Web site with “Dr. Tyler Durden recommends a healthy dose of Limp Bizkit.

...The Onion newspaper ran an expose on “The Quilting Society,” where old ladies would meet in a church basement, lusting for “bare-knuckled, hand-stitching action,” where “the first rule of quilting society is you don’t talk about the quilting.”

...A zillion “Fuck Club” porn sites.

...A zillion restaurant reviews headlined: “Bite Club.”

...Rumble Boys, Inc. started labeling their men’s grooming products, hair mousse and gel, with Tyler Durden quotes.

...You could walk through airports and hear bogus public address announcements paging “Tyler Durden … Would Tyler Durden please pick up the white courtesy phone.

...People in Texas started wearing T-shirts printed with: “Save Marla Singer.”

Before all that there was a book -- a small book written at a particular time and in a particular cultural place.

At the same time, the bookstores were full of books like The Joy Luck Club and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and How to Make an American Quilt. These were all novels that presented a social model for women to be together. To sit together and tell their stories. To share their lives. But there was no novel that presented a new social model for men to share their lives.

This is the kernel that the book tries to honor, this new way for men to be and be together. From the novel itself:

You aren’t alive anywhere like you’re alive at fight club. When it’s you and one other guy under that one light in the middle of all those watching. Fight club isn’t about winning or losing fights. Fight club isn’t about words. You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood. This guy trusts himself to handle anything. There’s grunting and noise at fight club like at the gym, but fight club isn’t about looking good. There’s hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved.

This is the primal thing that lives at the center of the novel, and the thing that the movie and all that came after it exploits -- glorifying and perverting it at the same time.

If you want to enjoy this book, don’t see the movie first.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.