the political art conversation is a flat circle

(as we’ve said before, however, all circles are flat)

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In The Atlantic George Packer has a piece about why politics makes for bad art or what have you. It’s a little bit of a muddle, in my opinion, because he’s sort of doing several different things: 1) addressing the way in which people with any sort of public platform feel like they have to issue statements on everything 2) addressing art that’s meant to serve ideological ends and 3) addressing a kind of ideological boringness or sameness to art that wins awards. These are problems with a high degree of social overlap, I grant you. But I consider them distinct.¹

Anyway—it was pure coincidence that I saw this piece at more or less the exact time I was reading this passage from Sylvia Nasar’s Grand Pursuit. But nevertheless, the side-by-side felt a little… well, it felt a little pointed:

Like most reform-minded middle-class liberals, Dickens considered…