“Capitalism says that society must become richer and richer,
that whatever the cost, economies must grow. Once we subscribe to money as the
core value, what follows is a deregulated, twenty-four-hour society, where the
right to sleep, the right to peace and quiet, the right to family life, the
right to human-friendly work patterns and human-friendly hours all become far
less important than the right to make money.Against this golden calf in the wilderness, where everybody comes to buy and sell, art offers a different rate of exchange. The artist does not turn time into money; the artist—whether writer, painter, musician—turns time into energy, time into intensity, time into vision. And the exchange that art offers is an exchange in kind—of energy for energy, intensity for intensity, vision for vision. Can we make the return? Do we want to? When people complain that art is hard work, they really mean that our increasingly passive entertainments do not equip us for the demands that art makes. Art is not a passive activity. We have to get involved. Imagination always means involvement, and as soon as your mind is open to a different level of seeing, thinking, hearing, or understanding, you start asking questions. Money culture hates questions.
… At the core of art is an intensity of experience totally lacking from a money culture, whose purpose is to dilute every other value to below the value of itself. Art wants you to concentrate; money wants you to dissipate.”
From “What Is Art For?” by Jeanette Winterson, found in The World Split Open: Great Authors on How and Why We Write (Tin House Books, 2014)
See also: William Kennedy on Literary Obscurity
See also: William Kennedy on Literary Obscurity
