Friday, June 29, 2007

Art, or a stack of cans, or the answer to what was a scary book I read.









Yesterday I tried to answer the question presented by a friend as to what the worst book or books were that I had read. Today the question was what was the scariest? The problem with both questions is that the answer changes and in both cases there are a number of contestants for the position. Now with that said I have fewer book titles in my mind that could be designated “most scary”. The reason is pretty simple. I don’t like “scary”. I don’t read it, search it out, or have it on my shelves on purpose if it is scary. The best Stephan King book I every read was “Heart of Atlantis” and I read it to find out how Stephan King wrote and the good news it wasn’t scary.
*
Scary can be something that upsets or worries or creates apprehension I suppose. It can be scary what you find your self reading without realizing it.
Once I had a book that had in the title the words “Me Pretty”, blank blank whatever, I just don’t remember. What I do remember is that it was vulgar and just sick to get attention. I was upset for having read as far as I did. I also was at one time interested to learn more about Andy Warhol. I read a few things and then in a “life story” I again found myself just in the middle of sick vulgar junk and I wish I had not read that far. So I may have started that journey from one of his odd art approaches. The cans of soup sort of had a lot of attention. Way overdone I thought.
*
Andy Warhol first exhibited in an art gallery in 1962, and showed his 32 Campbell's Soup Cans, He was a sort a poster child for a sort of collective American state of mind in which celebrity became a brand name and somehow that transformation replaced sacredness. The cans of soup, I suppose, are about sameness. What they suggested was not a humanizing touch of the hand but the pervasiveness of routine error. Well then with that deep insight why I would bother to read more about this individual is sort of pervasive itself. There are several books about his life. Then of course about his art and so on. The ones about his life are indeed a little scary. It is a slow decent in to vulgarity and that qualifies as scary.

No comments: