{"id":8331,"date":"2023-08-19T17:50:29","date_gmt":"2023-08-19T17:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=8331"},"modified":"2024-03-11T20:31:36","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T20:31:36","slug":"letter-to-the-editors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/19\/letter-to-the-editors\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the Editors"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Letter to the Editors<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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From Tom Break<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Dear Editors:<\/p>

I really appreciated Katy Carl\u2019s essay in the Winter 2023 issue, \u201cA Taste for Delight<\/a>,\u201d because it draws out an aspect of taste that\u2019s easy to forget: that it isn\u2019t static, and that indeed we might even have a moral<\/i> responsibility to cultivate good taste\u2014or at least to strive to make our own taste better. Carl is walking toward the border between the aesthetic and the ethical, a border where the art we make and the art we love is a matter of grave consequence.<\/p>

But Carl hedges her bets as she approaches a sliver of territory that artists have mostly conceded, where there\u2019s a direct route from the realm of art into the realm of morals. It\u2019s a sliver of territory that\u2019s been so heavily bombarded that there are hardly any human inhabitants there anymore, and the ground has become so toxic, and the way leaves the wanderer so vulnerable, that no one is willing to venture there.<\/p>

In the middle of her essay, where she\u2019s tracing in Jason Guriel\u2019s book, On Browsing<\/i>, some of the features of off-screen living that create the conditions for growth in taste, she\u2019s headed straight for this disputed territory. It seems like she\u2019s dying to say: good taste matters! And better taste makes better people!<\/p>

Instead, she hedges. She\u2019s careful, and she doesn\u2019t want to overstate the value of art, to make it seem more important than the politicians and moralists have bullied us into thinking that it is. So before picking an alternate route through an argument about how the cultivation of taste achieves a kind of moral utility by creating experiences of higher pleasures that in turn reinforce our better instincts, she makes a pretty standard disclaimer about the limitations of what art can do. \u201cGood taste doesn\u2019t guarantee good character,\u201d she says. The editors were good enough to reprint the thought in big letters on the page.<\/p>

For my part, I\u2019ve been stealing into this territory in the nights, sifting through artifacts left over from the peoples who once lived here amidst the fragments of mortar shells from militant moralists who drove them away. Remnants of barricades from generations of avant-gardes<\/i>, remains of campfires from itinerant Bohemians, private musings of artists who desperately hope that their work could really matter, errant thoughts of philosophers who wonder if there might not be some treasure buried in the sands, and functional objects that flowed so directly out of and back into life that they shame our academic creations with their vitality.<\/p>

One of my favorite artifacts is a quote from the historian Peter Brown, writing in The World of Late Antiquity<\/i>. He\u2019s talking about the concept of paideia<\/i>, \u201cthe true education,\u201d which is of course less an education in facts than a formation in taste: \u201cThe man who chiseled and polished himself like a statue through the devotion to the classics was the highest ideal.\u201d<\/p>

What struck me about the idea is the concept of using art as a chisel to cut away the excess of myself, to reduce me<\/i> to the essential, to take up the challenge of finding in this lump of stone sitting here the form of a true man, of a good man.<\/p>

That\u2019s the only reason that makes any sense to me for caring about art at all. Which is why I\u2019m here in this no man\u2019s land. I want to say to Carl: don\u2019t walk away from this place. Don\u2019t plot a course from art into the moral universe through some other territory, winding your way through philosophical or theological or psychological backroads, so that the mountains remain between art and the rest of life.<\/p>

Come here, where the path is direct! For there is power here. We\u2019ve forgotten that this territory exists, and hardly know how to defend it. But it\u2019s a territory worth fighting for: the straight road from art into life and life into art is right here. And here, taste really matters. It has to matter, and it has to matter more than people safely on either side of this territory are willing to admit.<\/p>

And because it matters, we must demand that it be true, and that it lead us to the good. So I scrawled on my copy of Fare Forward<\/i> an emendation to Carl\u2019s quote: \u201cIf good taste doesn\u2019t guarantee good character, then it isn\u2019t good taste.\u201d<\/p>

Sincerely,<\/p>

Tom Break
Co-founder and Editor of In the Wind Projects<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Letter from Tom Break to the Editors regarding Katy Carl’s essay “A Taste for Delight”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","category-issue-28","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farefwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Browser.png?fit=864%2C611&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8331"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8570,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8331\/revisions\/8570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8331"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