[lbo-talk] This is the End of Tony

[BklynMagus]

> For me at least, and I hope for you, this - both our 
on-list and off-list exchanges - has been fruitful, 
because I begin to see more clearly how we disagree, 
and it has allowed me to clarify, for myself, my own 
relation to certain artists -- well, at least Puccini.


> Thanks very much for responding so thoughtfully and 
intelligently.

Thanks to you as well.  I now understand my own aesthetic 
far better than I did before.  Also, your defense of THE 
SOPRANOS was what the best criticism does: you 
illuminated a possible avenue of response through a 
sophisticated reading/explication of the work and yourself.

As I prepared for bed last evening, I picked up a volume of 
the divine Oscar for pre-slumber reading and came upon this 
passage which I though serendipitous after the last two 
emails I had written (Terrence said I spent so much time 
over them he thought I was writing a novel):

"All art is at once surface and symbol.  Those who go beneath 
the surface do so at their peril.  Those who read the symbol 
do so at their peril.  It is the spectator, and not life, that 
art really mirrors."

Brian