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DWIGHT MACDONALD
on to it for a lifetime, like a dog worrying a bone." This is not
at all to imply that James T. Farrell is deliberately hanging on
to his bone for profit or prestige, or that Norman Mailer changes
his
bones for idealistic reasons. The truth probably is that the
former really enjoys mumbling the same old bone while the
latter, perhaps because he is more volatile and talented, has
wanted to try something new. But the result is that Farrell has
got a lot of mileage out of very little gas, while Mailer is still
a real problem to his publishers.
VIII
Let us, finally, consider Masscult first from the standpoint
of consumption and then from that of production.
As
a marketable commodity, Masscult has two great
advantages over High Culture. One has already been consider–
ed: the post-1750 public, lacking the taste and knowledge of the
old patron class, is not only satisfied with shoddy mass-produced
goods but in general feels more at home with them (though on
unpredictable occasions, they will respond to the real thing, as
with Dickens' novels and the movies of Chaplin and Griffiths ) .
This is because such goods are standardized and so are easier
to consume since one knows what's coming next- imagine a
Western in which the hero loses the climactic gun fight or an
office romance in which the mousy stenographer loses out to
the predatory blonde. But standardization has a subtler aspect,
which might be called The Built-In Reaction.
As
Clement
Greenberg noted in "Avantgarde and
Kitsch"
many years ago
in this magazine, the special esthetic quality of
kitsch- a
term
which includes both Masscult and Midcult- is that it "pre–
digests art for the spectator and spares him effort, provides him
with a shortcut to the pleasures of
art
that detours what is nec–
essarily difficult in the genuine art" because it includes the
spectator's reactions in the work itself instead of forcing him
to make his own responses. That standby of provincial weddings,
I Love You Truly,
is far more "romantic" than the most beauti-
