9 Writing Assignment due August 29th Art (book, poem or film) Film of a book: Love in the Time of Cholera In the summer of 1992 I decided to read an essay by Leo Tolstoy called "What is Art?" Art was something I didn't know much about. It was one of those things that I didn't know how to think about. I remember being puzzled by much of the "Art" I had seen in venues such as the National Gallery of Art and dozens of museums I had visited. I remember not having been much impressed by much of what was called Art and that some of the things which had impressed me most were not necessarily well regarded by critics. Some of the things that had impressed me were: a painting by Vermeer which made me feel as if I were there with a young milkmaid who was working in a kitchen hundreds of years ago. A painting of Picasso's first wife moved me nearly to tears and it seemed as if I felt his love for her and his pain in loosing her. A popular contemporary sculpture by Max Ernst had repulsed me and a simple French marble sculpture seemed as beautiful as anything I had ever seen before. Count Leo Tolstoy's essay impressed me and gave me a grounding. I had to reason with it and struggle to interpret his message, but it seemed to me that his meaning was that true art had three characteristics which were consistent: for Tolstoy, Art was 1) original, 2) universally appealing and 3) morallly uplifting. I didn't "buy" the Count's opinion completely, because I realized that he had a point of view, an agenda and a place in time. Nonetheless, I could not, after reading the essay, continue to look at art without asking myself if it met his criteria. That said, I've decided to write about a movie I saw last May: Love in the Time of Cholera. It is a movie interpretation of a popular book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It tells a simple story and is witty. It seemed to me to be an original interpretation of the book—I had read the book during the Summer of 2002 while I was staying at a resort in San Diego as I passed through while hiking part of the Pacific Crest Trail—and I didn't remember feeling that the movie was "just like the book". It seemed to me to be appealing, though I had a point of criticism or two in challenge of that. First, I was a bit confused by the filmmaker's portrayal of the aging of a couple of the characters in the film. Certain transitions didn't seem to "work" and I had to think about it and use my imagination to believe that the same persons portrayed in the film were those portrayed by the actors. Next, in discussing the movie with a friend, he said that he found it filled with cliches and it puzzled me that I didn't relate to it this way. Also, I found the movie morally uplifting: in a time when "love" is no more than a toy for many and for which popular opinion ranges from trite to the only thing in the world of value, I found it refreshing that Garcia Marquez and the filmmaker had found a way to make romantic love seem fresher and more real than the books, tv and movies which are popular have portrayed it. It seemed to me that I was participating in a poetic interpretation of a personal and universal sentiment. The final narrated line of the film was memorable: A life with love is greater than the eternity of death. It gave me that poignant feeling which had moved me when I finished reading A Hundred Years of Solitude, though with a sort of comic, rather than a tragic sense. Value of the study of literature? To use a broad definition of "Literature": written works, esp. those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit (OAD 2.0.2); after reading Mortimer J. Adler's HOW TO READ A BOOK, I decided to allow his advice to guide me (at least to an extent). I've found that his conviction–that the reading of what he called "great books" had the potential to change a reader–to be true. Example 1: Literature as narrative. When I was a student at L.S.U. in the 1970's, one assignment that I had was to read Joseph Conrad's story THE SECRET AGENT. It was beyond my ability at the time, especially regarding the vocabulary required to understand the book. So I told the instructor about the difficulty I was facing and I asked him if he really expected me to read with the text in one hand and a dictionary in the other. He simply answered that he didn't expect anything of me in a rather non-judgmental tone. I've found the recalled situation and the consequent remembrances of the occasion to be some of the most important learning stages and metamorphic experiences of my life. Example 2. Inspiration. I want to write a story or set of works which will be aimed at teenagers and will be an appealing revelation of certain literary terms–stories about a competition, not a race. For example, on the ship Hyperbole, the captain will cavalierly slice off the head of any mate who dares mispronounce his ladyship's name.