Country and western is ignored by the intellectuals. They don't look at it as an art form. They think it's just somebody sitting on his couch singing about his life.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Western art is built on the biographical passion of one artist for another.
The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.
Country and western is the music of the devil. That's the real truth of the matter. My late Mother, bless her, loved country and western. God, I couldn't handle it.
But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them.
If you consider film an art form, as some people do, then the Western would be a truly American art form, much as jazz is.
The hero of the book does long to experience God. But his conception of God is very western.
Unfortunately, I haven't thought sufficiently about art. What I never realized - and it's really stupid - is the art world is the art world because all these thousands of famous and not-famous artists do things, over centuries. This hadn't occurred to me.
You don't see artists sitting around a lot, talking about ideology. They find out what they believe, and what they're doing, by doing it.
The artist is something of an outsider in America. I have always felt that America does not value its artists, certainly not in the sense that the Europeans do.
Everyone loathes his own country and countrymen if he is any sort of artist.