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Saturday, November 09, 2013

The Repitition Of Art

Alec Guinness in Our Man In Havana




I mentioned I went to the Phillips in D.C. to view a Van Gogh exhibit, which was an obsessive art-critical view of subjects Van Gogh painted more than once.
Ouch!
However, there is a place for repeat, repeat, repeat, in Art, but it lay in the esperience and in a fuller immersion, not in some critique which aims to blind the Philsitines  (i.e., me)  with Art Science.

Good novels and stories defy one reading. A good book is water off a duck's back with one reading. Ditto films and songs and such.

A good book implies an interesting intelligence behind it. Following that intelligence into its web of words can be a profound experience.

I have read and listened to Graham Greene's Our Man In Havana more than ten times. It remains ever fresh and surprising. There is a surface meaning and - believe it or not! - there is a deep meaning. And as it surprises, it remains comic and entertaining.
To mention that it also foretells the general lineaments of the future in Oriente Province and the terrible atomic game of intrigue in a future Cuba is almost too much, but there it is. 

Amazing, I think.

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