Fungible Conviction #1: The wrong environment can drain the power of good writing, just as it can a good painting.
My girlfriend and I had a debate about museums. She, being an archivist-in-training, defended the museum’s role as conservator and educator. I suggested though, implausible as it is, that all art should live in an environment true to its original purpose, and by way of example I walked her through a room at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts dedicated to “the great works of the Renaissance,” a space filled with countless masterpieces. None of them, in such a room, had any power. Imagine: El Greco without emotion!
In that room, many paintings are hung twenty feet up the wall, and small pietas are physically dwarfed by battle epics. But all are robbed of their emotional impact by having to live in a completely relativistic environment.
In the same way, creative writing kept in collections that overwhelm can fail to connect with the reader. But unlike visual art, writing can be given its proper context without the archival dangers of humidity and direct sunlight. Poetry can be read aloud. Editors can write introductions. And literary journals can publish with mission guidelines, ones narrow enough to assure the reader they’re in the midst of quality yet wide enough to allow for surprises.
Ultimately, my girlfriend won the argument. It’s impossible to move the world’s great still-lifes to individual dining rooms, and with photography there is very little emotional connection left in painted portraits to the average viewer. But writing, especially given the social-tagging powers of the Internet, can and should always be experienced in an environment that heightens its power.
