I would love to say that I haven't read any of his "art" column for The Guardian, as I haven't much time for him, but I have.
At least this one: Get real. Terry Pratchett is not a literary genius
This particular one is a kind of patchwork of banalities and classic rhetorical mishap like "No offence but...", but the jest of it, is: If it's massively popular, it has to be mediocre and/or shit.
(more about what I think about that kind of logic here)
Mr Jones doesn't think that the late Terry Pratchett wrote "literature".
Mr Jones is entitled to his opinion, but on what is it based? On nothing.
By his own admission, Mr Jones has never read a single novel by Mr Pratchett.
Once, he "did flick through a book by him in a shop, to see what the fuss is about, but the prose seemed very ordinary"
See? Ordinary. Popular, not serious... therefore shit.
The piece goes further into trying to differentiate "serious" authors - all great, there's no point arguing with that - from others, etc...
To properly answer Mr Jones, I translated - rather poorly I'm sorry to say - an excerpt of a radio piece written by my favourite comedian of all times, Pierre Desproges, an French author, TV and radio personality, who occasionally did some stand-up comedy (I know right? A French stand-up comedian! Yes, we have some).
Mr Desproges is long dead now, and this piece was written almost over 30 years ago... but still is, in my mind, the perfect reply to Jonathan Jones' drivel.
“A critic, the name of whom I'll keep silent so
that he doesn't emerge of the legitimate anonymity where his own indigence maintains him, wrote in his weekly column: "This is a
film that has no other ambition than to make us laugh". I say
"thank you".
Thank you, bleak ruminant, for the unreal perfection of your dung, spread as a promising fertilizer on the sparse field of my flickering inspiration.
Thank you, bleak ruminant, for the unreal perfection of your dung, spread as a promising fertilizer on the sparse field of my flickering inspiration.
What makes my blood boil, is that a
pedant dares belittling the art, nay, the craft of laughter, to the
rank of a pallid little chore for lethargic origami paper hen makers.
But who are you 'flaccid zero', to allow yourself to think that the
work of the clown is done without the sweat of the man? Who allows
you to believe that the comedian has no pride?
But it is immense, my dear, the pretension to make people laugh. A film, a play, a book, a drawing that seeks to give joy – to “sale” joy, let's not be foolish – takes planning, it is crafted, it is polished. An artwork just for laughs, it is well turned like a cabinetmaker's armchair or like a compliment. I don't know if you see what I mean, with that gaping hole in your brain-case?
Take Molière, who still makes the pensioners laugh, he perspired to death, Chaplin sweated, Guitry worked his ass off, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks are tired, for often to have had, 20 hours a day, the pretension to make us laugh. Poor little joy killer, you know what he has to say to you "Monsieur Hulot"?”
But it is immense, my dear, the pretension to make people laugh. A film, a play, a book, a drawing that seeks to give joy – to “sale” joy, let's not be foolish – takes planning, it is crafted, it is polished. An artwork just for laughs, it is well turned like a cabinetmaker's armchair or like a compliment. I don't know if you see what I mean, with that gaping hole in your brain-case?
Take Molière, who still makes the pensioners laugh, he perspired to death, Chaplin sweated, Guitry worked his ass off, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks are tired, for often to have had, 20 hours a day, the pretension to make us laugh. Poor little joy killer, you know what he has to say to you "Monsieur Hulot"?”
Criticon (1986), Pierre Desproges
For the braves and the purists, you'll find the entire original untranslated text here
