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July 26, 2006
Novels and Plays - different skill sets?
This an interesting essay, prompted by a revival of James Joyce's only play, on why novelists generally write such bad plays and so few dramatists write good novels. The author is a novelist, so take it as you will.
I don't know if I've ever read a treatment of the visual arts that considers reasons other than patronal or sociological (women not being allowed to study from the nude explaining why women didn't do history painting, Impressionists being bourgeois explaining their choice of subject matter, commissions driving altarpieces or portraits) for some of the differences between artists. I'm sure that scale is an important consideration - some people like to make big things, some people small ones. What about media? Some media are finicky, some looser. Do some archtiects really prefer houses to larger commissions? Of course they do.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at July 26, 2006 6:47 AM