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What Good Are the Arts? (Hardcover)

by John Carey (Author) "'What is a work of art?' is a simple question, but no one has yet found an answer to it, and perhaps finding a single..." (more)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 204 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber (2 Jun 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0571226027
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571226023
  • Product Dimensions: 18.8 x 12.4 x 3.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 73,949 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

David Lodge, Sunday Times

'Informative, thought-provoking and entertaining.'


Rupert Christiansen, Spectator

'Carey lays into the snobs... Exhilarating and suggestive.'
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
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First Sentence
'What is a work of art?' is a simple question, but no one has yet found an answer to it, and perhaps finding a single answer that will satisfy everyone is impossible. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious, but internally contradictory, 17 Aug 2005
By A Customer
It's hard not to love John Carey. There are so few witty, intelligent literary critics willing to stand up for the general reader. As ever, this offering is rich in pointed and thoughtful deflations of the smug, the pompous and the self-important, and the result is rib-tickling and heartwarming.

However, it isn't always illuminating, because Carey's critical judgement is sometimes overwhelmed by his flair for apt phrases and putdowns, and because of the stark contradiction at the heart of the book. Having spent several chapters wittily dissecting the pretensions of high culture in the form of the visual and musical arts, he abruptly tells us that literature is different because it alone is self-critical. Huh? Modern art - since Matisse, at least - is vehemently self critical to the point of being self-consuming, constantly lampooning its own status. There's an intriguing argument about literary language actually being vague and suggestive rather than precise, but one could use this just as well to defend Vaughan Williams or Kandinsky. Somehow, Carey wants to cut Dickens a lot more slack than anyone else, despite the fact that he too could be as snobbish as anybody.

If you can live with all these contradicitons, however, you can enjoy Carey's own lacerating wit as itself the kind of literary pleasure he wants to defend.

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Nose Tweak, 11 Feb 2007
By A. P. Hick - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: What Good are the Arts? (Paperback)
The funniest book I have read this year. Carey tweaks the nose of the urban elites, and their earnest country cousins at 'arts centre' mission stations, he tweaks it until it hurts, and then he still won't let go.

If your idea of the arts coresponds with the cultural taste of the metroploitan pivileged class, then read this, you deserve an intellectual nose pinch. If not, read it anyway.

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16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Joy to Read From Beginning to End, 18 Aug 2005
This book is a sheer joy from start to finish, full of sharp insights, written in sparse, elegant prose - astringent and beautiful and easy to read. I was so taken with it that I kept slowing myself down in order not to get to the end of it too quickly! Also, it's such a counterblast to the armies of literary and artistic snobs out there (some well known novelists included) - and from such an erudite, well read source as well. It's hugely funny, wise, iconoclastic and may well change your life. It should be required reading for anyone with any involvement in the arts, but perhaps most particularly for would-be critics (and Arts Council Committees!) everywhere. I loved it, and only wish I had half such facility with words and ideas. Buy it, read it, savour it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars teachy
Writing slickly , Carey scores a few easy points in the first few chapters.

He probably doesn't much like art, at least not visual art or music. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Nt Deregowski

3.0 out of 5 stars A knockabout but no knockout
Carey is funny and incisive, and certainly a critique of the Visual Arts, with its intellectual pretensions and creative stasis is overdue. Read more
Published on 21 Jan 2006 by groggery

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