Seeing The Story in History
“Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art,” Susan Sontag wrote in her 1964 work, Against Interpretation and Other Essays. “Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.”
Maria Popova, the brilliant writer behind The Marginalian, explored Sontag’s line of thought regarding art and content, criticism and interpretation. Popova’s examination and Sontag’s words prompted thoughts about how I’m researching and writing about history. Bear with me as I follow Popova and Sontag, leading to thoughts about my work on Barons, Brewers, and Bootleggers: A Social History of Beer in Missouri.
The Lingering Shadow of Interpretation
Sontag wrote about our culture’s approach to interpretation. She defined it as “a conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain ‘rules’ of interpretation.” An interpreter may act as a translator of sorts. Like translation, meaning may be lost or altered by interpretation. Interpretation suggests “a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of (later) readers” and seeks to resolve that discrepancy.
“The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can’t admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning. However far the interpreters alter the text … they must claim to be reading off a sense that is already there,” wrote Sontag.
Sontag’s words jump out to me as a writer researching history. How does interpretation of that history play a role in storytelling without altering a reader’s understanding of it?
Interpretation can be overbearing, a lingering shadow, projecting meaning onto an existing and inherent meaning work of art. Interpretation mines the source material and by its newborn existence can shape how the original work is perceived. Sontag acknowledges that interpretation can be liberating by revising and “escaping the dead past” to deliver understanding.
Interpretation may also be “reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling.” A critic may recast a classic novel or work of art as offensive based on contemporary taste and morals. Such criticism can lead to disfavor toward the artist and censorship of the art.
In turn, a reader or viewer may generate a response to the interpretation rather than the original work itself. Both the interpretation and the reaction can be a form of “violence.” The interpretation by critics and subsequently the public creates distance from the art or subject being interpreted. For example, a reader may peruse a film review based on a critic’s interpretation and form an opinion without seeing the film itself.
This tendency extends to our contemporary behavior with social media outside of art. Celebrities, pop culture, politics, restaurants, true crime podcasts – how often do we form an opinion and reaction facilitated by social media and other media? Is our opinion based on the interpreter rather than our direct experience? Do we form an interpretive opinion without our own research and reference to more fully understand?
Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.
The Interpreter’s Power
“Interpretation is not simply the compliment that mediocrity pays to genius. It is, indeed, the modern way of understanding something, and is applied to works of every quality,” wrote Sontag.
Interpretation invests power in the interpreter’s assigned meaning who may wield it like a sword. Most deadly, an interpreter can apply their intellect to the subject to serve their own agenda, creating a “shadow world of meanings.”
Sontag asserted that interpretation can commit a form of “violence” against the artist and their work. By recasting meaning through interpretation, the interpreter seeks to tame the art and make it more palatable.
“Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable,” wrote Sontag.
Further, the interpreter also gains power as the arbiter of what’s what based on the meaning assigned. The interpreter may seek to build a following of people who back their interpretation. At its worst, the interpreter can become an advocate for censorship, a self-appointed moral and social guardian. Transformed into a cause, the critic as interpreter may inspire protest while recentering focus onto them and away from the artist, the creator, or the source.
Reducing art into content makes it easier to consume, to monetize, and to persuade. Emotionally and intellectually, it is safer for the audience who consumes with less thought and empowering for the critical interpreter turned cultural gatekeeper.
Resisting Content as Commodity, Recognizing Art as an Agent to Feel
Popova points to Sontag’s writing in 1964, a time before the internet and social media, mind you, and her observation about the power of cinema as art.
Sontag wrote, “Perhaps the way one tells how alive a particular art form is, is by the latitude it gives for making mistakes in it, and still being good… In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret… The fact that films have not been overrun by interpreters is in part due simply to the newness of cinema as an art.”
Art makes us feel emotion, especially when encountered directly without the mediation of the critic, the interpreter, or pundit telling us what to think and feel.
Next, Popova led to a key point that resonated: “Sontag’s greatest admonition against interpretation has to do with its tendency to de-sensualize art.”
When interpreting art, Sontag asserted that we need to shed the conditions of modern life. Specifically, we must allow our senses to help us experience art, culture, and life itself. Instead, we’re distracted by the excess of materialism. We’re overwhelmed by the constant stream of “content.” We’re entranced by the attention-seeking of performative influencers and media to occupy our senses and dull them rather than engage them.
Sontag reminded, “What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.”
Popova concludes with this insight from Sontag about experiencing art as more than content, and reminding the critic as interpreter that:
“Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art — and, by analogy, our own experience — more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
Interpreting History
Popova’s exploration of Sontag’s writing is a lot to digest. How does this relate to my work as an author? I’m researching and writing about the history of beer and brewing in Missouri. I am not a trained historian or an art critic. Still, the writing of Popova and Sontag prompted thoughts about how I write an interpretation of that history.
I don’t aim to merely recount facts about people, places, and events. As a storyteller, my interpretation could cast a lingering shadow. The lives of people and the scope of events, past and present, are far too rich, detailed, and nuanced to definitively portray in full. Also, covering more than 200 years of history in Missouri is daunting, too. Built-in limitations kick in.
How do I gather the clay of history and shape it into art? Storytelling decisions have to be made about who and what to include. As a writer and an artist, those decisions are editorial in nature. Creatives must work within limits or risk producing meaningless, unfocused work.
Again, as Sontag wrote about the art critic, ““Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.”
Selective writing about Missouri’s brewing history, its countless breweries and people, is necessary. I focus on specific stories – the firsts, the significant, the innovative and odd, the lesser-known and forgotten, the ripples that may become waves across the expanse of history.
Interpretation matters, too. Historians analyze and interpret historical events. While their function differs from art criticism, I see some overlap. As a storyteller about Missouri history, I’m aware that my interpretation adds to the canon of published history. My work may inform and shape the knowledge and opinions of other writers and readers long after I die.
Unless time travel becomes available, past events prevent us from directly experiencing now the events of what happened or meeting the people who lived then. Encountering an actor portraying Abraham Lincoln or Harriet Tubman isn’t the same as meeting them in real life. In the realm of art, we may visit a museum or gallery to experience Claude Monet’s 1899 work The Water Lily Pond, but we cannot converse with the renowned artist to directly divine meaning and insight.
A curator acts as an interpreter. Someone who crafts exhibition notes and decides how the work will be presented. The curator’s decisions are informed by study, research, the artist’s life story, documentation, and curatorial choices about what story and point of view to tell.
Ideally, the temptation of the historian and curator is even less than the critic to be heavy-handed in their interpretation.
As a writer drawing from the well of history, I find myself aligning with the historian as analyst and interpreter. I relate to the curator as a historical interpreter who preserves and provides context. I rely on secondhand documents, recordings, physical objects, published work, and other source material. When possible, I interview brewers, owners, and others to create a new record.
Writing about history necessitates some degree of analysis and interpretation. Even so, I take the responsibility to present a history supported by sources and references. Another consideration to avoid erroneous interpretation is presentism.
In literary and historical analysis, presentism refers to the introduction of present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. In other words, viewing the past through the lens of present-day morals, values, and perspectives. That interpretative path can quickly lead to misrepresentation of the how and why of what actually happened.
I’d rather share stories that invite readers to think and decide for themselves, once aware.
My goal as a storyteller and artist is to craft chapters about the people and events that prompt questions and poke reflection about the past. Sometimes that history may make us uncomfortable or a range of other feelings. Both the history and our feelings about it are valid. As Sontag wrote, “Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.”
While each story’s details cannot be “all inclusive,” each portrayal is meant to provide illuminating context about that person and brewery and the time they lived in. Some stories may prompt readers to reconsider (or research!) the history they knew as well as dwell on history unknown to them.
To paraphrase Sontag, I aim to share Missouri’s history through its people and events (that it was what it was). To a degree, I’ll convey how historical events unfolded (how it was what it was). In order to not cast a shadow that obscures or alters history, I will resist the temptation of the overbearing interpreter and critic to show what it means.
Hopefully, dear reader, you’ll contemplate the meaning of our collective past while sipping on a beverage of choice.