[MD] Review of 'The Truth About Art'.

[Ant McWatt]

FYI Arlo & Dan:

"TTAA followed a standard American book design, used by university presses, down to the choice of font and size of leading. It makes for perfectly comfortable reading. And while a coated paper would have printed the images with a greater tonal range, they reproduce perfectly adequately for a book driven by an argument, rather than by the pictures."

"What Warr missed was the whole thesis of the book, which is summarised in the initial note 'To the Reader'. She used the word 'quality' only once, and that was to refer to the low-quality paper!"

Best wishes,

Patrick Doorly

(October 24th 2014)

----------------------------------------

On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 11:52 AM, ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR
<ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:
> [Ant]
> Remember that Patrick Doorly (the author of TTAA) was primarily aiming his book towards an academic audience (I guess fine art critics and philosophers mainly) so a vanity publisher such as CreateSpace (whose academic credibility is basically zero) was not an option open to him.  It's the finely honed arguments in Patrick's book which give it, its intellectual quality and its these arguments that I ask the reader of this post to be primarily concerned with.
>
> [Dan]
> In other words (and forgive me if I am translating this wrongly), folk like me have no reason to be reading Patrick Doorly's book. Only those who are academically trained in the fine arts and philosophy would have any use for it. It is a text book.
>
> [Arlo]
> I don't think "academic" here should be a point of contention Dan (*I* think you are highly academic).
 
[Dan]
Thank you, Arlo.I don't think it should be a point of contention
either which was basically the gist of my reply to Ant.
 
[Arlo]
> Sadly, textbooks do tend to be very expensive, even David Grange's text (which is mostly text) sold for $110 upon publication (I see the price is down to $69 on Amazon). So authors who publish in this format may do everything they can to keep costs down. How many 'non-academics' do you think will shell out $110 for Granger's book? And yet I'd argue its incredibly important. So $25 for Doorley's book as it is, or $110+ for the book with high-quality print and hi-res color images? Which do you think will reach more readers?
 
[Dan]
Exactly... but what is the point of Patrick Doorly's book? I thought
it was aimed at anyone with an interest in art and quality and of
course Robert Pirsig fits the bill on both counts. If the book is
indeed aimed at an academic audience that will leave a lot of us out.
 
>[Arlo]
> And, we can't really deny that there is a symbolic capital to be had with the publisher imprint. Right or wrong, it has meaning. Many academic authors are required, for tenure, to publish using certain 'respected' or 'established' publishing venues. Having your book published by "Oxford University Press" (for example) establishes symbolic capital for both the author and the argument. Whether this is wholly good or bad, whether it is something that we should reject outright or accept, it is a fact for those publishing within their academic tenure.
 
[Dan]
That makes sense and I appreciate that there are journals and
publishing houses positioned to serve academic authors. But aren't we
going beyond content here just as the reviewer of Doorly's book did?
 
>
> [Dan]
> CreateSpace is different than a vanity publisher in that no upfront purchase is necessary.
>
> [Arlo]
> Another consideration is that often authors (academic or otherwise) are provided with some compensation when their manuscript is accepted. Pirsig, for example, worked off a Guggenheim grant.
 
[Dan]
Correct me if I am mistaken but I thought the Guggenheim came after
the success of ZMM. I'm pretty sure he was teaching full time while
writing ZMM. I seem to recall that he worked out of a flophouse in
Minnesota from 2am to 6am before going to his day job. Too, I read
somewhere (I think it was in the same ZMM interview) that Robert
Pirsig received a $3000 advance for that book and was told by the
publisher not to expect any more royalties from it.
 
[Arlo]
>Now, I'm not sure if that specific grant conferred certain rights to the publisher (and away from Pirsig), but often authors need compensation (even in the form of work-release) while they are writing.
 
[Dan]
"Guggenheim Fellowships are grants to selected individuals made for a
minimum of six months and a maximum of twelve months. Since the
purpose of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is to help provide
Fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much
creative freedom as possible, grants are made freely. No special
conditions attach to them, and Fellows may spend their grant funds in
any manner they deem necessary to their work. The United States
Internal Revenue Service, however, does require the Foundation to ask
for reports from its Fellows at the end of their Fellowship terms. "
 
http://www.gf.org/about-the-foundation/frequently-asked-questions/
 
[Arlo]
> I do not know the specifics of Doorly's publishing contract, but there may have been important and unavoidable reasons (in addition to academic capital) that he went with a publisher rather than self-publishing.
 
[Dan]
I suspect so too.


.