On the Question of Quality Versus Quantity

 

   

I. 

 

Good people always insist: It's quality rather than quantity that matters [1].

 

You'll be a much happier and more authentic human being, they say, if you forget about numbers, stop being acquisitive, and focus instead on things that have real value and substance, such as meaningful relationships.

 

It's a kind of moral minimalism in which the related mantra less is more is used to justify a small circle of friends, or the fact that one hasn't read many books. 

 

Surprisingly, even D. H. Lawrence, who is usually quick to attack the base-born stupidity of proverbial wisdom, buys into this idea. But whilst he may be right to argue that it is better to read one good book six times rather than six bad books once [2], we feel obliged to point out the possibility of reading six good books six times.

 

That's a greater quantity of books - and many more readings - but surely that's better than simply reading one text over and over and insisting with monomaniacal intensity on its value. For that's precisely the error religiously-minded people fall into when they mistakenly decide that all they ever need read is a single holy text. 

 

Ultimately, it's not a binary choice: you can have quality and quantity. In fact, as we'll explain below, you can't have the former without the latter ...

  

II. 

 

Speaking as an evolutionary biologist, I can say that nature massively favours quantity over quality, which is why it can be so outrageously profligate. It's not necessarily the fittest who survive in this life, it's those who have the numbers to stake a claim on the future. 

 

And by modelling populations over long timescales, a recent Oxford study showed that the most important determinant of evolutionary success was not good genes, but the widest number of genetically available mutations [3].   

 

Brilliant individuals come and go like flowers; they simply don't have time to fix in the population or determine the evolutionary outcome of a race.   

And speaking as an artist, I can also confirm the fact that the creation of great works rests upon a large body of work. That's why, for example, it was necessary for Picasso to paint some 60,000 pictures in order to produce a small number of works - probably fewer than a 100 - that are considered masterpieces. 

 

This doesn't mean the vast bulk of the work is worthless or a waste of time; on the contrary, it was vital. For it was by producing works in such quantity that Picasso was able to learn, experiment, and evolve as an artist. Most importantly, it allowed him to make mistakes; for just as quality rests upon quantity, success rests upon repeated failure.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The saying is often attributed to the Roman philosopher (and proto-Christian) Seneca; see his Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XLV: 'On sophistical argumentation', line 1. Click here to read online.    

 

[2] See Lawrence's discussion of books and reading in relation to this question of quality (or real value) versus quantity in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 60.  

 

[3] The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE and was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. It's lead author is Dr Ard Louis, Reader in Theoretical Physics at Oxford University. For an interview with the latter discussing the key finding of the study - i.e., that  life's evolution is all about arrival of the frequent, rather than survival of the fittest - click here.

 

 

We'll Never Have Paris: une critique pour le 14 julliet

Repeater Books, 2019

 

 

I don't want to quibble over a back cover blurb designed to big-up the seventy-nine authors contained in the five-hundred and eighty-three pages of this book, edited by Andrew Gallix, but if they all deserve to be named among the 'most talented and adventurous writers' in the English-speaking word today then je suis l'oncle d'un singe. 

 

However, once you remove from the menu of this moveable feast some of the more bland offerings and half-baked items, then you're left with many things to savour [1] and it's unfortunate that what could have been an excellent slim little book has become (in places) bloated and boring. 

 

The minimalist maxim, less is more, should always determine a project of this kind and every editor should keep a working model of a guillotine on their desk, because, to paraphrase Robespierre, editing is nothing but a form of prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue. 

I suppose, like General de Gaulle in his helicopter, one of the things I was looking for was a greater level of cohesion. There were too many times when reading this book that I felt like saying: Gallix, remettez-moi un peu d'ordre dans ce bordel! [2] The idea that a chaos of writers and ideas will automatically result in a work of great beauty (or even great interest) is, sadly, mistaken.   

I also couldn't help feeling that Lee Rourke reveals something crucial with the title of his piece. For this book is ultimately a jigsaw picture of a Paris already imagined, rather than an exciting new vision [3]. 

 

Thus it is, that all the usual suspects - as well as all the usual street names, monuments and myths - appear in this book over and over again, until even the most ardent francophile begins to roll their eyes and look for a way to exit the twentieth century, so that they might concern themselves only with those moments when life shatters the glaciation of literary nostalgia and allows us to enter a Paris to come ... [4] 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] For the record, the pieces I admired most in We'll Never Have Paris are: 

 

Paris at 24 Frames a Second, by Richard Kovitch, pp. 182-190.

The Past is a Foreign City, by David Collard, pp. 191-196. 

Waiting for Godard, by Jeremy Allen, pp. 197-203.

City Not Paris, by Anna Aslanyan, pp. 276-282.

Manna in Mid-Wilderness, by Natalie Ferris, pp. 283-288.

Waiting for Nothing to Happen, by Andrew Gallix, pp. 294-299.

Donut, by Will Ashon, 300-302.

The Arraignment of Paris, by Stuart Walton, 332-336.

Paris Perdu, by Tom McCarthy, pp. 342-344.

Ten Fragments of an Idea of Paris Already Imagined by You, by Lee Rourke, pp. 350-356.

Terminus Nord, by Adam Roberts, pp. 367-377.

Poisson Soluble, by Lauren Elkin, pp. 378-387.

Paris, Isidore Isou, and Me, by Andrew Hussey, pp. 448- 454.  

Anchovies - Brian Dillon, pp. 538-543.

I suppose I should also mention Flogging a Dead Clothes Horse, by Thom Cuell, pp. 255-263, which discusses the influence of Paris on Malcolm McLaren's political and artistic imagination, though, again, it simply rehearsed a lot of the same old ideas.

 

[2] I'm grateful to Richard Kovitch who writes of de Gaulle's lament whilst flying high above Paris; see Paris at 24 Frames a Second, We'll Never Have Paris, p. 184.  

[3] Lee Rourke, Ten Fragments of an Idea of Paris Already Imagined by You, We'll Never Have Paris, pp. 350-356. 

[4] I'm paraphrasing from Leaving the 20th Century, (Free Fall Publications, 1974), a collection of Situationist writings ed. and translated by Chris Gray.