Summary

Chapter c is titled “books for people who find television too slow.” Numbers 46 and 47 consider the meaning and value of abstract expressionism in painting, the author defining it as “the manipulation of reality through its technique of spontaneous creation on the canvas” (20). He then considers the work of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, quoting an art gallery tour guide who described the artist’s greatness as “forc[ing] artists to change how they thought about painting” (20). The author comments that “this is the single most useful definition of artistic greatness [he’s] ever encountered” (20).

In 48 through 58, the text explores different ways in which the influence of the novel, and the techniques that go into creating it, have become less and less important. There are also suggestions that the same is true about facts, and that memoir and lyric essay writing are the...