unravelling
That avant-garde culture is the imitation of imitating—the fact itself—calls for neither approval nor disapproval.
I was nearly done knitting up a cardigan when I realized that it was entirely wrong. It did not feel right – the yarn I had chosen, though good in itself, was wrong for the fabric, even allowing for the changes wrought by washing. Usually I notice such faults before I am half a sleeve and a button band from finishing, but we cannot always notice the obvious. It lingered in my workbag for nearly a year before I gave up and started unravelling it.
A similar thing happened with something I meant to write here about Sontag’s ‘Notes on Camp’ and Clement Greenberg’s ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’; I suppose my problem was that I didn’t really have much to say on the topic, thought I spent a good deal of time gathering up sources and quotations (enough to knit up many a ravell’d sleeve). It was the question of criticism itself as a whole that drew me, I think, and the impulse to comment upon (and judge – morally and aesthetically) the (sub)cultures of another. An ingrained (though not always self-aware) dislike of hypocrisy led to much rewording and deleting and ultimately complete discarding. I suppose a few odd threads showed up elsewhere (here for instance), but for the essay at least, the material felt borrowed, so I am content (or willing to pretend to be content) not to make anything of it.