Re: Art is when someone says 'Now' -- or is it?

Jim:
<<
Novelists, for instance, occasionally do second editions of their
novels (James Branch Cabell, J.R.R. Tolkien); but I've never heard of
one saying something equivalent to this, like "I may keep making
slight additions to the worldbuilding detail until I die, but the plot
and characters aren't going to change".  That doesn't mean that
conlanging is a better or worse kind of artform than literature (let's
not open that can of worms again) but it may tell us something about
how they differ.
 >>

The notion of something being "finished" is defined by the
audience and the method of publication.  If you branch out
into the world of television or serial novels, "finished" is roughly
equivalent to the notion of "canon".

So, for example, one doesn't have to go very far to find an
unfinished book: Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman.  The
book is "finished", in the ultimate sense, because Walt Whitman
is dead, but he published it several times throughout his life--
not because he said at what point, "Yes!  This is finished!",
and then later decided, "Oh, wait, I need to change it..."  No,
his idea was that Leaves of Grass was *his* book.  As he
produced new poetry, he'd add it to Leaves of Grass, and
when there was enough new material, he'd add it to the
new additions.  The idea is that this was his forum.  He
even removed or changed the order of poems from time
to time.  Kind of similar to another Walt--Disney, this time--
and his idea (never really realized) for Fantasia: That it
would be put out every few years with new pieces, together
with some old ones, but that people would go out to the
movie theater for the Fantasia experience.

Most of these projects never live up to the artist's ideal
(like the Who's Lifehouse) precisely because of the confines
of publication and audience.  Publishers publish finished
works, because they've not known any other way to do
it.  Even with series, it's a series of *finished* works.  The
costs of producing the equivalent of Leaves of Grass with
a series of novels would be astronomical--and off-putting
to the consumer, who wouldn't want to repurchase a novel
they already read with twenty or so pages of new material--
and possibly twenty fewer pages than was in their original
edition.

With the web, a project like this might be possible, since
publication is a free.  I always thought it would be ballsy
of one of these marketeer fantasy writers to write a live
novel.  Consumers don't pay for a finished novel: They
pay a *subscription*, not unlike many online video games
nowadays, to literally *watch* the author as s/he types.
This will include the creation of new material as well as
editing and revising.  The project can end when a normal
novel would end, or it need not: the author could just
keep on writing, since an endpoint isn't needed for the
audience to enjoy the work.  I imagine the technology
would be extraordinary for this (the author's computer
would have to be linked to a live server and updated
by the second), but given how rabid genre fiction fans
are, I bet it'd be profitable, if the right person did it.

So, these projects have existed in the past.  Most of them,
though, are bound by constraints that conlangers don't
have.  Take television, for instance.  In a television series
like The Simpsons, *everything* that happens in the show
goes into a book they call the show's bible.  This contains
every fact about every character, every reference, everything
they've ever done, etc., so that when writers create new
episodes, they can make sure they don't do anything
redundant, or contradict anything that happened in an
earlier episode.  In a sense, then, a show is bound by its
history if it hopes to retain its fan base (or unless it specifically
forgets its history, as a show like Aqua Teen Hunger
Force).  Fans gets upset if writers don't remember
what happened in some episode back in the first season,
and will often point it out.

With conlangs, publishing is, essentially, the web.  And
since few if any will notice that the definition for a given
word changed, we can keep tinkering forever without
constraints.  If grammars and dictionaries for conlangs
became marketable entities, they would become canon.
It's much harder to change a definition if it's been published
in a print volume owned by thousands of people than
if the dictionary exists only on your computer and/or
website.  If such a thing did happen, conlangs would
suddenly feel like bounded projects--if anything, similar
to a card game or fiction series.  In the game Magic,
they produce series of cards, each of which have specific
effects.  They're essentially bounded by the rules the
cards from the very first edition play by.  They can add
rules, and make the early cards not as exciting since
they're effect is dwarfed by new cards, etc., but they
must still function.  Think of Klingon.  Okrand could
publish a new dictionary with new words, but do you
really think he could change a significant part of the
grammar, or maybe suggest that new word for "language"
be tlhIS, not Hol?  How would all the Trek fans worldwide
react?  I honestly think his change would have no
effect--they'd stick with what was already established.
In a sense, the language's history has more power at
this point than its creator.

To sum up: I don't think what we've stumbled on here
is an inherent difference between artforms by any means.
Rather, it's a byproduct of the artform's status in the world,
and could easily change if its status in the world changed.

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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