The illusion of television

In the novel Television, after the bit about the protagonist's enjoyment of swimming comes a great write-up about the 'spectacle' of television and its illusion of reality ..

Television offers the spectacle not of reality, although it has all the appearances of reality (on a smaller scale, I would say -- I don't know if you've ever watched television), but rather of its representation. It is true that television's apparently neutral representation of reality, in color and in two dimensions, seems at first glance more trustworthy, authentic, and credible than the more refined and much more indirect sort of representation painters use to create an image of reality in their works; but when artists represent reality, they do so in order to take in the outside world and grasp its essence, while television, if it represents reality, does so in and of itself, unintentionally you might say, through sheer technical determinism, or incontinence. But the fact that television offers a familiar and immediately recognizable image of reality does not mean that its images and reality can be considered equivalent. Unless you believe that reality has to resemble its representation in order to be real, there's no reason to see a Renaissance master's portrait of a young man as any less faithful a vision of reality than the apparently incontestable video image of an anchorman, world-famous in his own country, reading the news on a TV screen.

A Renaissance painting's illusion of reality, rooted in colors and pigments, in oils and brushstrokes, in delicate retouches with the brush or even the finger, or a simple smearing of the slightly damp linseed oil paste with the side of the thumb, the illusion that you have before you something living, flesh or hair, fabric or drapery, that you stand before a complex, human person, with his flaws and weaknesses, someone with a history, with his own nobility, his sensitivity, his gaze -- just how many square millimeters of paint does it take to create the force of that gaze, looking down through the centuries? -- (which) by its nature is fundamentally different from the illusion offered by television when it represents reality, the purely mechanical result of an uninhabited technology.

Ok..that's all I have read so far and I am sure there are more gems in the book but realize that over the last three posts, I have transcribed a large percentage of the first few pages of this novel and so need to stop here. Go read the book if it leaves you desiring more. :)

Suffice it is to say that I have enjoyed the little that I have read of Touissaint - though I should say I enjoyed Making Love (no..not the physical act but the novel though I am yet to meet a person who would admit to not enjoying the act in itself) more than reading Television but both novels and the author's writing style are surely delectable and interesting.

Previous excerpts from the book: 1, 2.