Chapters 1-15: http://bit.ly/bP2JR8
The night air of Malibu Canyon rushed through the vents and into Matt and Mariko’s faces they zoomed down the winding road. They only saw a couple of dozen cars coming toward them in the opposite direction. Each one shut its high beams on approach. No one was behind them.
Instead of heading down Sunset to PCH, Mariko had driven over the freeways to Malibu so she could try to see if anyone was following them before they hit the canyon road. Now it seemed they were in the clear. The walls of the canyon, with fossils from pre-historic times embedded into the layers of dirt that formed them, rose steeply on their right. A ravine plummeted down to a creek on their left. A coyote darted across the winding road ahead of them, visible for only a moment in their headlights before disappearing into the brush.
Matt was going to ask why she was taking the long way. But he knew, so there was no point. He'd hoped that spending time alone with Mariko would clear his head so he could figure out how to deal with Ashton. But since those hopes were now gone, he thought he'd strike up some idle conversation.
"So," he asked Mariko as she leaned slightly while steering around a curve. "How's class going?" They sometimes talked about her French lit courses.
"Fine," she said.
"What are you on?"
"The Quarrel Between the Ancients and the Moderns," she told him. "Ever read about that?"
"No," he said. "When was it?"
"Late 17th to early 18th. You'd like it. It started with a speech Charles Perrault gave at the Académie Française in 1686. He said the Académie should stop emphasizing Classicism and start accepting progress."
"Hmm," Matt said. "I'm not sure whose side I'm on."
"Wait 'til you hear the whole thing before you choose sides," she told him. "Anyway, the Ancients _ the Classicists _ were against modernization because they believed the world of the antiquity was better than the one they lived in. Their theory was that man doesn't change, only the world does.
"But the Moderns said they were better off than the Ancient Greeks because they had inherited the traditions of the Classics, and could develop their own as well."
"Sounds reasonable."
"The Ancients _ Racine, La Bruyère and Boileau _ stood by their theory about the Classics being better. But the Moderns _ Perrault, Fontanelle and Bayle _ developed a theory that science and technology could change the nature of man, the world, and art and culture, too. They believed that artists' tools _ new oils for painting, new musical instruments, different styles of opera _ were changing culture. And so they were changing man's soul."
"So who won?" Matt asked.
"Nobody won right away," Mariko said. "It went on for 40 years. Then it became a war."
"You're kidding," Matt said. "A real war?"
"No, the Poetry War. It was actually called The Poetry War. Over a translation of Homer. The Ancients liked Homer just the way he was. But the Moderns wanted to do an update of the Illiad and the Odyssey. So they rewrote it, but in their version the Gods didn’t intervene. And the heroes acted more reasonably, less emotionally. Overall, they took out the metaphysical tone, turning the text into a kind of everyday living sort of thing."
"Dumbing down," Matt said.
"Yeah, maybe that's a fair equivalent," Mariko said. "But the Ancients didn't defend their position very well and the new translation was published."
"And that was that?" Matt asked.
"Almost. The end came with an essay written in 1718 by the Abbé du Bos. It was called "Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting."
"Whose side was he on?"
"His own, really," Mariko said. "He was an individualist."
"So what did he say?"
"Believe it or not, his theory was: There's no accounting for taste."
"Is that where they get that saying?"
"I don't know, maybe. That's probably not exactly what he said. His theory was that determining the value of an artist's work could only be done by looking at it and deciding if you liked it."
"So that was it?"
"Yeah, that was the last word, really. So what do you think?"
"About what?" Matt asked.
"Well, does man change when the world changes? Is the Chumash Indian who rode his horse across the chaparral here 200 years ago the same as the guy who can fly the space shuttle into orbit? Or do these two guys have different kinds of souls?"
"That's a good question," Matt said.
The BMW pulled into a driveway and started climbing a winding road passed a sign that said Ozowatech. Mariko turned to Matt.
"Yeah," she said. "It IS a good question."
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