Kosinski, Casablanca, and The Market

As suspected, I had some of the details of the Jerzy Kosinski Steps hoax wrong. The real story is far, far more interesting than my garbled version. More astonishingly, the same thing was done with Casablanca's script.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/the_steps_experiment
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/casablanca_rejected/

No Cliff's Notes version is needed here, as the articles linked are rather short, but I do have some comments, to give a counterpoint to the criticisms presented:

While I can understand why Steps might not have been universally accepted by the publishers, M.A.Orthofer is waaaay off base in his characterization. Steps is utterly unique and very uncomfortable to read, but it's also rather obviously brilliant. To say it "made no impression" is either irrelevant to the question at hand if he refers to its cultural/societal impression, or plainly insane if he refers to personal impression. If reading Steps doesn't affect you on some level, then you've probably seen one too many snuff films (too many being one). I can see some publishers rejecting it, particularly publishers less concerned with pure literary merit, but all of them, including the original publisher? Unacceptable.

Really, the implications are fascinating for any conception of art. To the modernist/post-modernist/not-traditionalist: So, what exactly are the standards, anyway? "Eye of the beholder" is at least a functionally coherent provisional answer, but the beholder would appear to be awfully unconcerned with the art itself in its judgement of art these days, wouldn't you say? One might call it erroneous to mix art and economics, but the latter can be understood on a more general, pertinent level as well; what is the market but one more indicator of human preference, and thus human nature?

To the traditionalist: Is this symptomatic of a fallen, egotistical society, or is human nature merely a poor channel for "divine influences" regardless? What of these gatekeepers you would have regulate the standards for art? Has human nature itself really changed so much, or is it that, apart from the existence of the metaphysical truths art strives towards, those truths are functionally elusive, even inaccessible? Perhaps the publishers were correct, human nature overcame society's collective delusion, and it is the work of Kosinski and Hollywood which are decadent. (If not, then perhaps the metaphysical truths of Steps owe more to the Hellish than the Divine. Seriously though, read that book. It'll take a few hours tops.)

Lotta content here, and answers have scarcely yet been ventured, let alone explored. Have at it.