Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock
Thursday 9 June 2004. A terrific quote I’ve recently found and logged in my Commonplace Book (filed on the home and work computers) is: “Art is not art if only 14 people know about it,” said by Joni Mitchell, quoted by Jacquelyn Mitchard. (Mitchard is a former syndicated, family style, feature newspaper columnist, a fact no longer noted on the popular novelist’s dust jackets. (I’d gladly read her, or listen to one of her recorded books, if she ‘fessed up.))
That perhaps defines a goal of Brick, which otherwise serves as an outlet: 15 hits. Fifteen readers a day or a month, I don’t care. But 15 is sufficient for the energy expended. Though it’s obvious Joni was pulling a number from her imagination. Why not “22”? “42”? A minyan of 10?
Fifteen, it is. -30-
One reply on “14 people”
14 plus 1?
David Weinberger, another advocate of new-media journalism, has summarized the situation with a witty play on Andy Warhols maxim:
— Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker, Aug. 7, 2006