In his article Dana Gioia states clearly about unpopularity of business as a topic for reflecting it in the modern literature. As he continues in his article the difference between literary world or the appreciators of art and the business world is clear and generally can not be demolished.
To support his arguments Gioia uses a lot of example from real life, showing that writers consider businessman to be very material, practical minded people, who live in the world of realism with no place for esthetical high feelings or emotions.
This position is well understood. Gioia worked in the business field for nearly 20 years and his words written in the article, are the evidence that was observed and lately analyzed not by one year. These two types of people way of thinking and reasoning differs greatly. Most of art and literature related professionals live with a help of emotions, feeling play the main role in their way of reality cognition. While those whose work is more related to material objects as money, industry, economics in general find the only way of reality cognition through reason mostly. We can not definitely say that first type of people belongs somehow to sensualists and the second type of people belongs to rationalist, because both of them show different types of reality cognition in different situations. But it basically makes them so different from one another.

There is a very good explanation to this phenomenon. People who some how are related to natural sciences or math have a very different inner world from those who belongs to humanities. The difference in rhythm of life and daily issues makes such difference even more clear. Business men food for reading is primary different kinds of reports, market and stocks summaries, documentation, manuals, etc. These are simple statements of facts, senseless and dry. This kind of work change people, make them firmer to different emotional stresses, makes them think only about objects that have some kind of material value.
All these – not familiar to humanitarians. Their inner world is full of emotions and feelings. Every event in their life causes a tide of emotional waves and expressions. In this case they are more anxious about surrounding and notice those daily routine details that are invisible for the representatives of other occupations. Humanitarians are more interested in the inner world of a person, in his relations with his surrounding, than in his business activity. There has been now fiction that had a deal about economical issues, because it’s strange and non-familiar to literature. Even those literary works that had a deal with business issues still had an emotional life of the main character in the center of the plot. Because of no interest to economics most of the works that refer to economics and business life of the main heroes, as well as heroes who are mostly businessman or financists are described very subjectively and works in general are very dull and uninteresting to the reader.
The majority of modern writers have an opinion that material culture and money that are the main subject of materialism change the personality, make it more senseless, anxious only his own prosperity, profit and indifferent to others. They look and reflect money relations in their works as the reason of misunderstanding and separation of people, something that make people influence and manage others, something that dehumanizes a person, makes him a slave of his financial ambitions.
To my point of view a very critical look on business through the eyes of literature is often pointless. It’s looks absurd to underestimate the role of business and money relations in our life. To refer to these things as to something that is senseless and unemotional would be considered as nonsense.
Material and emotional life of a person are two mainly contrary different concepts that live in one’s mind and complete one another. So business is just one of the aspects of our many-sided life, which gives us sources to survive and make our living primary, things without which emotional life would never exist. It’s hard to imagine how a person can think about something spiritual and of high esthetic value, when he is hungry and doesn’t know what he would eat later. Business and economics are those aspects of modern society’s life that move the whole world, make to develop, change and improve. Economical relations in majority determine the social weather in the global world, and if so then they play one of the first roles in forming of one’s emotion world and direct the development of culture in this or that way.
The misunderstanding of the role of business in an individual’s life, subjective attitude to this problem which often is groundless can look as misunderstanding of reality as well, some kind of attempt to escape to the emotional world of illusion. It’s a well-known fact that people employed in business sphere also feel, suffer and have a rich inner world like the majority of others. Those people form the bigger part of modern busy population of the planet. So economical relations that somehow refer and influence the life of an individual make a great impact on his inner world, changing his system of values, etc. The changes can be of a different kind, not just the turning of a person into the slave of his business or “worshiping money”.
A part of the successful businessman spends a lot of money on charities, donations, art and social life. A good example is Carnegie.
Even though that a role of business is often underestimated in literature and modern art it and money still dominate over the minds of people. Despite the many fail attempts to draw the truthful image of the positive businessman, classics as Draiser, Dickens and others presented unforgettable masterpieces of literature depicting complicated personal relations caused by different sorts of financial dependence of the heroes from one another. There are lots examples in modern popular art as well. Most of contemporary works look on this problem from just one side and are not able to show the full character with all his inner world, but modern cinema had some of successful works.
Movies as Other People money and Wall Street are a good example of critics and irony on the occupation of a stock broker. The meaning of the profession of a stock broker is considered to be not really decent. As the movie makers show them, these people only order with the created property, but do not create anything and are indifferent to anything but the bare numbers and prices. The only thing that worries them is money. Denny DeVito’s hero in the movie “Other people money” doesn’t care to close a small company in New England that produced cables and wires, only because it was more profitable. He didn’t care about the destinies of people who were employed by the company and about their families, because these concepts about common human values contradicted his principles and were out of the borders of his imaginary world. But the movie shows that the character of DeVito, one who is energetic, flexible and sly, always gets dry from the water and somehow escapes the anger and revenge of people he made harm to. This comedy and drama movie made in the traditions of Hollywood happy-ends shows that Lawrence “Larry the Liquidator” Garfield does everything to maker everyone’s life better and richer. His manipulations with closings and openings of the companies still save the working places and nearly none is fired out of his job. Everyone benefits. It’s a bitter irony on the realities of the stock market world and it’s representatives – stock brokers. Wall Street plot is more clear and more realistic, like real life. If Garfield in “Other peoples money” just breaks the moral principles in order to achieve his ambitious and satisfy his greed, than the hero of Michael Douglas in “Wall Street” also violates the inner laws of the business, never worrying about his partners and close people. As a result the hero of Charlie Sheen, who became the victim of his manipulations and who was employed by him, starts a war against him on the wall street, trying to ruin his wealth and power. Even though that both movies depict personalities that are ruled by mercantile principles in different ways: one as an ironical comedy and another as drama, they still have the same meaning. Greed and money spoil the mind of any kind and good-natured person, and will turn him in to a selfish and indifferent person, if gives a freedom to his materialistic desires. The image of stock broke is the mostly criticized one in modern popular art, as of a person for whom only money have a real value, not love or other virtue feelings.
The image of stock broker and the image of selfish businessman was early touched by T. Dreiser in his works “Stoic”, “Titan”, “Finansist”. Where the character of a millionaire, broker and businessman was represented by Frank Couperwood, who had much in common with the characters of DeVito and Douglas. Dreiser’s another novel “American tragedy” shows that the pursuit of success, acknowledgement and prosperity is often resulted by simple illusion of happiness and respect that is given by money and their power, stating that real personal immortal values of friendship, love and respect are of the higher value than anything else.
It’s also worth to take temperate soap operas as Dynasty or Santa Barbara.
These movies show the realities of life of the upper class representatives, those who can be definitely called “American dream”. Successful and respectful, the heroes in majority are not so happy because of their position in the society. The financial situation that differs them from the rest of the society doesn’t give enough opportunities to live a normal life, but often restricts the heroes in the freedom of choices because of their social rank, making more and more soil for emotional problems and unsatisfaction from life. Even widely criticized by literary authorities and criticized through the works, the image of businessman and “American dream” in general is considered to be of a wide social approval, still money remain to be the measure by which one judges the another.
Gioia, a businessman himself, also touches in his literature the problems of a businessman, looking on the problem as he expressed: “as a spy in the office”. He feels a great sympathy to him, admiration of his hard-working traits and simply enjoys the dynamics of modern life, the changes that follow so quickly in everyday life. He is confident that the busy life rhythm is the guarantee of social prosperity or stableness. Understanding the realities, dreams and feelings of a working businessman, and his life he doesn’t give an essential role to business, showing that still business is important, the person life and family should come first proving it by the words from the poem “In Cheever Country”: “to go home now-to drinks, to love, to supper, to the modest places which contain our lives”. He as no one else, can understand the world of busy, working people, rush hors, office work. But still he doesn’t say that “Business” should be on the first place in somebody’s life, it’s just a work, a way to earn living, to survive, and his words from a poem ”In Cheever Country” “to go home now-to drinks, to love, to supper, to the modest places which contain our lives” proves that family plays an essential role.
As the time changes so the culture changes, too. New age brought new concepts of cultural values, making the culture more universal and widely understood, changing some of the national particularities. The same way the conception of happiness and success has changed. It’s widely accepted to be a well-to-do person but who also has a rich inner world, an individual with good personal character traits.
Despite the concept that Modern art uses to describe the relations of people, showing that money and daily working life lead to lack of attention to people, lack of care and lack of time, it still accepts that all that is the reflection of pragmatic realities of modern time.
In this case modern popular art should show and prove through it’s influence on the minds of people, that even in modern pragmatic and materialistic world, and crazy rhythm of life there is a lot of space in the soul of every person for spiritual values, mainly love, friendship and family, and that no other values would be ever able to substitute them.

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