Interestingly, number 15 is not a writer at all but New York Times Literary critic Michiko Kukatani, who recently gave Johnathan Franzen's new book a rave review, prompted The Atlantic to publish this article, claiming, in so many words, that the NYT neglects female authors and privileges the white, upper-class male writer who lives in Brooklyn (and yes, he is sad).
(The Awl also weighs in, chronicling the response of a few female writers to promote female fiction).
I've taken a particular interest in this latest onslaught of debates on how who is speaking determines who we(the public) are reading because I've also spent the last few days working my way through Ania Loomba's Colonialism/Postcolonialism, and that will get anyone thinking about the politics and power underlying the literary industry in contemporary circles.
On the one hand, certainly not all 15 of the "overrated" authors are white males. Yet this seems to place the "non-white males" on the list in a double bind: they are dismissed both by the NYT and by those who seek to shatter the hold that the NYT and those like them have over what we deem masterpieces of contemporary fiction.
As a sad young literary woman myself, I must confess that I too feel the privileging of the sad young literary men, and not just those who are our contemporaries. This is why Mary Gaitskill is called a "shock" writer and Philip Roth or Charles Bukowski are not, for example.
If language speaks us, then limiting our literary output will have an impact on our worldview, and the cycle which privileges certain subjects and perspectives as more "literary" than others will continue. This seems analogous to colonized subjects inability to locate a language or mode of expression in which to speak.
What does everyone else think about this?
I think a big part of the debate going on here is the passing back and forth of sour grapes. This is particularly true, I think, of Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult, who seem to think that being able to put together a gripping story that sells well should get you considered for the Pulitzer. They're arguing from the wrong position, because, as I see it, the divide between them and the NYT darlings is not one of gender, but of talent. Chuck Palahniuk doesn't show up there, either, and he's about on the same level as Picoult and Weiner.
ReplyDeleteAmerican world-class female writers may get less notice in America; in fact, I'm almost sure that they do, as I had to seek out Lorrie Moore, Carole Maso, and Elizabeth Strout on my own, while their contemporaries among the white male set are much easier to find in a graduate classroom or being passed around among the group. I think this is most apparent in looking at the novel, which has always carried that stench of the middle class male struggling for an identity.
Perhaps what's really needed here is a little activism on the part of the colonizer (me, the white dude who is sad) for the colonized (a world-class female writer) in this dichotomy. Here it is, then: Carole Maso is just as important as David Foster Wallace. She is doing things in her work that are far beyond what most writers are capable of. The Art Lover or Ava should be read by anyone with half a brain and the tiniest interest in the literary representation of the postmodern experience.
(Also I cleaned up your links for you, kid).
For me the more important question is why all the nationalist anxiety about the American literary identity? I can understand why nobody wants the novel to go away, and also why the sad white man perhaps should not be the novel's savior, but what I don't understand is what exactly everyone thinks is at stake here. If we were actually concerned about whether the gatekeepers of quality are doing a good job or not, then I think the debate would take on a much different rhetorical tone. As it is, the debate is ambiguous, unfocused, and panicky, and nobody is quite able to articulate why they are so terribly unhappy with contemporary literature. To me, this is a red flag of anxiety over something that we can't exactly pinpoint.
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of different ways to approach this anxiety. But no matter how you look at it, it will be impossible to come up with an answer as to what is causing the anxiety. One of its major symptoms, though, is without a doubt extreme nostalgia. Whether we want to admit it or not, all of us (the presses, critics, writers themselves, etc.) wish we could be sitting in a 1930s Parisian loft taking advice from Ezra Pound on how to simultaneously get rich and change the world with our words. Because that's what those writers were doing, right? Or is this nostalgia just another Baudrillardian longing for a past Real that never actually existed? It's probably both. Which is why there is no solution. At least not one that Huff, Awl, or even the unforgivably pale males at NYT will be able to come up with. There's a paradox somewhere here... It's almost as if our generation has inherited an anxiety of influence that somehow got merged with a strange, exaggerated hunger for influence. We can't turn back but we can't go on. We are equally afraid of polar opposites: people like Jonathan Safran Foer terrify us just as much as people like Tucker Max. Maybe (and this is just an offhand observation) one of the reasons this old debate is getting so heated has something to do with Updike's death. Which was two years ago I think? For almost half a century, the guy was more or less the unspoken Socrates or Oracle at Delphi for American literature. By that I just mean he was the figurehead, the Queen, or whatever, the symbolic national border guard between what American literature has to offer the world and what the world doesn't need to offer us because we already have it.
ReplyDeleteSo now American literature is in a precarious situation, no doubt about that. In the meantime, we've also been rocked by theory (DFW, Dellilo, Pynchon, etc.). For a while it was safe for America to bend over and endure intellectual suppositories full of ideas which were bigger than the ones our country's anus can usually digest. We just smiled and didn't pay attention to what we were being given, as long as it satisfied the intellectual elites, whoever they are, something to point at and call it complex and innovative. We could do this because we had the "real" American literature to fall back on (like, anybody can have big words and confusing ideas, but only America can write about America). It's like Barthes' idea of inoculation: give your culture a flu shot to keep it from getting the flu. 5 Roths for every 1 Wallace, 5 Lahiris for every 1 Maso. That sort of thing. And I think it's a little more complicated than just ordinary resistance to change. I think, in a way, it's more like a resistance to invasion. I agree with Hillary: "If language speaks us, then limiting our literary output will have an impact on our worldview, and the cycle which privileges certain subjects and perspectives as more "literary" than others will continue. This seems analogous to colonized subjects inability to locate a language or mode of expression in which to speak." And right now I think the colonizers (ie all the NY types who matter) are searching for their own language, for the "American" language, and they are feeling pretty anxious about not being able to find it. They need a product and they need to market it. But how does America market something to itself, especially after theory has made us so painfully self-conscious about narrative trafficking? America, I think, is too big and too complex and too self-aware to continue trademarking an American Literature. And yet, what other option do we have? Franzen is pretty convenient...as are the ridiculous comparisons I've heard critics make between him and Tolstoy...can't get much whiter and sadder than that.
ReplyDeleteWe don't want to be duped by intellectual Frauds and Wallace impersonators; nor do we want to give Pulitzers to Palahniuk and Picoult. This is America! We've got to come up with some Great Compromise, right? So we reincarnate Tolstoy! What better way is there to save the American novel? Franzen, as far as I can tell, is the literary market's equivalent to political fear-mongering: the textbook cure for a national identity crisis is no holds barred patriotism. That's a metaphor; I'm not actually referring to Jonathan Franzen as an example of no holds barred patriotism.I don't think activism is the answer, especially not on behalf of the other, because that sort of thing is impossible, as Stringer mentions. I think readers, writers, and critics need to step up to the plate and actually try to articulate some of their fears rather than writing countless asinine lists and driveling on about the "American voice" or the American whatever. As readers we should make the taste- and trend-setters do their jobs rather than continuing to 1. act as marketers first, demand-generating shock peddlers second, and genuine advocated of literature a distant third; 2. feel like they can get away with slinging haphazard accusations like "overrated" and justify them with equally haphazard explanations like "the ideas were too confusing," which, though not a direct quote from anyone, is pretty much the gist of about 50% of responses to Foer- or Wallace-esque risk-takers; 3. write about writing with about as much seriousness as tabloid journalists write about how Lindsay Lohan supports her addictions by managing a coca farm on Mars with the help of exploited Martian laborers.
ReplyDeleteOk this is getting way too long (and off-topic a bit?).
Basically I think we should let go of the idea of the great American novel. It's been a self-parodying insider's joke for a while, but it's not funny anymore and it's keeping us too distracted by the specter of its possibility. I want books to stop being marketed as "American" or a "return" to something pure. And I don't want to hear anything else about the novel dying. We're talking about blank ink and processed trees, not Terry Schiavo.
ReplyDeleteLet's call this entire contemporary debate what it really is: marketing. It has little to do with literature, although yes it will greatly affect what literature is available. But at the end of the day, it directly concerns nothing but marketing (both as debate about marketing strategy and as a marketing strategy in itself), which in turn stems (partially or mostly) from the theory-induced national identity crisis. This is the only way to safeguard quality. Unless what we really want is to safeguard "American Literature." Which we might...but I hope not. America is what it is. We don't need marketers to tell us that.
Boom I win.
wish you could edit your comments. for typos and stuff.
ReplyDeleteHubbs, if I didn't have so much Loomba to read, I'd jump in much more heavily, but I'll say that you're essentially right: criticism was once viewed as one of the most important acts of the humanist, and now it's turned largely into the frippery of ranking everything so that you spark a debate that gets the most comments that in turn furthers your own career and the careers of those people you deem fit. The kinds of articles that are finding traction online are the ones that say the least the loudest. I was talking to Jessica about this tonight at dinner, and she said something along the lines of it being pretty cool that an article about literature can generate 1500 comments compared to tech or pop culture articles that top out at a couple hundred, and yeah, it is cool, but at some point we need to start wondering if lit-crit-cum-Gawker is really such a good idea. Of course, all this is shot through with my own nostalgia.
ReplyDeleteI also really dig your Updike theory, and I think you should do something with it. I also think the question of the American novel will continue to haunt us, but I don't think that's all bad, as long as we're willing to embrace the hybridity of the sub- and superstructures of "Americanness" in a global context when we talk about it critically. I self-identify as an American; my construction and my experience function largely within those bounds. I only know how to write as an American. I don't think having "write an American novel" as my goal is a particular hindrance any more than Chinua Achebe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, et al are hindered by thier own national identities. It's when we talk about "the great American novel" as something set apart or special that we are failing ourselves and thinking people in general.
I also think the casting about for an American identity has a lot to do with the death of David Foster Wallace, who was often spoken of as the future of American literature. You could probably throw Vonnegut and Salinger into the mix, too, if you wanted to.
ReplyDeleteI am also starting to like this little recent authors' deaths theory...
ReplyDeleteAnd the American identity thing... I know you know what I'm saying and I know I know what you're saying, but since it's so damn fun to say it I think I'll keep going...
I do think it's important for a writer to have a sense of his own identity, because if that doesn't inform his writing in a big way then I don't know what does. But I think the process of defining such an identity runs the risk of being wholly artificial if not achieved as a bottom up effect rather than the reverse. In other words, if a writer is going to define himself then he should first take stock of the elements of his style and content to which the naming of his identity will adhere. The opposite and artificial order would be if he started with the naming and worked backwards to accumulate characteristics that he will probably also have to artificially tweak in order to fit whatever market demand he's looking to satisfy. Which is basically the genre-fication of national identity.
Also, I think defining or analyzing one's self or one's work according to national qualities (which today are more varied, heterogeneous, and difficult to symbolically melt into the ol' pot) isn't a very useful or practical method of analysis for an individual in the increasingly globalized world. But that's another post or something.
And really all I needed to say was I hate marketing.