AN ANALYSIS

ONE THING I’VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD

is why some writers praise difficult writing. “Let’s get inaccessible!”

What’s the rationale? The reason– if there is a reason? The logic? “Well, team, we have these much-lauded many-layered canonical books by our favorite snobby novelists, they’re very difficult— a slog really, like swimming through mud– but that’s the point! No one can get through them. Only us! Which makes us special. A breed apart. Class distinctions and all that.”

The literary mandarins congratulate themselves in an upper room of the moldy, falling apart literary tower. A high-up, far removed room which is actually a closet. A well-furnished closet, mind you, with imported French wine with subtle bouquets, delicate-tasting English pastries, and crackers with brie. Anything an out-of-touch snob set could need. No windows in the room– it’s airless and stuffy– but they don’t want windows anyway. No windows! They don’t care to know what’s happening . . . out there.

Mad leaders open-air prisons wars mobs refugee removals ruthless tech moguls pushing insane AI gadgets as populations potential audiences become angrily detached and illiterate. Increasing levels of gloom. Stray assassinations and nascent revolutions. Not their concern!

As long as the pastries arrive on time and they’re able to take a few sips of overpriced wine while they cling to the overlong overwrought volumes of overdone writing constructed via endless sentences and paragraphs so that no one other than they, them— the last literary aristocrats, cultural dinosaurs– can appreciate them.

–Karl Wenclas