What’s Wrong with American Literature?

Four Fears of Literary Critics

WHAT’S WRONG WITH AMERICAN LITERATURE PART IV

FIRST FEAR: MIDDLEBROW

Many years ago, ridiculously-overrated English novelist Virginia Woolf wrote a defensive letter over a criticism of her work on a radio show(!) in which she scorned her critics as “middlebrow.” Her husband had her letter published in a collection of her writings after her death. Since then, established literary critics on both sides of the Atlantic have lived in fear of being thought of, or thought to be encouraging, or in any way associated with, “the middlebrow.” An excuse, really, for disconnecting themselves from the general public in order to remain in an artistic bubble.

In practice this has meant not aiming for the center, for a wide audience– and that writers like Ernest Hemingway who attained a wide audience despite their literary skill and intelligence have been downgraded as a result. The outcome for literature as an art form has been disastrous.

The fear is most pronounced among those critics who come from conformist middle-class backgrounds. Which means: all of them.

SECOND FEAR: SENTIMENT

To avoid sentiment and melodrama, authors have eliminated strong passion and emotion from their works. Subtle effects only. In practice: works which are restricted. Constipated. To instead be operatic in scope, expression, and theme? Nope. Can’t have it.

BUT the novels of Charles Dickens thrive on sentiment. Or what does one do with “the best worst movie ever,” 1967’s Valley of the Dolls? The flick has a bad screenplay, bad writing, bad direction, bad acting– its fans know this yet compulsively view it again and again. Why? Because of its over-the-top emotion, which strikes deep chords, despite all else, in we human beings.

No: Avoid sentiment. Play it safe. The result: More disaster.

THIRD FEAR: POP

Pop elements are also forbidden. Any of them. Anything too colorful, dramatic, or entertaining is not wanted. The approved literary reader is not supposed to be entertained. Speed and excitement? No. Action? NOT! “Lit-ya-chur” is serious business, made for committed slogs through densely written tomes while wearing determined frowns.

FOURTH FEAR: POLITICS

Finally, there’s the biggest fear: politics. Unless the politics is strictly in-line with an approved narrative issued by proper mandarins from on high. In practice this has meant an avoidance of ideas. No thrilling verbal exchanges expressing intellectual conflict. “One can’t use characters as mouthpieces for ideas,” I was told more than once by prominent literary personages. Uh, why not? “Fiction must never be polemical” founding Paris Review Editor George Plimpton himself told me in person more than twenty years ago, when we sat at a table at CBGB’s after a literary debate, drinking beer. (Which, brahmin New Englander that he was, he pronounced “be-ah.”) Did ol’ George have an agenda? Perhaps.

The extreme example of polemics and politics in fiction are the novels of Ayn Rand– anything can be pushed too far. But you know what? It worked. Readers for decades have thrilled to her one-sided diatribes and over-the-top plots. Their mistake wasn’t in enjoying the books, but in believing too-well what the characters said.

My own thinking: when you inject ideas, present more than one viewpoint.

As I do in a re-released 2012 ebook novel I’m currently hawking called The Tower. Available here.

(I need more clueless bad reviews of it. Or a few objective ones. Only 99 cents on Kindle. Weigh in!)

XXX

WHY is any of this important? It matters because the fundamental purpose of the New Pop Lit project is to provide a better “UX,” as techies say. A more exciting User Xperience. Literature that’s reader-centric. The only way forward. We’ll examine this further, at this site and elsewhere. Much more to come– in ideas, imagination, and ART.

-K. Wenclas

What’s Wrong with American Literature Part III

WHAT HAPPENED?

(Those who most need to read this, won’t.)

LITERARY INTELLECTUALS became too caught up in their own intellects. They lost sight of what matters most: That authentic art is of, by, and for the people. IS a part of a society’s every day life. HAS meaning within that context.

The same phenomenon stagnated classical music. It became burdened by the art’s own intellectuals: music critics and academic pontificators who added to the form a heavy legacy of profound and-or pretentious thought, when all that mattered was the emotional connection between music and listener. Those notes or chords, or voices– those moments which went deep into a person’s soul and were beyond thought.

New fiction in this culture today especially should be playing chords deep within us, not merely impressing us with some Gaddis Foster-Wallace Knausgaard exhibition of disconnected intelligence.

Dickens and Dumas in the 19th century were wildly popular for reasons. Jack London’s tales have been translated into every language in every culture on the planet and loved by readers for over 100 years for reasons. Literature as an art form needs to get back to those reasons if it expects to be central to this society’s culture once again.

-KW

The Importance of Charisma

PART II OF “WHAT’S WRONG WITH AMERICAN LITERATURE?”

Where are the stars? Where are compelling personalities who can draw the public back to what was once and should be again the culture’s central art form?

Where are they?

Where’s the charisma in today’s writers? It’s to be found neither in person nor on the page.

Do we find it in Jon Fosse, recent Nobel Prize winner, or in his work? In Margaret Atwood? Joyce Carol Oates? Jonathan Franzen?! Mary Gaitskill? George Saunders? Colson Whitehead? Paul Murray? Marilynne Robinson? Junot Diaz? Jeffrey Eugenides?

What about popular authors? Stephen King, you say. Uh, not really. George RR Martin– not! The biggest-selling novelist in America currently is Colleen Hoover. Is there a city or town in America where she would be recognized– by anyone?

Maybe we should consult our society’s esteemed literary critics, the acknowledged experts. They’ll tell us.

Or will they? They’ve spent the last couple decades touting recluses like Don Delillo, Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Pynchon. Front men for a cultural band on its way to oblivion.

HOW TO GROW A CULTURAL PHENOMENON

History tells us you need a few larger-than-life personalities to do so. Popular music had Elvis, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, and so many others (while “serious” music has all but vanished).

What’s the most prominent cultural force in the U.S. at the moment? Judging by interest, I’d say NFL football. Sixty-five years ago, the NFL ranked far behind Major League Baseball for sports fans. Three things turned this around. 1.) A more exciting product, geared toward the society’s faster-paced lifestyle. This included giving the position of quarterback a more prominent role in the game. More passing improved the aesthetics. 2.) A yearly Big Game which became the focus of the entire nation: The Superbowl. 3.) New stars. One of the most important of them was quarterback Joe Namath aka Broadway Joe, who played in the media capital of the globe and carried around with him bold talk and a truckload of swagger and charisma. His leading the New York Jets to a win in Superbowl III put himself– and the National Football League– on the map. Afterward there was no looking back.

WHAT ABOUT LITERATURE?

What’s the template for renewed importance? Among our literary intelligentsia, there isn’t any. They’re like slow-thinking clerks in a Charles Dickens novel– like the proceedings of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce: allowing the wheels of the activity to turn slowly, while they go through the motions of preserving remnants of the once-exciting and entertaining literary art.

The blueprint to follow as alternative is clear. Faster-paced, better-designed, more thrilling novels, stories, and poems, with better aesthetics. The merely competent, the simply adequate, isn’t good enough. We also need a few writers with energy, smarts, and swagger willing to take the cultural stage instead of hiding in cabins in woods or in dusty academic monasteries– writers willing to engage this mad tumultuous world, in their persons and in their art.

Let’s hope they’re coming.

-KW