Conflicting Directional Arrows for Lethem's Woketariat

 In my previous post -- Jonathan Lethem, "Narrowing Valley" -- I discussed Lethem's view that he could not write the expected conclusion to his New Yorker short story because to do so, he would have to misappropriate the culture of an Indian, or Native American, and, well, as a member of the woketariat (those for whom prevailing political correctness comes first and foremost), that was impossible.

The story is all about a coming showdown between a white family about to take possession of a patch of desert purchased sight unseen from an anonymous "Realtor" and the Indian who presumably actually owns if -- if "owns" is the right word for Native American land.

So, Lethem simply bailed out as the confrontation neared, leaving his readers rather distinctly short changed, but New Yorker editors, presumably also anxious to be politically correct, apparently impressed and, who knows? even relieved.

No Indian appeared in his story so he could avoid getting into trouble for daring to write about a person with a cultural background other than his own.

Now let's look back a couple of years to a post I wrote in June 2020 on a New York Times article on the work of Wallace Stegner.  It was the first in a Times series on American writers "who show us who we are." Stegner, by the way, was once known as "the Dean of Western Writers."

In the course of discussing Stegner's work, A.O. Scott, the author of the Times article, noted that Stegner's work had been criticized by, among other, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a writer and member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, because Stegner failed to significantly address the indigenous peoples of the region or a variety of non-white immigrant groups.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. 

Perhaps Mr. Lethem, who talked in his New Yorker author interview about making political correctness conundrums "teachable moments" at Pomona College where he is a professor of Creative Writing, could horse that one over. Maybe he could even put it up for a vote and let us know what the students decided.

Johathan Lethem, "Narrowing Valley" and the Woketariat

 At the bottom of the preceding post -- Marisa Silver's "Tiny, Meaningless Things ... " --  I talk about a relatively new class of society: the woketariat. In a nutshell, these are people for whom political correctness trumps other values.

Johathan Lethem, the author of the Oct. 24, 2022 (electronic edition) New Yorker short story "Narrowing Valley" is a professor of creative writing at Pomona College, an award-winning writer and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellowship.  He's also arguably a member of the wokerati, or the woketariat.

"Narrowing Valley" is a story about an earlier story and it's laced with cultural references, presumably giving it a writerly quality. A potentially dramatic denoument is in the offing, but the tale never gets there. It just ends.  

Therein lies what Lethem suggests may be the real tale: the state of prevailing political correctness and what he clearly feels is his obligaton to toe the line.

The problem is this: the presumably dramatic denouement would involve an Indian, or Native American, man as a key protagonist  -- and for a white male to create such a character would, in Lethem's world, constitute cultural misappropriation.

Just imagine the flap that could ensue,and the possible adverse consequences for Lethem himself, given that cancel cuturse has far less to do with culture than it has to do sociopolitical power and who gets to hold desireable jobs.

In the usual New Yorker author interview, Lethem says he's enmeshed in conversations with students and colleagues on a daily basis as to what is permissible in the current environment. "This story's hesitation, precisely at the limit of a willinness to invent a Native character to advance its cause, is informed by it," he said, adding: "I don't mean that as a defense, but I hope it might be a useful description."

Elsewhere in the intereview, Lethem says: "The tone I struck here -- that of nervous guilty riffing in the treacherous realm of 'appropriation' -- may seem almost to beg a reader's own anxieties into play. Or a readers's condemnation. That risk is one of the subjects of the story, really."

Nominally, this is a tale about a whilte family about to attempt to occupy some desert land purchased from a "Realtor"  sight unseen. But the land has a history and apparently wasn't the "Realtor's" to sell. Rather, it is Native American land and so the story is "headed into crsis" because the white family in question, traveling west in a Winabago, must meet an Indian.

Sounds like an interesting exchange of views, or more likely a clash of some sort, is in the offing, but, alas, no. Lethem simply can't bring himself to "appropriate" the Native American protagonist. So the story ends abruptly (as many New yorker short stories seem to), in a casino -- on Indian land, of course. Ironic -- get it?

Good thing Alfred Uhry was't Lethem or we wouldn't have "Driving Miss Daisy." Altenarively, good thing DuBose Hewward or Ira Gershshwin wasn't Lethem or we wouldn't have "Porgy and Bess." And so forth and so on..

Within "Narrowing Valley," Lethem refers to a white make writer as "another exemplar of the Exhausted Normative."  In other worlds, "please take me out into a pasture and shoot me. Liberate that Pomona creating writing post and award it to someone far more worthy." Hmmm. would the new occupant be able to write a story involving a white male, or does cultural misappropriation go only in one direction?

I will have more to say on wokerati-type issues in due course.

 

More on the Tension Between Art and Political Correctness

The New York Times rehashed the career of American painter Andrew Wyeth on Feb. 3, 2022, using the transfer of a couple of small islands off the coast of Maine from Wyeth family foundations to Colby College as an excuse. 

 One paragraph in particular jumped out at me.

 "In a 2017 assessment of his paintings of Black people in the Brandywine Valley, the art historian Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw questioned the power imbalance in his representation of race, and also pointed out that in a handful of paintings he had darkened the skin tone of his white model, Helga Testorf, a Chadds Ford neighbor who posed for him in secret for more than a decade." 

 “His nude images of black women embody the power imbalance that characterized interracial interactions in the Brandywine Valley throughout the 20th century,” Shaw wrote in 2017, arguing that the “subordinate positions (of his models) as poor, black and working class enabled the artist to exert a great deal of control over how he imaged them on paper or canvas.” 

 To Ms. Shaw, the New York Times said, the visual representation of race in Wyeth’s work raised the question of how much leeway white artists should have in depicting subjects of another race. Is all fair in the name of art?

 The "power imbalance," and just what leeway artists (presumably not just those who are white) should have in depicting subjects of another race? What's at issue here is political correctness and cultural misappropriation. Sound familiar? 

 One wonders, should we go back through the history of Western art, identifying all the painting where an artist had some sort of "power imbalance" over a subject and/or where he or she depicted someone of a different race or culture and burn them? Or should we continue to evaluate them first and foremost on aesthetic considerations? We are, after all, talking about art.

 To be fair to Ms Shaw, the Times reported that in 2017 "she took pains to note that her work wasn’t intended to injure Wyeth’s reputation, but rather to layer it. "I love Wyeth,' she said. 'I think we can find artists to be complicated and frustrating and disappointing in some ways and still love the work.'" 

 Well, maybe Wyeth also wasn't trying to injure the Blacks depicted in his paintings, just lawyer them.

 I'll leave it up to readers to decide, but these are important issues in the current "cancel culture" mood of certain U.S. sociopolitical actors.

"Mockingbird" Fails the Political Correctness Test in Mukilteo

 In late December 2021, "To Kill a Mockingbird" won a New York Times contest for the best work of fiction published over the past 125 years. About a month later, a school board in Mukilteo, Washington voted to remove it from the required reading list for ninth graders,

Mukilteo, for those unfamiliar with it, is a coastal town north of Seattle next door to Everett, Washington, the site of one of Boeing's largest aircraft assembly plants, 

Removing a book from a required reading list is not the same as banning it since individual teachers can still assign it, but it is nonetheless an interesting development and, appropriately, the Mukilteo decision has been widely reported.

According to a report by the Everett HeraldNet, a local news outlet, the book was dropped for several reasons including that it "celebrates white saviorhood," is guilty of "marginalizing characters of color" and it uses "the n-word almost 50 times." 

This is a HUGE topic for anyone interested in fiction and and/or interested in whether, in the current, fraught sociopolitical climate, writers have to exercise self-censorship to avoid getting "cancelled" by the thought police. So what follows is, even more than usual, is meant to be provocative as opposed to dispositive.

First, of course, one has to ask why children are assigned to read works of fiction in school. Is this to familiarize themselves with writing as an art form, and in the process, learn how differing writers deal with differing subject matter in the course of practicing their art?  Or is it an exercise in political correctness, which is to say school children should be assigned books deemed ideologically appropriate for young minds and therefore properly instructive in the prevailing sociopolitical context?

This is, of course, a moving target. Much Young Adult fiction is now celebrated for dealing with topics of sexual identity that would have been deemed highly inappropriate not that long ago.  One could go on and on and especially with respect to themes of violence.

But back to "Mockingbird," a book about which I have had very mixed feelings after the controversial publication of "Go Set a Watchman," essentially the first draft of "Mockingbird," a few years ago. In a nutshell, a very talented editor known as Tay Hohoff worked with Harper Lee for a couple of years, an effort that significantly recast Lee's original conception and made the book vastly more sellable. One can argue the final product was as much a work of commerce as a work of art.

"I was a first-time writer so I did as I was told," Lee said in 1015 -- in the wake of the publication of "Watchman."

Most significantly, the chief character, Atticus Finch, depicted as a bigot in "Watchman," was turned into what the Mukilteo school board viewed as a representative of objectionable "white saviorhood" in "Mockingbird." 

That's interesting on its face. Readers of "Mockingbird" surely know that Finch succeeds in saving no one. At best he is a "savior wannabe," but frankly, not even that. He just believes that in a society established under the rule of law, justice should be applied fairly and equally to everyone. But gosh, he has white skin and is a male -- apparently cis-gender as well -- and we now know that cis-gender white males are responsible for The Patriarchy, slavery, colonialism, a fundamentally racist American Constitution and a systematically racist society and so forth and so on. So out he has to go.

But wait a minute: "Mockingbird" was written about a different era when such notions were not in vogue. It's a story about how a particular family, and a particular community, reacted to a certain situation during a certain period of time. Is that so difficult to understand? Can't a high school child, with a teacher's help, evaluate it in that context? Or does this instead have to be taught as a now all-too-transparent attempt by Lee and her editor to make white America look better than it actually has been -- and to make whites feel better about themselves than they "should." 

Then there is the charge that black characters were "marginalized" and that the "n-word" was used -- at all, or too often? Well, one of the three main characters in "Mockingbird" is black his role in central as opposed to marginal. But, too be fair, he is given more to say in the current Broadway play version of the story than in the book itself, perhaps reflecting such concerns. Interestingly, the Finch family's black maid, Calpurnia, is given more to say in "Watchman" than in the edited version of Lee's story, which is to say "Mockingbird."

But Lee can fairly argue that Tom Robinson, the falsely accused black man Atticus Finch attempts to defend, and Calpurnia were accurately depicted as they would have been during the time period in question. 

As for the "n-word," one hardly knows what to make of this when, walking down a crowded street in New York city, just ahead of a group of black males, one hears the taboo "n-word" in just about every sentence.

A Charming Little Tale On The Role of Language by Rushdie

The Nov. 23, 2020 issue of The New Yorker features a charming little tale by Salman Rushdie on the the role of language, and the importance of freedom of expression, in a functioning democracy. It's charming in that "language" (not any particular one) is depicted as a person of the female gender and like an actual person, can suffer certain indignities.

"She fears she may be decaying. It’s even possible—though it’s hard for her to admit this, even to herself—that she may die.

"Nobody’s listening."

"Nobody cares."

Nominally, the main character in "The Old Man in the Piazza" is an elderly individual who is first an observer of an era of strict Political Correctness when no one is allowed to say anything negative about anyone or anything.

When that era ends, people argue about everything and the old man, possibly because he has presumably been around long enough to have accumulated wisdom, becomes a popular mediator, at first reluctantly, but then with a sense of enjoyment. But, alas, his popularity becomes so great that people are afraid to disagree with him -- bringing on what is arguably a new era of Political Correctness.

At this point, Lady Language has had enough and begins to scream uncontrollably although at such a pitch no one can hear her and, gathering up her skirts, she departs the position in the piazza she has occupied for eons, at one time surrounded by young men who where presumably certain poets of an earlier age consumed by the beauty of language. But they are long gone.

The result of the exit of Lady Language: "our words fail us" and no one knows what to do about anything, including the old man, who if actually wise can't impart wisdom any more.

In the usual New Yorker interview that accompanies the publication of short stories, Rushdie says he prefers an argumentative society to that in which speech is controlled. "The ability to have such disagreements is what one might call 'freedom,'" he said, noting that this applies to all societies and that no great import should be attached to the seemingly Italian setting or to references to certain topics, such as denigration of immigrants (Rushdie being one) that appears to reference the prevailing Trump era here in the U.S.

When an Artist is a Celebrity, Role Confusion Can Result

 When an artist becomes sufficiently well known, he or she acquires an additional identify: that of a celebrity and suddenly that person's persona is as important if not more important than the art.

Such appears to have happened with respect to German artist Neo Rauch, the subject of a Nov. 11, 2020 New York Times article on a topic that has gotten a lot of interest in recent years: the apparent rise of a new right wing movement in Germany.

What triggered this was an incident last spring in which a German art historian named Wolfgang Ulrich argued that Rauch was contributing to the country's right-wing drift because Rauch had made public statements criticizing political correctness. The operative word was "statements" -- as opposed to, for instance, "paintings," which is Rauch's artistic medium.

Lets think about that for a moment.  If Rauch had not become a prestigious artist thanks to the quality of his work (The New York Metropolitan Museum has given him a solo show), no one except perhaps persons in the immediate vicinity of his remarks, would have cared in the slightest what he had said. But as a celebrity, those words were another matter.

Ulrich, the art historian, seemed to realize he was walking on thin ice because, according to the NYT article, he went on to claim that Rauch's alleged right-wing sentiments were reflected in his art as well because the surrealist worlds he creates on canvas constitute refuges from "a contemporary society he hates." In other words, there is nothing obviously and explicitly right-wing within them.

In view of his contention, one wonders if Ulrich would thus conclude that every person who plays an on-line fantasy game, often taking on another identity in the process, is doing so as a means of taking similar refuge and thus has right-wing inclinations as well?  I don't think so.

Ulrich's apparent failure to be able to point to any explicitly right-wing leanings in Rauch's paintings squares with prevailing views among art critics generally. While the paintings have been interpreted as signaling a sense of alienation, they haven't been identified as pointing in any particular political direction as an alternative.

Wikipedia, for instance, quotes art historian Charlotte Mullins as saying that while the paintings suggest a narrative intent, closer scrutiny immediately presents the viewer with enigmas: "Architectural elements peter out; men in uniform from throughout history intimidate men and women from other centuries; great struggles occur but their reason is never apparent; styles change at a whim."

According to the NYT article, Rauch's work "is known internationally for paintings that blend elements of Pop Art, Surrealism and Social Realism."  They "feature dream-like groupings of figures in garish colors, assembled into horrific or comic scenes."

An example is below:

 

A couple of years ago, Rauch told a major German newspaper he objected to political correctness because it reminded him of the authoritarian regime of former Communist East Germany, where he was born. He also said everyone should be wary of the current "cancel culture" movement.

The point of all of this is: shouldn't one view the flap over Rauch's comments as more in the nature of concerns about the influences a celebrity (in our celebrity-driven culture) might have on what others think rather than anything having to do with art?

 

 

A Few More Thoughts About the Prevailing Climate for Art

In recent posts, I've been talking about the notion that at present (in the U.S. at any rate), the significance or worth of a piece of art is determined more by the racial/gender/sexual orientation of the artist than by the attributes of the object in question. Pictures, music, literature, whatever -- don't stand on their own merits when it comes to critical acclaim. It's an approach, one could argue, that stands what was once the very nature and meaning of art on its head: the art in question stood on it's own. Of course one might then be interested in who created it because more works of equal or even greater beauty could be forthcoming.

Which brings me to the Oct. 10, 2020, "Arts" section of the New York Times, the lead article of which, plus a lengthy sidebar, is all about Louise Glück, an American poet, who was just awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

How did she feel about that?

 "Completely flabbergasted that they would choose a white American lyric poet. It doesn't make sense.... I come from a country that is not thought fondly of now, and I'm white, and we've had all the prizes. So it seemed unlikely that I would ever have this particular event to deal with in my life."

Glück, who has been writing poetry for decades and has won an array of other prestigious awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, would certainly seem to be a candidate in the Nobel tradition -- except, that in her view, reflecting the tenor of the times, her race would be a more important factor than the quality of her poetry. Well, it apparently wasn't in this case, but her comments are nonetheless revealing.

The NYT identified Glück as a poet who isn't afraid to use her work to explore cruelty. And an excerpt printed in the paper from one of her poems includes the line "I ask you, how much beauty can a person bear?"

Well, it's an interesting question these days because in the age of Political Correctness, pretty much everything or everyone that isn't downright evil is "beautiful," more or less by definition. In the article, Glück said she didn't want to be like the early American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow because his poetry was too easily understood. So, who knows, perhaps that line has a double meaning.

If Glück frequents major art museums these days to see exhibitions of contemporary work, she won't be troubled by too much in the way of beauty.  That's not what it's about.

For instance, another article in the same section of the NYT, notes that a group of prominent museums recently decided to postpone a retrospective exhibition of Philip Guston's work because of the current sociopolitical climate. Guston's work contains, among other things, images of the Ku Klux Klan.

According to a joint statement by the museums, the exhibition was postponed "until a time at which we think that the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the center of Philip Guston's work can be more clearly interpreted."

In other words, art these days is primarily viewed, evaluated and judged not on the basis of aesthetic considerations, but rather as just another form of politics.

Guston, by the way is white, and the main subject of the article noted above was how a group of Black trustees of American art museums have formed an alliance aimed at bringing greater diversity to such institutions. The goal, a statement quoted by the NYT  said is "to increase inclusion of Black artists, perspectives and narratives in U.S. cultural institutions by: addressing inequalities in staffing and leadership; combating marginalized communities lack of presence in exhibitions and programming; and incorporating diversity into the institution's culture."

Well, it is hard to argue that such goals don't have merit, but at the same time, one can't help wondering what, in the current climate of who the artist is matters more than the nature of the art, whether the Guston exhibition would have gone forward on schedule if the artist were Black.

Wallace Stegner, Political Correctness and Who We Are

Here in America, we live in an age of political correctness. From time to time, it mutates, or morphs, or goes so far as to shoot itself in the foot (the election of Donald Trump, for instance), but it refuses to go away.

And as a result, "ideological pigeonholing" has, in the words of  New York Times critic A.O. Scott, "become our dominant form of cultural analysis."

This observation appeared in Scott's lengthy appreciation of Wallace Stegner, an author known primarily for his depictions of the American West, both in fiction and in other forms of writing. Scott's piece, the lead article in the June 7, 2020, NYT weekly Book Review section, was identified as the first in a series called "The Americans" -- profiles of "writers who show us who we are."

The point, an introduction to the series explained, is to restore a sense of complexity to an America that is increasingly being parsed through the medium of "the simplified, sloganized language of politics."

A certain paradox associated with Stegner  makes him worth reading at a time "when we spend so much time mapping the fault lines between privilege and resentment and fighting over who is part of the elite and who is entitled to victim status." So said Scott.

Although known during his lifetime as "the Dean of Western Writers," the author,  who died in 1993,  thought of himself as an outsider, but not in the usual sense of the region. He was an advocate of community and a critic of the rugged individualism so central to the mythical ethos of the American West and what it long appears to have stood for.

The Times said the new series will include a variety of American authors -- "some well-known, some unjustly forgotten and some perpetually misunderstood."

Stegner probably fits into the middle group -- largely forgotten.

His work "is hardly a fixture on college syllabuses or in the pages of scholarly journals," Scott said. In addition, one might add, his name is pretty much totally absent from popular cultural.

Moreover, Scott noted, "there is no Library of America collection of his writings."

In the context of political correctness, Scott noted that Stegner's work has been criticized by, among others, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a writer and member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe on the grounds that his works fail to significantly address the indigenous peoples of the region or a variety of non-white immigrant groups.

Well, Stegner's novels ("Angle of Repose" perhaps the most well known) are works of fiction, not sociological treatises. Novels certainly can be sociopolitical in nature, but they don't have to be. As Scott points out, Stegner was most concerned about marriage and, in particular, the nature of monogamous marriage. Stories generally need a setting and he chose the West.  All he needed to tell readers about the West is what was important to the lives of his particular characters.

Then again, one can argue Stegner's main concern -- monogamous marriage -- is sufficiently sociopolitical in and of itself.  Monogamy, with its "crags and chasms" is "the human undertaking around which all the others are organized," Scott said.

Perhaps Stegner's exploration of that topic, more than is depiction of the West" is his salient contribution to "who we are."

Gender: a Contemporary Curiousity

Does gender matter? 

It's not a new question, but one that came freshly to mind when I read a book review in the June 4, 2020 New York Times. The piece, by Jennifer Szalai, takes a look at a recent book entitled "Surviving Autocracy" and as I perused it, I became more interested in the manner in which the piece was written than by what Szalai had to say about the book, or by what the book apparently has to say about the all-too-familiar state of American society.

The book is written by Masha Gessen, identified as an immigrant from Russia, and a gay parent who at one point confronted a Russian regime that threatened to remove children from same-sex families.

Does Gessen have a gender?  It's hard to know. The headshot accompanying the article is androgynous -- could be either a male of a female based on appearances.  But female perhaps, based on the name "Masha" -- in Russia traditionally a nickname for a woman named Maria, which, as it turns out, was Gessen's first name at birth.

But when reading Szalai's piece, what soon begins to strike one is the absence of any gender pronouns for the author.  So as Szalai quotes from or references the author, it is never "he  said" or "she said," but only "Gessen said" or, frequently, "Gessen writes."

The effect is a little like traditional Coca-Cola advertising where the name of the drink is simply repeated endlessly. One is almost gagging on the word "Gessen" by the time the article -- a third of a page spread -- is finished.

According to Wikipedia, Gessen is "non-binary" and uses they/them pronouns. But for Szalai to reference the author in that fashion would make it sound, to most readers, as if more than one person wrote the book. I've previously read articles written along those lines and they come across as not just confusing and disconcerting, but narcissistic.  It's all about me: I'm so important I can insist the meaning of the English language be changed. Plurals can be made singular if that's what happens to suit me personally and the rest of you are just have to go along with the ensuing confusion.

But that's where we are these days and I'm sure that what I've just written is about as politically incorrect as it gets.

Which brings me back to does gender matter? In this case, I suppose the answer has to be perhaps. Would one think differently about "Surviving Autocracy" if it were written by a woman, or a man as opposed to by a non-binary when Gessen's specific gripe about Russia has much to do with personal identify?

Considering Zadie Smith and her Novel "White Teeth"

According to an article in The Guardian, Zadie Smith recently reflected on her debut novel, "White Teeth," which quickly became a best seller after it was published in 2000 and subsequently won a number of awards.

The book, she said, "had been given an easy ride by the white critics because [its characters] were mostly brown." And, of course, Smith herself is a woman of color -- the daughter of an English father and a Jamaican mother -- just like one of the lead characters in "White Teeth." And the traditionally very white male-dominated Anglo/American publishing industry was, and is, under pressure to be more inclusive.

"It had all sort of mistakes, I'm sure," Smith said, referring to the book in question.

And on another occasion, Smith said: "I have a very messy and chaotic mind."

I mention these comments because I just finished reading "White Teeth."  While this is certainly a memorable work by a writer with impressive powers of observation and an exceptional ability to write dialect, it is also a rather messy novel with room for improvement.

With respect to Smith's ability to write dialect, in my view the novel contains too much of a good thing -- far to much in some instances.  Smith's characters often talk a lot while saying very little.  That's the sort of people they are, she would undoubtedly argue, but as a reader I would tell her: "I got that message loud and clear earlier on."  I found myself flipping through pages from time to time and I'm someone who generally carefully reads prose with a pen in my hand.

As for messy, this is a book in which one reads a lot about a particular character only to have him or her then disappear, often for extended periods. The book opens with a great deal about Archie Jones, leading one to believe he is going to be one of the main characters.  As it turns out, he really isn't. Other characters, such as the wife of the controversial scientist Marcus Chalfen, seem to loom very large at one point, only to pretty much just peter out.

Topics, too, come and go without much in the way of resolution, with the exception of Smith's main topic: the lack of identity felt by immigrants, particularly those of color in a traditionally white nation, and mixed-race people who are also of color.

"But Irie (Smith's mixed-race protagonist) didn't know she was fine. There was England, a gigantic mirror, and there was Irie, without reflection.  A stranger in a stranger land."

A couple pages later:

"And underneath it all, there remained an ever-present anger and hurt, the feeling of belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere."

And this:

"But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears -- dissolution, disappearance."

Or:

"Millat (one of an immigrant family's twin sons) was neither one thing nor the other, this or that, Muslim or Christian, Englishman or Bengali; he lived for the in between, he lived up to his middle name, Zulfikar, the clashing of two swords."

And so it goes -- and in the process of all this, Smith's characters, who in some respects seem richly drawn, end up appearing to be little more than types or caricatures crafted to make a certain point. One rarely has a feeling of being inside of them, of really understanding their feelings and motivations.  Instead, one is forced to rely on what Smith's all-seeing narrator wants to tell us, sometimes to make a point and at other times for purposes that aren't all that clear.

Why be so critical when there is much to admire about Smith?

We are in a period where "the canon" -- the list of books thought to represent the best of what culture has to offer (Western culture, that is) -- is under reconsideration and Zadie Smith is a name one hears mentioned as where things should be going.  Read "White Teeth" and decide for yourself.

Trump's Tactics and The Two Narratives

The current flap over whether Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is in some way responsible for Tuesday's apparent terrorist attack that killed eight individuals in Manhattan is illustrative of two trends I have been writing about.

The most straight forward is a salient element of President Donald Trump's modus operandi and one that his supporters love: the best defense is a strong offensive.

Quote of the Day: On The Rewards of Writing

"If you’re going to write, you’re going to have to find a reason to do it that has nothing to do with money or recognition or award."

That, says poet Hala Alyan in a Literary Hub article, is because publishers mostly say "no."

I also liked the following from the same article:

"We are living in an age of borders, a moment when people will either cling to those borders or try to dismantle them. A time when language matters more than ever, when words can be used to stoke or resist fear, as people try to criminalize words like 'immigrant' and 'trans' and 'Black.' Reclaim language. Allow writing to transcend those borders."

I don't agree with President Trump on much, but I do agree that political correctness has gone too far.

Next for Fiction: Trigger Warnings and Safe Pages?

I recently read an article on Literary Hub entitled "On the Use of Sensitivity Readers in Publishing" and it got me thinking: will we soon see novels with trigger warnings appearing at certain interior points, directing readers to "safe pages" within the book, where they can rest and suck on lollipops, certain that they won't encounter any micro aggressions before cautiously proceeding.

"Identity" is where it's at these days, in politics as well as in culture, and woe be it to anyone who offends, even inadvertently, a marginalized group to which they don't belong.  What is a marginalized group?  Well, pretty much any group other than white males, it seems.

Which brings me back to sensitivity reading, which Lit Hub  to its credit admits is a somewhat problematical activity. Is political and cultural correctness compatible with free literary expression and the role it has traditionally played in intellectual life?

The Lit Hub  article gives three views on sensitivity reading: that of a writer, that of a sensitivity reader and that of a publisher. Sadly, no effort appears to have been made to determine what the reading public thinks about this.

Is that important?  I don't know, but one could argue that a failure of certain elites to pay much attention to what was happening on the ground in significant areas of the country led to the election of Donald Trump -- for better or for worse. And one thing Trump repeatedly dismissed during his campaign was political correctness.

Identity Politics Viewed As A Threat To Fiction

During the recent presidential election, America arguably shifted significantly from policy-based political affiliations to affiliations based on cultural and racial identities.

Most notably working class whites living in the so-called Rust Belt states switched in significant numbers from the Democratic candidate for president to a man running as a Republican even though he had attacked the GOP establishment as aggressively as he was attacking the Democrats.