Fortune Cookie Manifestos

The Reading Experience's Dan Green highlighted the following from a Sven Birkerts-penned review the other day:

Every so often, who knows why, a new literary aesthetic announces itself - an approach, a tonality, a way of setting up scenes and characters that clearly has to do with how the authors, and those readers who embrace them, experience reality. If there is not progress in the arts, there is certainly change.

I first caught wind of what seemed to be a distinct - and unsettling - new literary take on things reading Donald Antrim's short novel, "Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World," and then I noted it soon after in work by writers like Ben Marcus, George Saunders, and Colson Whitehead. I'm sure they're not the only ones.

What struck me in all cases was the writers' way of staging reality. To begin with, they all deployed a style of affectlessness, even in presentation of moments when affect is ostensibly being expressed. This by itself dates back at least to Hemingway. What was different here was what felt like a carefully gauged disconnect between an action or event and emotion. I had an ongoing sense that something was "off," but a sense, too, that only a disappointingly dull reader would be looking for the old kinds of resonances. I would liken it to the black humor of decades past, except that it has a different edge; this tone seems occasioned not by the prospect of the Bomb so much as of a world permanently cut off from verities. Post-post-modern.

Dan continues by comparing it with the opening graf of a review from Michael Dirda:

Paul Theroux is something of a throwback. In an era when so many novelists jump up and down with tricks, verbal antics, shock and razzle-dazzle, all the while shouting -- like Baby Roo -- "Look at me, look at me," Theroux just gets on with telling a compelling story, with the smoothness of a confident professional. The Elephanta Suite is his 27th work of fiction. The man knows his business.

Now, everyone out there might be sick to death of this topic, but it fascinates me.  I see this mentality reflected all the time in literary criticism, and it never fails to baffle.  Hence, another post, this time in hopes of attaching a snappy name to the incidents of shallow engagement practiced by Mr. Birkerts and Mr. Dirda and their ilk.

For the nonce, I'll call these miscues Fortune Cookie Manifestos, considering they possess the textual and cognitive depth of the former while attempting to embody the grandeur and power of the latter.  (The ne plus ultra of the FCM style is found almost everywhere in Dale Peck and Brian Reynolds Myers; e.g., Peck's 102-word dismissal of non-realist literature from Faulkner to DeLillo:

"All I'm suggesting is that these writers (and their editors) see themselves as the heirs to a bankrupt tradition. A tradition that began with the diarrheic flow of words that is Ulysses; continued on through the incomprehensible ramblings of late Faulkner and the sterile inventions of Nabokov; and then burst into full, foul life in the ridiculous dithering of Barth and Hawkes and Gaddis, and the reductive cardboard constructions of Barthelme, and the word-by-word wasting of a talent as formidable as Pynchon's; and finally broke apart like a cracked sidewalk beneath the weight of the stupid — just plain stupid — tomes of DeLillo.")

Mr. Dirda is especially amusing here because he's selling Theroux's novel in the same way that local "Continuous Light Rock" stations sell their wares; that is, by promising you absolutely nothing challenging, shocking, complex, or, yes, novel.

I don't happen to agree with having my music sanitized, but I can see the utility of a station appropriate to play at work or that keeps one from having to explain to the ten-year-old in the backseat what a "Tip Drill" is.  But we're talking about a novel for private, adult consumption here.  Do we need Mr. Dirda to keep us safe from novels that might assault us with tricks, verbal antics, shock and razzle-dazzle?

What Mr. Birkerts and Mr. Dirda have in common in these passages is a need to take a shot across the bow of those authors who dare to stretch the bounds of, as Dirda has it, compelling story [and] the smoothness of a confident professional.

Now, again, I don't have anything against compelling story, smoothness, or confident professionalism--whatever that might look like a novelist.  (I do like it in a dentist, honestly).  And I'd just as soon leave critics such as Birkerts and Dirda alone as fisk them, except for the fact that they take cheap shots en route to making their overarching points, wallowing in antagonism and false dichotomy when it is not at all necessary.

So: story: good.  Cheap antagonism: bad.

Still with me?  Good. 

It's easy to see what Mr. Birkerts is trying to do, and, honestly, in the abstract it's the mark of finer critics--and would be here, too, if his assertions weren't so muddled and lazy.

He is reviewing An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England and is attempting to place it within the context of Literature at Large, specifically within a subset of works that to him represent a distinct - and unsettling - new literary take on things (courtesy Antrim, Marcus, Saunders, Whitehead, and perhaps some others; he's not sure).

This new literary take, as far as I can tell, is characterized by affectless characters deployed by an author who uses a carefully gauged disconnect between an action or event and emotion, presumably to keep dull readers away from seeking emotional resonances.

But let's cut the bullshit: Mr. Birkerts is not getting his warm fuzzy from the way Donald Antrim, Ben Marcus, George Saunders, Colson Whitehead, and, now, Brock Clarke, are staging reality.

Which is fine; he doesn't have to like them.

However, he's sneakily torpedoing the Young Turks with perjorative language while refusing to accept the subjectivity of his own preferences (see phrases such as: "I first caught wind of what seemed to be") and characterizing a whole strain of literature as inferior and actively insulting to the reader.

Here's how:

Every so often, who knows why, a new literary aesthetic announces itself - an approach, a tonality, a way of setting up scenes and characters that clearly has to do with how the authors, and those readers who embrace them, experience reality.

I think this is his sneaky, clause-heavy way of saying that not-realism is a construct of willful authors and inferior to realism.

Why?  Because all literary aesthetics/approaches have to do with how the authors, and those readers who embrace them, experience reality.  This is not worth saying unless one is pointedly setting up a hierarchy, assigning a qualitative measure to how novelists experience and express reality.

As for a rebuttal, I quote Donald Barthelme for the 10,001st time: "You exist for me in my perception of you (and, in some rough, Raggedy Andy way, for yourself, of course). That's what's curious when people say, of writers, this one's a realist, this one's a surrealist, this one's a super-realist, and so forth. In fact, everyone's a realist offering true accounts of the activity of the mind. There are only realists."

If there is not progress in the arts, there is certainly change.

A subtle opening for his criticism of the unsettling new literary take he's caught wind of. 

These newfangled novelists sure are different, with their danged disregard for old resonances.  But it sure ain't a better world for it, Hoss.  It sure ain't.

I first caught wind of what seemed to be a distinct - and unsettling - new literary take on things reading Donald Antrim's short novel, "Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World," and then I noted it soon after in work by writers like Ben Marcus, George Saunders, and Colson Whitehead. I'm sure they're not the only ones.

These authors are hardly fungible, I think.  Saunders, even if you accept that he plays with affectlessness, is often nakedly emotional and in fact is borderline sentimental at times.  Whitehead less so, although it seems obvious that when he presents an affect-challenged character it's for good reason and not to cheat the reader out of verities or the finer emotions.

What struck me in all cases was the writers' way of staging reality. To begin with, they all deployed a style of affectlessness, even in presentation of moments when affect is ostensibly being expressed.

Uh huh, so they're using irony.

This by itself dates back at least to Hemingway. What was different here was what felt like a carefully gauged disconnect between an action or event and emotion.

See, the first thing that I do when presented with a fuzzy argument is to call up counterexamples.  Here, it just so happens that I first thought of Nabokov's Despair, which features a rather affectless character named Hermann.  Who is so disconnected that he claims to be able to separate from his body during lovemaking and observe the action from across the room.  Who is so disconnected that he chooses as his "double" a man who looks comically unlike him.

In other words, you and I can sit around and come up with hundreds of literary examples that scuttle Mr. Birkerts' assertion of a new literary take.  Hemingway, say. 

But, see, this is different, says Birkerts, because the Young Turks are carefully gauging the disconnect.

No, sir, I don't see.   Whereas "Hills Like White Elephants" explored the disconnect between action and emotion willy-nilly?

Again, I think he's not observing so much as leveling an accusation at Clarke, et al.  These enemies of the old resonances are being calculating when they write, intending to stage reality in an unsettling way so as to ridicule and alienate the reader.

I had an ongoing sense that something was "off," but a sense, too, that only a disappointingly dull reader would be looking for the old kinds of resonances. I would liken it to the black humor of decades past, except that it has a different edge; this tone seems occasioned not by the prospect of the Bomb so much as of a world permanently cut off from verities. Post-post-modern.

See?

Again, as presented by Mr. Birkerts, this new scourge is without precedent, and not, as one might assume, akin to the irony or black humor of yesteryear.  There's a different edge here, a post-post-modern stance that accepts and asserts that there is No Truth, No God, No Santa Claus, and There Are Monsters Underneath Your Bed.

And, apparently, this all started upon publication of Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, in 1993.  Or at least when Mr. Birkerts got around to reading it.

Eventually Mr. Birkerts does get around to reviewing An Arsonist's Guide, which means that the real gem of FCMism is found at the end of the review:

"An Arsonist's Guide" concludes with various confessions and revelations, and narrative threads are tied up, but somehow this doesn't seem to be the point. Rather, the plot finally seems to be a vehicle, a construction on which Clarke can hang his disquieting prose. That prose communicates a feeling of such anomie that I had to wonder how literature will survive its gifted servants. But I did also find myself humming Peggy Lee's old standard "Is That All There Is?" Seeing her house burn to the ground, Lee asks: "Is that all there is to a fire?" To which she responds, shifting from speech to song: "If that's all there is, my friends, / Then let's keep dancing / Let's break out the booze."

[My italics]

I confess that this paragraph has stretched my patience to the breaking point, and that I have torn off the Caps Lock key and put it in the possession of a trusted friend.

Let's assume Antrim, et al. represent an entirely new paradigm in fiction, and not simply a slightly different aesthetic/approach that uses and rearranges the hoariest tools in fiction in a novel and (some might say) pleasing manner.

Are we expected to believe that literature itself is imperiled by a movement comprised of four or five authors (and maybe a couple others)?  Is even Ben Marcus that diabolical?

Also, are we to believe, as the final sentence would suggest, that these unsettling, affect-hating, verity-poor authors are the literary equivalent of Footloose's Reverend Shaw Moore, actively against the desire of the reader who just wants to break out the booze and keep dancing?

A world in which these things are true is a grim world, indeed.

I am happy not to live in it.

Comments

[jmscher]

I’m normally a fan of Birkerts’s stuff but think you are a right in your criticism here that his is a poorly argued piece. Largely, because my guess is that Birkerts probably liked Clarke's book.

He does a much better job IMHO in this Believer piece on Gary Lutz which I was immediately reminded of when i read the first part of his review. He even comes pretty close to explicitly agreeing with the spirit of your Barthleme quote “there are only realists” Here’s the link:

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200305/?read=article_birkerts

[Rake]

I've nothing much against SB, really. He was extremely laudatory of Infinite Jest, for example, even though IJ's opening section (Year of Glad) is a tour de force of the very thing approach he finds unsettling here.

Very odd.

[R Ellis]

Birkerts is a master at saying a whole lot of nothing while propping up his unexamined assumptions and prejudices. And, imho, he hides his lack of smarts and deep insecurities behind a gigantic bearhugging embrace of what he perceives, at any given moment, to be the True Literary Tradition. This "Tradition" is under constant threat by young ignorants with their blogs and their wacky tastes. It pisses me off, actually, because he reveals a boundless lack of respect for literature, which is a powerful human drive and ain't going away. Not even when we're all just a bunch of brains floating in jars.

[jrlennon]

There seems to be a movement afoot among popular literary intellectuals (Birkerts, Peck, Woody the Woodsman, etc.) to corral writers who annoy them, the easier to lead them down the chute where the steel bolt awaits. Do we really need to taxonomize writers? Is it so hard to shut out the world and observe the novelist as though she were an autonomous human being, rather than a member of some roving band of literary infidels? Nabaokov, Barthleme, and DeLillo are not remotely similar, except in the fact of their departures from representational reality. It's like purging your fridge of all the foods that begin with the letter "B." There's just no point.

[Tadd]

Reminds me quite a bit of that BBoW article from not so long ago--seems like we're back to the same realism/formalism debate from the 60s, or the 50s, or, I don't know, the 1700s. Though it's peculiar that oftentimes the best of the writers pigeonholed into these camps--Carver and Barthelme, say--loved each other's work.