Author: TC

Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize is a laudable effort to encourage politically progressive imaginative writing, and this year’s selected novel Mudbound that “tells the story of the contempt that greeted African-American veterans who returned to the Mississippi Delta after serving their country during World War II” is surely valuable and may be a great novel. Racism is as great an issue today as it was decades ago; the racist nature of the explosive growth in incarceration in the U.S. is merely one manifestation today. But is a novel set in the wake of WWII the most timely choice, and in that way the most conducive to social change? Were the other more timely submissions so very much more deficient, at all deficient, or in fact superior aesthetically, etc, to the winner? When Mudbound comes out, it might make for an interesting exercise to compare it to Homefront, Glory, and Washburn (three books of fiction of social change that I submitted as a single novel titled Homefront for the 2004 contest), and also compare it to Andre Vltchek’s novel Point of No Return (submitted for the 2006 contest) or even the forthcoming novel Master of Fine Arts (that I also submitted for the 2006 contest), and also compare it to other such submissions, if any, and you be the judge. All three of these submissions failed to survive even the first cut in the Bellwether contest. Maybe Andre’s novel and my own books are unaccomplished, written by a couple politically disengaged people with no writing experience or evident skill, heedless of the world and the people in it today; that’s one possible answer, easily looked into. The other possible answers are quite telling too.

DePauw Alumna article:

“Writers should embrace the idea that their work is political rather than running from the label,” novelist Barbara Kingsolver said. “In fact, some of the best writing is political…. Because of this climate in the U.S. that political art is taboo, the writers will tell you it’s not political. I’ve heard John Irving say he’s not a political writer. There is nothing to be worried about. It’s absolutely the domain of art.”

Also reported:

Kingsolver created and personally funds the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, the only major North American endowment or prize for the arts that specifically seeks to support a literature of social responsibility. At yesterday’s event she announced the 2006 winner, Hillary Jordan, who receives $25,000 “and a contract with Scribner publishing house for her unpublished novel, Mudbound. It tells the story of the contempt that greeted African-American veterans who returned to the Mississippi Delta after serving their country during World War II.

A worthy novel in concept, and, in all likelihood, in achievement. Yet it’s difficult not to think that — during this time of war and this time of lightning fast global connection and information, even direct access, and during this time of the ever bloody occupation of Iraq, and during this time of the increasing threats of hostility directed from the U.S. further into the Middle East and into Latin America and elsewhere — highly accomplished American novels of contemporary war will continue to be passed over in favor of, say, the next great novel of the French and Indian War, or its wake, that might garner the 2008 prize. In a time of state aggression and state terrorism and non-state terrorism; in a time of nuclear proliferation; in an increasingly perilous time of environmental catastrophes, those arrived and those impending, it’s long since time for skilled novelists, let alone politically engaged prizes, to get up to speed in these areas, not least.

Also, is a contest nearly the best way to go about facilitating the publication of politically progressive imaginative fiction? Instead of producing a single novel every two years, wouldn’t the prize money be better spent founding such a publishing house itself? Or recognizing more novels with a much smaller prize or none at all? After all, these novelists aren’t writing for the prize money, one would think. That said, one would also think that simply going with accomplished but more timely novels would help make the Bellwether Prize something more than it currently is.

Some thoughts from Stan Modjesky on antiwar novels in "Anti-War Book Collecting": 

"Curiously, little if any anti-war fiction has dealt with post-Vietnam warfare, despite the fact that U.S. citizens have been bitterly divided on the justification for the Persian Gulf wars, the war in the Falklands, the ongoing Arab-Israeli and Irish-British conflicts, to name only the most obvious examples. I cannot but wonder whether this stems from lack of artistic inspiration, or fear of reprisals."

The title of Terrence Rafferty’s article in the New York Times about Carlos Fuentes new novel The Eagles Thrown, “The Political is Ultra Personal,” might lead one to believe that the article will explain that the novel portrays the political ramifications of personal decisions and actions that lead to general illumination and pointed understanding on private and public levels both, along with their relation — overt, implicit, and enigmatic…all. Not so fast.

Would that be asking too much of a novel? Would that be too complex for the novel form to ever dare hope to handle? Would that be beyond the capacity of the authors themselves to create, let alone readers and critics to understand?

For instead the article builds to and closes on this bit of boilerplate ideology:

“Fuentes, no mean aphorist himself, wrote not long ago: ‘Politics can be dogmatic. The novel can only be enigmatic’….”

While it may be that most every novel might do well to be deeply imbued by enigma, surely most any novel can also make as deep and clear a political mark as it would like, as well. The two are not mutually exclusive, far from it. See, for example, some of the best moments in Robert Newman’s comic geopolitical novel The Fountain at the Center of the World or Andre Vltchek’s global novel Point of No Return, and so on….

This is not to say that Fuentes did not write a fine novel, or that Rafferty did not incisively review it, or even that the title of the article is inept. It is to say, again, that Fuentes’ aphorism that Rafferty agrees with is deeply flawed, in a variety of ways, as the progressive tradition of literary criticism has revealed in vital detail over the decades.

Link of the day: Graphic Witness

"a site dedicated to social commentary through graphic imagery by artists working from the turn of the 20th Century to the present, with related bibliographic and biographic data"

Interviewer: Is it true that reviewers are too cowardly to review your Iraq War novel, Homefront?

A: You mean antiwar novel? I don’t know. I guess you would have to ask them.

Interviewer: Well, what makes me ask is, see, there’s this whole war going on, people dying by the scores every day in Iraq, and U.S. soldiers dying and occupying the place, and the Air Force bombing across the land, and, well, here you’ve written this Iraq War novel Homefront and can it possibly be that no one is interested?

A: Antiwar novel. What can I say? You would have to ask reviewers. And their editors and publishers.

Interviewer: Way back on March 12, 2004, for Kirkus Reviews Tom Miller and Gregory McNamee  asked: “Where are the great Iraq war novels? It’s been a year since American tanks rolled into Baghdad, and we have yet to see the first roman a guerre.” [The Great Iraq War Novel] That was over 2 years ago, and still nothing today?

A: Seems strange doesn’t it? It’s a massive, very serious public issue, very grave, very many people involved. Hard to fathom why there is not more exploration of the war and occupation of Iraq in novels. Think of the stories the military war resisters could tell…as some are, all across the country.

Never have so many argued for so much (of what they do) to mean so little.

This is how they think, from establishment high officials to establishment flunkies, like the dominant press. They think what they do doesn’t matter in any damaging way when they simply type up what the officials have to say and leave it at that. Hey, buyer beware! (But you won’t be warned here.) Here’s Ana Marie Cox on Stephen Colbert’s satire of the administration and of the press at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner:

“Comedy can have a political point but it is not political action, and what Colbert said on the stage of the Washington Hilton — funny or not — means far less than what the ardent posters at ThankYouStephenColbert.org would like it to. While it may have shocked the President to hear someone talk so openly about his misdeeds in the setting of the correspondents dinner — joking about “the most powerful photo-ops in the world” and NSA wiretaps — I somehow doubt that Bush has never heard these criticisms before. To laud Colbert for saying them seems to me, a card-carrying lefty, to be settling.”

She hit the trifecta in a short space, wrong on three accounts. First, political comedy is political action and can directly create social, cultural, and political action all. Second, Colbert’s whole performance was mainly a criticism of the press, a far more apt target under the circumstances. Third, the idea that Cox considers herself a “lefty” is entirely laughable and predictable.

Back to the first point, the dominant members of the press love to think so very much of their work has no negative effect on anything no matter how disinformative and subservient to power it continuously is. I’m sure tobacco PR spokespeople think the same way: Just doing my job (and making my big bucks) mainstreaming killer dope, into the veins of the public. And why not? PR doesn’t kill people — words do.

A note I posted on a thread at The Valve:

It seems to me too that the NYT list exercise is in many ways absurd and seriously deficient — does that need to be pointed out? Despite some accomplished works on the list, it fails to provide even a glancing overview of the vital works of contemporary American fiction, or even much insight into what might be more truly representative of or understood as “the best” — singly, let alone, variously, defined.

Considering “the best” might not be the most fruitful way to go, but if one wants to seriously consider standards of high excellence it might not be terrible if the exercise were thoughtfully constructed. So, “the best” according to some 100+ literary figures who know one particular literary figure, or viewed much more broadly, in ways both more representative and eccentric? And “the best” culturally? intellectually? emotionally? ethically? aesthetically? (defined how?), the best in effect? or in execution? or in conception? or…?

It may be that a “best” list exercise can’t be done in a way that does justice to the value of literature. Considering which novels or short fiction may be exceptionally vital, in many ways defined, seems more fruitful and appropriate. But even then one would want much fuller contextualization of the selected works and their relation to other valuable works that don’t measure greatly or at all on any such list.

Evidently, the NYT list is the result of an exercise (by connected establishment figures) with no serious thought to design and understanding. Though there are some strong works on the list, the exercise is in many ways an embarrassment, not least given its obvious limits coupled to its grandiose claim. Should people take it seriously, it seems to me that it would be destructive to literature and culture, as it fails to highlight much of the most valuable writing, let alone the diverse “best,” and a lot of the otherwise vital and lively work being produced.

From the New York Times, a list of the “best work of American fiction from the past 25 years” and an essay “In Search of the Best” by A. O. Scott, excerpted and commented on briefly below. [The NYT list exercise is in many ways absurd and seriously deficient — does that need to be pointed out? It fails to provide even a glancing overview of the vital works of contemporary American fiction, or even much insight into what might be more truly representative of or understood as “the best” — singly, let alone, variously, defined.]

“The three novels do what we seem to want novels to do, which is to blend private destinies with public events, an exercise that the postwar proliferation of media simultaneously makes more urgent and more difficult.”

Really? Or more urgent and easier? because we don’t have to wait a generation to gather so many of the facts, and stories, from, by now, around the globe.

“A big country demands big books…. The best works of fiction, according to our tally, appear to be those that successfully assume a burden of cultural importance. They attempt not just the exploration of particular imaginary people and places, but also the illumination of epochs, communities, of the nation itself. America is not only their setting, but also their subject.”

Really? That parochial? High quality global novels like Point of No Return (by the American international journalist, Andre Vltchek) would seem to have a leg up on novels that limit themselves to a national subject, rather than, by now, a global one. Novels of the global age can be found at Mainstay Press, and elsewhere of course. Maybe a few more of those will make the next list.

Other thoughts:

Some novelists and critics have commented on the necessary internationalization of American novels for over half a century. And a decade and a half ago, Maxine Hong Kingston commented in “The Novel’s Next Step,” Critical Fictions: The Politics of Imaginative Writing (Philomena Mariani, Ed.): “I’m going to give you a head start on the book that somebody ought to be working on. The hands of the clock are minutes away from nuclear midnight. And I am slow, each book taking me longer to write… So let me set down what has to be done, and maybe hurry creation, which is about two steps ahead of destruction…. All the writer has to do is make Wittman [hero of her novel, Tripmaster Monkey] grow up, and Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield will grow up. We need a sequel to adolescence—an idea of the humane beings that we may become. And the world will have a sequel…. The dream of the great American novel is past. We need to write the Global novel…. The danger is that the Global novel has to imitate chaos: loaded guns, bombs, leaking boats, broken-down civilizations, a hole in the sky, broken English, people who refuse connections with others…. How to stretch the novel to comprehend our times—no guarantees of inherent or eventual order—without having it fall apart? How to integrate the surreal, society, our psyches?”

Further thoughts at The Future of Imaginative Writing and Political Fiction Journal.

Art Hazlewood with some thoughtful words on political art at Mark Vallen's weblog Art For A Change.

From Counterpunch

Colbert’s Moment: The Beltway Gang Didn’t Get Colbert, But Nearly Everyone Else Did

By Chris Dols

“An old friend of mine with a penchant for Marxist jargoneering takes every opportunity to remind anyone who will listen that, ‘the American ruling class is the dumbest class ever to rule.’ After speaking in front of the most representative audience of the American ruling class that he’ll ever land –the White House Press Correspondence Dinner –Stephen Colbert proved it. Colbert impaled them and they were dumb enough to claim, as Noam Scheiber of the New Republic did “that he just wasn’t very entertaining.” Of course, comments like this just vindicate Colbert….”

 

One problem here is that if you are being “impaled” of course you are not going to find it “entertaining.” That’s not being “dumb.” Wouldn’t it be more “dumb” to find entertaining one’s being impaled? The lack of favorable appreciation is more likely a sign of having a different set of values. These folks value the status quo. After all, it works for them, to a considerable extent.

Of course Dols is correct in pointing out that Colbert accurately criticized the dominant media and government, among which we may safely assume that many are deeply indoctrinated into the values of power, but this of course doesn’t mean they can’t recognize when they are being criticized or even condemned. It doesn’t mean they don’t “get” the send-up. It means they disagree with it, not because they don’t understand it, but because they are, for whatever reason, dehumanized to its value. And if they were somehow humanized to its scathing accuracy in the moment, or could even admit the value of a little of it, then the last thing one would expect them to do is laugh. They got the send-up all right. Understood it just fine, thank you. It’s just nothing they care to hear. As they made perfectly clear.

There is no such thing as America, of course, despite what they try to teach you in school, church, media family, etc.… Never was, never has been, never will be.  

Columbus, when he sailed the seas and arrived on an island off the coast of Turtle Island (what is called North/South/Central America), and when Columbus chopped off the hands of the Arawaks, he did not think he had arrived in America. (He thought he was in India of course, but even if he had realized he had met with uncharted land, he would not have thought of the big mud bank as the corrupted form of some Italian explorer's name.) Too bad the big mud bank was not named after Amerigo's last name, Vespucci. It would be easier to give it up that way. Who, after all, wants to be known as a Vespuccian? Here, poochie, poochie. Meanwhile, America, sort of has a lyrical beautiful ring to it. America! America! God shed his grace on thee! Hold it! God? His? Thee? What century are we living in here? The sixth? There is no such thing as God, people. There is no Lord, No Allah, Ho Yahweh, No This, That, or The Other. As far as anyone knows. Sorry. Would be lying not to say so….

Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."  

There is no such thing as Canada or Mexico, either, of course, etc…. "Nation" states are basically formed by a bunch of rich men who get together and say this is how we can make a buck. The people are pushed around, and so we try to resist as best we can. It's very Un-American indeed.

Orhan Pamuk in Freedom to Write comments:

  "…didn't I often and angrily fantasize about raising these subjects in my novels, just because they happened to be forbidden [by the state]? As I thought all this through, I was at once ashamed of my silence, and reconfirmed in my belief that freedom of expression has its roots in pride, and is, in essence, an expression of human dignity." 

The sense of shame among novelists and publishers in the U.S. should be far greater and deeper than this because even though here there is little or no state censorship, there is still no flood of novels about many of the great crises of our day. In some cases scarcely even a trickle, or less.

AN EXCERPT FROM A FEW NOTES ON THE LITERARY ESTABLISHMENT AND "THE URGENT CONJUNCTION OF ART AND POLITICS":

As political consciousness and knowledge grow more prevalent in the broad culture, leading literary stars lag behind, as does much of the literary establishment (as journalist and filmmaker John Pilger has noted in a series of articles). Less than a month after the September 11, 2001 attacks against U.S. financial, military and governing centers, the often-perceptive, leading literary critic James Wood declared absurdly, “Who would dare to be knowledgeable [in a novel] about politics and society now?” Meanwhile the brilliant writer, highly successful novelist Jonathan Franzen stands by his notion that there is “something wrong with the whole model of the novel of social engagement,” and also directly in the face of marvellous and compelling evidence to the contrary, The New Republic’s scholarly art critic Jed Perl writes that works of art are all but inevitably weakened by much political emphasis—an idea that would come as a shock (or a joke) to many great artists of the past and present.

In “Resistance,” the article where Perl makes this central point, his major assertions are often so ambiguous or unsubstantiated (and inaccurate), that it hardly seems worth refuting what is scarcely there, but examining a few of the more lockstep reactionary statements can show in more detail some of the dominant debilitating views on art and politics held by much of the literary establishment. Perl claims, “the trouble with political art remains pretty much constant…for an artist's effort to speak to a wide audience on a specific topic all too often compromises art's essential discourse, which is a formal discourse, a discourse with its own freestanding meanings and values”—as if only “political” art (and not, say, “psychological” art) attempts “to speak to a wide audience on a specific topic.” Then there must be no great novels on adultery or on first love or on a particular virtue or vice. There goes Anna Karenina, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice. There goes every great anti-war novel ever written. And there goes Antigone, Lysistrata, The Inferno, Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, Hard Times, The Awakening, Native Son, Invisible Man, and every great novel with a purpose, every great problem novel, utopian novel, dystopian novel, in fact most every great social and political novel ever written, along with many great “psychological” novels as well.

“In spite of the crudeness of most political art—” Perl continues heedlessly—as if "political" art, whatever he means by it, can be any more crude than the largely apolitical or politically retrograde art that is endlessly spewed from out of TV, Hollywood, and across the airwaves—so heedlessly that one wonders if as Perl writes he is simultaneously chanting “I must not (appear to) be political, I must not (appear to) be political…” In full he asserts: “In spite of the crudeness of most political art—“ [for some great political art, see here] “and of most of the debates about it” [for over a century of evidence to the contrary, that is of thoughtful, far from “crude,” discussions on political art, see here and here] “—there are very deep feelings involved. Even the cheap-shots and prepackaged effects and self-righteousness poses reflect a very old and honorable debate about the relationship about art and life," Perl would have us know, with a marvel of condescension.

AN EXCERPT FROM PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL FICTION: 

At Mainstay Press, we publish works of progressive political fiction that are invigorating, urgent, and vital – politically, aesthetically, and otherwise.

Frank Norris, The Responsibilities of the Novelist (1903): 
[The novel] may be a great force…fearlessly proving that power is abused, that the strong grind the faces of the weak…..

Upton Sinclair, Mammonart (1924):
…mankind is today under the spell of utterly false conceptions of what art is and should be; of utterly vicious and perverted standards of beauty and dignity. We list six great art lies now prevailing in the world, which this book will discuss…
 

Morris Edmund Speare, The Political Novel: Its Development in England and in America (1924): The political novel…is the most embracing in its material of all other novel types…[and] must be dominated, more often than not, by ideas rather than by emotions…
 

W.E.B. Du Bois, “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926): 
…all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. 

V. F. Calverton, The Liberation of American Literature (1932): 
Most of the literature of the world has been propagandistic in one way or another…. In a word, the revolutionary critic does not believe that we can have art without craftsmanship; what he does believe is that, granted the craftsmanship, our aim should be to make art serve man as a thing of action and not man serve art as a thing of escape. 

John Dewey, Art as Experience (1934):  
A particular work of art may have a definite effect upon a particular person or upon a number of persons. The social effect of the novels of Dickens or of Sinclair Lewis is far from negligible….

Joseph Freeman, Proletarian Literature in the United States (1935): 
To characterize an essay or a book as a political pamphlet is neither to praise nor to condemn it…. In the case of the liberal critic, however, we have a political pamphlet which pretends to be something else. We have an attack on the theory of art as a political weapon which turns out to be itself a political weapon…. 

James T. Farrell, A Note on Literary Criticism (1936): 
Literature must be viewed both as a branch of the fine arts and as an instrument of social influence…. I suggest that…the formula ‘All art is propaganda’ be replaced by another: ‘Literature is an instrument of social influence.…’. [Literature] can be propaganda…and it can sometimes perform an objective social function that approaches agitation. 

Bernard Smith, Forces in American Criticism (1939):
‘Propaganda’ is…used [here] to describe works consciously written to have an immediate and direct effect upon their readers’ opinions and actions, as distinguished from works that are not consciously written for that purpose or which are written to have a remote and indirect effect. It is possible that conventional critics have learned by now that to call a literary work ‘propaganda’ is to say nothing about its quality as literature. By now enough critics have pointed out that some of the world’s classics were originally ‘propaganda’ for something. 

Roger Dataller, The Plain Man and the Novel (1940): 
That Charles Dickens assisted the reform of the Poor Law, and Charles Reade that of the Victorian prison system, is undeniable…. Such novels influence. 

Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (1941): 
The contemporary emphasis must be placed largely upon propaganda, rather than upon ‘pure’ art…. Since pure art makes for acceptance, it tends to become a social menace in so far as it assists us in tolerating the intolerable. 

George Orwell, “The Freedom of the Press” (1943) (Excerpt from the suppressed preface to Animal Farm):  
The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban…. The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trouser in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

*[After the end of Jennifer Howard’s recent article “The Fragmentation of Literary Theory,” notice the gap in the timeline of works of literary “theory” that occurs roughly between the two world wars: That gap comprises much of easily one of the most vital periods of US literary criticism, as partly indicated above, a time that Bernard Smith overviews and analyzes in the last two chapters of Forces in American Criticism (1939). It seems to me that there should be more discussion among political artists and others of the sort arising, both figuratively and literally, from that gap in the timeline – discussions that relate the creation of art and literature today to the urgent concerns of today.] 

Somewhat more recently, Roland Barthes observes: “Then comes the modern question: why is there not today (or at least so it seems to me), why is there no longer an art of intellectual persuasion, or imagination? Why are we so slow, so indifferent about mobilizing narrative and the image? Can’t we see that it is, after all, works of fiction, no matter how mediocre they may be artistically, that best arouse political passion?” 

Pakistan, for one, has made overt its understanding of the cultural potentcy of fiction, as I’ve noted elsewhere, having banned all imports of fiction from India but not all non-fiction. The state of Pakistan apparently fears that the power and influence of fiction will undermine its control. In this case, fiction is even more feared than nonfiction. And why shouldn’t it be, given its very influential history and nature, in public and private realms both? 

The remarkable fact about literary censorship in America is that it is largely voluntary (to play off of Orwell’s comment about England). It is carried out knowingly in some cases and unwittingly by others, in ways that happen to serve the interests of power – in the sense it is commonly understood, that is, economic power, command and control authority – who gets to make decisions – a corporate-state elite, or the people at large.

“A response to Richard’s post at The Existence Machine:   

“Chomsky himself is not extolling the virtues of political fiction [in his remarks about literature giving great insight into the human condition]…. In fact, on several other occasions it has become clear that he keeps his reading of literature separate from his political reading.”

Quite true. However, I refer to Chomsky’s remarks about literature giving great insight into the human condition because, among other reasons, they are concise and powerful, in my view, in pointing to the great potential insight to be gained from fiction/literature. That’s surely reason enough to cite them when one wants to underline this capacity of fiction. I don’t cite them to “extoll the virtues of political fiction” but to point out the potential power of insight of literature. 

And although Chomsky has strongly cautioned about not mistaking fiction for fact, he has also noted that fiction/art has great powers to heighten people’s perceptions about the world around them and that it has a great influence on people in many ways. He has noted repeatedly the racist stereotypes coming out of the culture industry, Hollywood (and elsewhere), of Arabs and others, and how much damage this does. It surely follows that if racist art can have such a damaging influence, then progressive, even revolutionary art can have a liberating and otherwise constructive influence. Again, Chomsky has repeatedly pointed this out.

There’s nothing unusual about using fiction, poetry, cartoons, film, art generally to attempt to effect change, or to maintain the status quo. It’s done all the time, by the establishment, as well as by progressives, and others, and by the greatest of artists throughout history, for that matter. 

There’s nothing odd about denials of this either, since a lot of effort is expended trying to cover up or distort or ignore these basic facts. 

When you say Chomsky “keeps his reading of literature separate from his political reading” you may be thinking of the following comments of his:

“I’ve been always resistant consciously to allowing literature to influence my beliefs and attitudes with regard to society and history.” “There are things I resonate to when I read, but I have a feeling that my feelings and attitudes were largely formed prior to reading literature.” “Look, there’s no question that as a child, when I read about China, this influenced my attitudes–-Rickshaw Boy, for example. That had a powerful effect when I read it. It was so long ago I don’t remember a thing about it, except the impact. And I don’t doubt that, for me, personally, like anybody, lots of my perceptions were heightened and attitudes changed by literature over a broad range–Hebrew Literature, Russian literature, and so on. But ultimately, you have to face the world as it is on the basis of other sources of evidence that you can evaluate.” “If I want to understand the nature of China and its revolution, I ought to be cautious about literary renditions.” “Literature can heighten your imagination and insight and understanding, but it surely doesn’t provide the evidence that you need to draw conclusions and substantiate conclusions.” “I can think of things I read that had a powerful effect on me, but whether they changed my attitudes and understanding in any striking or crucial way, I can’t really say.” “People certainly differ, as they should, in what kinds of things make their minds work.” “I don’t really feel that I can draw any tight connections [personally].” 

Be “cautious,” he sensibly notes, about the social and historical impressions you get from fiction, because it’s necessary to turn to “evidence that you can evaluate,” facts not least. That’s why I so value heavily fact-based fiction, well researched.

Also, I’m no more writing for Chomsky than I am for Dan Green. Chomsky says he “can’t say” whether or not literature “changed my attitudes and understanding in any striking or crucial way,” but he also notes, “People certainly differ, as they should, in what kinds of things make their minds work.” I’m writing mainly for some of those people who differ in that way, not necessarily for Chomsky or Green, while trying to do the sort of work that Chomsky and others do in nonfiction, as I note. Fiction had a big impact on me in regard to public and private issues both, as it does on others. (After all, the “personal” – fiction’s strength – is composed of the “private” and the “public” both.)

Furthermore, Chomsky himself has tried to employ Swiftian satire to do his work. He wrote a Modest Proposal type satire before the US invasion of Iraq, in which he argued that Iran should be the state to invade Iraq because if the US invades, especially to democratize Iraq, as it claimed, then naturally the majority population in Iraq, the Shia, would want to ally with the Shia of Iran, which would be real democracy in action. So why not let Iran do the work? This is a basis for potentially great satire and it’s a very informative piece of writing. Unfortunately, totally unlike Swift’s Modest Proposal, Chomsky’s piece turns out to be a lousy piece of satire from an aesthetic viewpoint. Chomsky has acknowledged that he has no talent for such satire. But Swift’s masterpiece provides evidence that fictive satire can be informative, effective, and aesthetic (among numerous other such works of art even in the dominant media – e.g., see the best editorial cartoons). And Chomsky has asked, “Jonathan Swift, where are you now?” He has noted further:

“Caricature can be very well done. Swift is marvelous, for example. Animal Farm is pretty good, in my opinion…. Caricature is an art, and not an easy one. But when well done, a very important one. As for dealing with Orwell’s problem, I try to do it in the ways I know how to pursue; 1000s of pages by now. No doubt there are other ways, maybe better ways. But others will have to find what works for them.”

See the weblist of articles and excerpts at my political novel site for some articles on quality art that is politically engaged, accomplished, and effective (scroll down to Views by Art: Society and Politics) .

“Second, the remarks strike me as highly unlikely to persuade anyone. Certainly not Dan Green, whose position on the matter is clear.”

It should be obvious that I’m not trying to persuade Dan Green of my views anymore than two debaters try to persuade the other of their views, as opposed to some audience, in this case the public. I’m entering a public discussion about matters of some importance in a public arena, for the sake of explaining my views and understanding in public, to whatever public there might be. 

“…it strikes me more than a little odd that one would continue to cite Chomsky (or for that matter, Howard Zinn, as he has also) in this context. It amounts to little more than an appeal to authority, and it does not further the debate.

I’ve cited a variety of thinkers at Dan’s blog, let alone elsewhere, and I purposefully often cite figures like Zinn and Chomsky because they are widely known as progressive workers. This helps further understanding, in a concise or shorthand way, of what I mean by progressive art. So in this way, citing these figures especially when they speak of art is highly useful, and quite appropriate, for purposes of clarity and brevity not least. 

Here’s more of what Chomsky has to say about Orwell’s fiction and the importance of culturally critical novels (with some key passages that I put in bold):

“About Orwell’s 1984, I thought, frankly, it was one of his worst books. Could barely finish it. Some parts (e.g., about Newspeak) were clever. But most of it seemed to me–well, trivial. The problem is not a very interesting one; the modes of thought control and repression in totalitarian societies are fairly transparent. In fact, they often tend to be rather lax. Franco Spain, for example, didn’t care much what people thought and said: the screams from the torture chamber in downtown Madrid were enough to keep the lid on. It’s not too well known, but the Soviet Union was also pretty lax, particularly in the Brezhnev era. According to US government-Russian Research Center studies, Russians apparently had considerably wider access to a broad range of opinion and to dissident literature than Americans do, not because it is denied them but because propaganda is so much more effective here. Orwell was well aware of these issues. His (suppressed) introduction to Animal Farm, for example, deals explicitly with ‘literary censorship in England.’ To write [in a novel…] about that topic would have been important, hard, and serious–and would have earned him the obloquy that attends departure from the rules….

“If Orwell, instead of writing 1984–which was actually, in my opinion, his worst book, a kind of trivial caricature of the most totalitarian society in the world, which made him famous and everybody loved him, because it was the official enemy–if instead of doing that easy and relatively unimportant thing, he had done the hard and important thing, namely talk about Orwell’s Problem* [as pertains to England and western states], he would not have been famous and honored: he would have been hated and reviled and marginalized.

“Caricature can be very well done. Swift is marvelous, for example. Animal Farm is pretty good, in my opinion. But 1984 I thought was a serious decline from his best work. Caricature is an art, and not an easy one. But when well done, a very important one. As for dealing with Orwell’s problem, I try to do it in the ways I know how to pursue; 1000s of pages by now. No doubt there are other ways, maybe better ways. But others will have to find what works for them.”

 

Furthermore, you might see my ZNet essay Orwell’s Problem and Partisan Fiction for further elaboration. Also you might see my other ZNet essays, Progressive Political Fiction and A Few Notes on the Literary Establishment and additionally my other essays on the topic here. The essays would help show how you’ve misinterpreted and/or misunderstood my various blog comments.

“I should reiterate that I agree that the aesthetic experience of art is what is of foremost importance, by far.”

That’s fine if that is your preference, but it’s certainly not everybody’s, especially not in every case, every situation, all the time. Far from it. Many church services are works of art, intentionally and elaborately constructed, yet what is of “foremost importance” to the designers and other participants is usually not the “aesthetic experience.” This is commonly understood.

In a different vein, Kenneth Burke for one (along with many others) has done some interesting work on how tightly intertwined are aesthetic and moral qualities, which might make you reconsider your qualifier “by far” at least. See in particular Burke’s brilliant and important book, The Philosophy of Literary Form, excerpted at my sites and in some essays.

“I agree that attempts by artists to intentionally send political messages with their art most often fail to succeed as art.”

It could just as easily be said that attempts at art with no intentional political “messages” by artists more often fail to succeed as art, and that they fail more often than intentionally political attempts because the artists are not fully aware of the political messages their work inevitably sends.

Or, what your statement might indicate is an indirect acknowledgement that intentionally political art is more difficult than other sorts of art, maybe simply because more is intended, more is attempted, there is more to deal with. If so, it’s an imbalanced playing field for evaluation. It could also be an indication that successful intentionally political art is a greater — because more complex, at least — accomplishment than non-intentionally political art, or so-called apolitical art. 

“I wouldn’t try to convince someone, Dan Green in particular, by quoting vague remarks from Noam Chomsky.” 

Again, neither would I, nor do I. Chomsky’s remarks that I quote are brief, not vague.

“I think that when a writer’s primary goal for creating a work of fiction is to “debunk harmful propaganda and taboos” and “help energize, motivate, and inspire” then that work of fiction is highly unlikely to succeed as art.”

Again, of course you give no evidence for this, because it’s scarcely possible. Or even likely, as I suggest above. Quality editorial cartoons and plenty of quality films and corporate-broadcast songs, etc, that take care not to upset too many apple carts are clear indications that the social and political intentions and effects of art can be quite carefully crafted and controlled, as they are on a regular basis.

“(Note, also, that here again Chomsky is anyway not talking about fiction himself.)”

Nor do I remotely claim or imply that he is. Clearly and explicitly, on the main page of my Imaginative Literature and Social Change site I explain that what I work at via fiction is similar to what Chomsky and others work at via nonfiction. My site reads: “In its own way, fiction can accomplish something similar to what Noam Chomsky and many other progressive workers try to accomplish through nonfiction: the creation of works that clarify and better the world socially, politically, culturally….”

“Unfortunately, it appears that Tony Christini does subscribe to Dan Green’s definition of political fiction, as demonstrated, for example, in his same comment to Dan’s clarifying December post (where, again, the words of an authority [Michael Hanne] are provided):[…]”

Richard, I appreciate your patient analysis of my thoughts (unfortunately only drawn from blog comments apparently), but this remark is especially bizarre, I’m afraid. I don’t “subscribe to Dan Green’s definition of political fiction,” or any definition of political fiction, whatsoever. Such a concept is impossible to define because in certain ways everything and anything is political. See, for example, my response to the first question of this interview with Mickey Z.

Also, what is the problem, again, with referring to the research and thoughts of knowledgeable and relevant figures?

“…this passage does nothing to further the argument that fiction can be both politically motivated and literary.”

Not only fiction but many types of art are both “politically motivated and literary.” Not least a lot of art that is designed and crafted to reinforce the status quo, whether unconsciously or consciously motivated.

Also, if you’re serious about critiquing my views of political fiction, then it’s appropriate to critique the formal essays I’ve written on the subject, rather than turning to brief blog comments and quick excerpted references to the work of others that, in any event, you are taking far out of context. My book of criticism, The Novel and the Public, will be out later this year. In the meantime, a number of my formal critical articles and chapters are available here.

“I don’t think Tony’s comments, in the vein quoted above, further the discussion either, or indicate that he’s been paying attention to what Dan and others say.”

On the contrary, as I’ve again demonstrated above, I’ve dissected what Dan and others say in detail, even on the blogs, and more so in my formal articles and essays.

“It would be more interesting to read an actual demonstration of the political elements of a novel enhancing its aesthetics or not hindering them.”

I’ve done this in extensive detail in my formal writing. Again, I refer you to what’s available online and to my forthcoming book of criticism. Also, for such theory/analysis underlying potential critique of specific novels, there’s no shortage of criticism available historically. Again, I document and excerpt much of this at my sites. 

(To that end, I’m interested in taking a look at his own explicitly political novels, which are available through Mainstay Press, which he co-founded.) 

That would be great. Also, you might see some of my short explicitly political fictions online at my weblog A Practical Policy and elsewhere. 

(One note of possible confusion: I see at the Mainstay Homefront Trilogy page that the types of works are not indicated, unlike on the main page, which probably should be corrected. That is, as regards the trilogy: Homefront is a novel. Glory is a novella. And Washburn is essentially a long two part story.) 

 

Societies that subsidize things like missile research and not novel publishing are headed off the deep end. In my view, universities have a duty to encourage, solicit, and produce (culturally critical) novels and other types of work on matters of war and other cultural issues of gravest concern, not least. To my knowledge, not only have no such novels been published (about the Iraq War), none has been solicited….

The above is a modified excerpt from the comment I left at Michael Allen’s Grumpy Old Bookman weblog, following up on a post and comments he and others have made in regard to my post here, The University Press and Original Fiction.

New Orleans resident displaced by hurricane Katrina, author Tom Piazza notes that after the hurricane, he wrote his partisan non-fiction book “Why New Orleans Matters in five weeks – too quickly to think about it.” He adds that: “If I was lucky, maybe its style is some kind of amalgam of the nonfiction stuff I have found most compelling, most of which was written by fiction writers – Orwell, Didion, Mailer, and Hemingway, especially. I wish more fiction writers would tithe a certain amount of their energies to writing about politics and current events. If they are good they have tremendous evocative power at their disposal. I admire Denis Johnson and ZZ Packer for doing it. Sometimes, of course, it can go wrong. But fiction writers, because of the primacy they give to voice and point of view, tend to have more power available than your average reporter – more leverage on the objective events about which they report.”

Apparently outside the realm of thought is that “fiction writers should tithe” or otherwise devote “a certain amount of their energies to writing about politics and current events” in their fiction itself, as partisan fiction that might have substantial effect in the world, including issue-based socio-political effect. In doing so, authors would run the risk of producing works that might virtually ensure their immortality, works such as Aristophanes’ anti-war play Lysistrata, Jonathan Swift’s anti-economic-exploitation story A Modest Proposal, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-chattel-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a risk it seems most authors would, otherwise, consider taking. [An article on The Lysistrata Project: A Theatrical Act of Dissent – another here.]

Roland Barthes: “Then comes the modern question: why is there not today (or at least so it seems to me), why is there no longer an art of intellectual persuasion, or imagination? Why are we so slow, so indifferent about mobilizing narrative and the image? Can’t we see that it is, after all, works of fiction, no matter how mediocre they may be artistically, that best arouse political passion?” Not that Lysistrata and A Modest proposal are mediocre artistically. Nor are significant parts of Uncle Tom’s Cabin – especially, interestingly enough, some of the most overtly topical and political passages.

Part I – Kaufman’s Plant Closing

The top headline in the Sullivan Review [a weekly newspaper in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania] on April 2nd, 1998 reads, “Kaufman Footwear Will Close Dushore Plant: Blame El Niño.”  This misses the main reason for the plant shutdown.  The unseasonably warm weather was not to blame for the plant closing; other, far more human, or inhuman, factors were at work.  The title gets it wrong.  The deteriorating economic conditions cannot be blamed on uncontrollable fate.

While two mild winters back-to-back may have somewhat undermined the immediate need for winter apparel and gear, Kaufman’s manufacturing is more likely a casualty of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which – in its first few years of existence – has had a devastating impact on mid-level manufacturing in the U.S. and Canada and also on agriculture and mid-level industry in Mexico (co-signer of NAFTA with Canada and the U.S.).   

Continue reading Can’t Blame the Weather