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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in his critical work Decolonising the Mind (1986) below. His masterpiece novel Wizard of the Crow (2006) goes hand in glove with it. Wizard of the Crow is the equal of any of the Victorian novel greats.

In the Preface of Decolonising the Mind, Ngũgĩ notes:

“Inevitably, essays of this nature may carry a holier-than-thou attitude or tone. I would like to make it clear that I am writing as much about myself as about anybody else. The present predicaments of Africa are often not a matter of personal choice: they arise from an historical situation. Their solutions are not so much a matter of personal decision as that of fundamental social transformation of the structures of our societies starting with a real break with imperialism and its internal ruling allies. Imperialism and its comprador alliances in Africa can never never develop the continent.”

The University of Iowa is home to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, one of the leading, or the leading, graduate creative writing centers in the US, nationally and internationally renowned. But let’s consider all the creative writing programs across the US and the faculty and grad students, and let’s think of all the literary journals, and let’s consider in addition all the novelists in the US, and the publishers. How many explicit investigative novels about the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, for example, have been written? And published? How many have been taught? Virtually none. The novel is a popular vehicle. The US conquest of Iraq, of greater Oila, is one of the great crimes and calamities of the time for which the US is responsible. Academics, intellectuals have an obligation to solicit, foster, produce, publish, teach, and otherwise disseminate such work. Essentially, they don’t. That’s a culture that is complicit.

Historian Paul Street recounts in “Cowardice Pays: Reflections on Academic Abdication and a Paul Krugman Lecture in Iowa City“:

“Academic co-optation” is not just a “cynical” radicals’ fantasy. It really exists across the middle and upper reaches of “higher-education,” where engaged radical sentiments and activism are commonly seen as naïve and un-professional and where cowardice can pay quite handsomely. And if it can explain the conservatism and indifference of state university professors deep in the heartland, imagine how far it can go with a heralded, Nobel Prize-winning Princeton academic who also holds down cherished column space at the nation’s leading newspaper of record?

Brute realism – not the end all be all in art but sometimes useful:

“Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” – The Mafia Without Moralizing” by Kim Nicolini via Counterpunch, excerpted:

Shot on location with non-professional actors and stories based on actual events, Gomorrah brings the Mafia Myth down to its ugly reality. The film integrates a number of stories: thirteen-year old Toto, who is being recruited by the mafia; Don Ciro, who delivers money to families of imprisoned mob members; Marco and Ciro, two young men who worship Scarface; Pasquale the tailor who works in a mob-run sewing factory; and Roberto who facilitates the mafia’s exploits in waste management. Through these intersecting stories, their relation to the environment in which the movie is filmed, and the spare cinematography, Gomorrah shows the dark, gritty underbelly of capitalism and its relation to organized crime. There is nothing flashy here: no artful montages like the famous baptism scene in The Godfather, no self-reflexive storytelling like we get in Goodfellas. What we get instead is brutally claustrophobic documentary realism that refuses to distance us from the ugliness that plays out on the screen. Continue reading Brute Realism: Exposing Myth

At Stanford – the announcement – more info at press page – includes the familar quote on politics in lit by Stendhal, with discouraging implications  that are belied by the quote continuation, which is virtually never noted  – see below, excerpted from Fiction Gutted – The Establishment and the Novel, Part Four: Continue reading “Politics and the Novel” conference

From The Vassals Handbook – Lesson  sixteen – Profit U

So I wrote a speech to end all speeches for our beloved President of the Incorporated Estates of Earth, Al O’Toole. He delivered it to the rebels. It did not go over well. I am not surprised. The truly intransigent cannot be reached. We go through the motions, as required.

I must admit I was underwhelmed by my meeting with the President of the IEE. It made me think I am not the right man for the job of Official Sloganeer. I longed to return to my first true love: teaching. I recalled fondly my years of joy as Terminator of History at Rockview Terminal. Who knows what connections exist between our thoughts and the actions of the universe? About that time I was offered the Presidency of the newest university on earth: Profit U. Good ole PU.

PU is founded in this time of psycho-socio-economic crisis with the intent of restoring faith in the system of the IEE. I accepted the Presidency of PU, stipulating that I continue work on the epic in progress, the how-to book for good loyal consumers of the IEE, The Vassals Handbook. The Executors Board of PU readily agreed. IEE President Al O’Toole wished me well and said he would sign up for a distance learning course if I were to lead one. Of course I promised to come up with something. So here I am, newly installed as the first President of PU. The school cheers ring in my ears. Let’s go PU! Here we go PU! We Are PU! We’re Number One! PU! Number One!

PU! PU! PU!

The rosy-fingered dawn of the new day breaks at PU.

Profit U. We are tasked to challenge Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the other greats for intellectual and moral supremacy in the IEE. We are charged by the leaders of the IEE to take on their traditional roles as the bastions of all that is wise and good. We are charged to lead the IEE through crisis high and low. What ambitious young man or woman would not want to attend PU? The question answers itself.

“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. 

– V. F. Calverton (George Goetz), The Liberation of American Literature

James Wood opens his essay “The Tunnel,” a review of John Wray’s novel Lowboy, by claiming:

“Fiction is at once real and imaginary. Not real at one moment and flickeringly illusory the next, like the fading pulse of a dying man, but both at once, as if a ghost had a pulse. Fiction is one giant pseudo-statement, a fact-checker’s nightmare. Like one of our own lies, it can be completely “wrong” about the world and yet completely revelatory – completely “right” – about the psychology of the person issuing the error. Thus, one of fiction’s most natural areas of inquiry, from Cervantes to Murakami, concerns states of confusion, error, or madness, in which a character’s crazy fictions become intertwined with the novel’s calmer fictions, and the reader’s purchase on the reliable world becomes intermittently tenuous.”

Wood’s emphasis here – a kind of tautological claim, that the very nature of fiction “at once real and imaginary…as if a ghost had a pulse” acts to produce in readers an “intermittently tenuous purchase on the reliable world” – functions to misrepresent or mask his implied observation that fiction as a curious mix of fact and make-believe allows readers a mostly reliable grip on the world, even when involving a character who also mixes fact and make-believe.  Continue reading The Vitiation of American Literature

Some roundup comments on establishment and liberatory fiction – The Kindly Ones, 2666, Les Miserables, Wizard of the Crow… Continue reading Stars of the Lit World

Kyle Boggs:

Stephanie McMillan is the author of Minimum Security, a radical comic strip that approaches some of the most pressing issues of our time: the global environmental crisis, rampant consumerism, U.S. imperialism, and institutionalized gender and class inequalities. Much of McMillan’s work challenges readers to look beyond a system that does not serve the needs of people or the natural world. She says, “Beliefs are extremely tenacious and we’re trained from birth to believe in this system—that it’s the only possible way to live.”

See her graphic novel: “As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial,” created with writer Derrick Jensen, 2007, Seven Stories Press.

From The Vassals Handbook – Lesson fourteen – in the banks we trust

I pledge allegiance to the banks of the Incorporated Estates of Earth and to the Rulers, whom they enrich, one Command throughout the land – obedience – with conformity and subservience for all.

Good vassals learn the Bank Pledge by heart when still wet from the womb. And with good reason. The Bank Pledge can take a vassal far in the Incorporated Estates of Earth. The banks are divine, and vassals mere mortals who owe their breath to the going rate of exchange. Few vassals would rather defy banks and starve than obey banks and have a chance. All is fair in love and banks. Continue reading Lesson fourteen: in the banks we trust

Lesson twelve – the economy is fundamentally sound

What we mean when we say the economy is fundamentally sound is that the Incorporated Estates of Earth are fundamentally sound.  No rogue nation are we, no failed state, no terrorist sect. What we mean when we say the IEE is fundamentally sound is that this is the best system ever. Ever was, ever is, ever will be. History has ended, nature has decreed, the universe declares: vassalism is perfect. As perfect as can be. As close to perfect as one can possibly imagine.

Look, Great Depressions, let alone recessions, are unavoidable, like unemployment, a fact of life, a law of nature, a boon to the economy in the end. It serves the common good to keep wages down, expectations in check. Full employment? The pipedream of children.

Even during Great Depressions and myriad wars the economy is always and everywhere fundamentally sound. That is, ultimately. You know this. Temporary glitches or catastrophes, mass layoffs, environmental wipeouts, ongoing battles over scarce resources, the arms race – these phenomena are all part and parcel of the fundamentally sound nature of capitalism cum vassalism. In this we trust and believe. With the lords of commerce. Let it be. Amen.

Dahr Jamail, “The Ongoing Occupation of Iraqi Artists“:

When Art, a crucial component that sustains the socio-cultural fabric of a society, and the Artist, who weaves this fabric, are both under assault, society tends to get frayed and fractious. As my sculptor friend Alawchi stated most succinctly, “It is dangerous for people to leave the arts. It’s dangerous, because art is the front face of the community. We now have the desertification of the art world in Iraq.”

And not only in Iraq. 500 years of imperialism has its effect on the culture.

[“Lessons” are temporary posts. These early drafts may come down after a few days. Any surviving or revised remnants and expanded passages can be found at The Vassals Handbook page – also subject to revision.]

Lesson eleven – we mean well

The great thing about being a vassal is that you always know you mean well. We mean well, we do. Isn’t it obvious? We mean well, always. No matter what others might say about us. No matter what silly arguments they might raise.

Take for example universal health care. We don’t have it. And for that we are thankful. Lack of universal health care is a sign of our inherent fairness, generosity of spirit, economic thrift. We mean well because we are well.

Do not speak of the supposed virtues of equality of condition, wherein everyone has a right to health care. Preposterous. The United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights is not worth the paper it is written on. Useful only for starting fires. Unlike the laws of the Incorporated Estates of Earth, the laws of the old United Nations do not mean well. The UDHR remains a document of illness, if not raving lunacy, signed long ago in some sick spasm of internationality.

What could be more generous than allowing everyone the equal opportunity to fend for themselves? Poor health and death take the hindmost. Time to face reality, vassals. Life is a race from the wolf at the door. If you mean well, if you really do, you will run for your life, like good vassals everywhere.

The same holds for international affairs. The Incorporated Estates of Earth owns the world, as it should, because it means well, always and everywhere.

Thus we intervene constantly against people of color the world over. We garrison the earth, and every year we spend over half our money on all matters militant.

It’s easy to find people of color to smash. There are so many of them, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Africa, South America – even in the heart and soul of the IEE, the USA, where the prison population – chock full of people of color, not to mention people of no money – leads all Earth. More prisoners per capita, more prisoners period. Hey, we’re number one!

Those who we don’t smash, we threaten. Because we mean well. The order and security of the Incorporated Estates of Earth demands it. The IEE likes to, needs to, aims to extract oil like blood from these people. Just blow them up and the oil comes splurting out into our waiting pipes, tankers, pockets. So what if millions upon millions of innocents are slaughtered in the process of IEE invasions, occupations, sanctions? We mean well. The wars of the IEE grease the gears of the economy so we know we are doing well. Business is booming. We are far to the right in meaning well. We mean it. We mean well. Continue reading Lesson eleven: we mean well

[“Lessons” are temporary posts. These early drafts may come down after a few days. Any surviving or revised remnants and expanded passages may be found at The Vassals Handbook page – also subject to revision.]

Lesson nine – the treason of the credit unions

Let no one speak of turning to credit unions, which are owned and operated by the depositors. Credit unions ought cease and desist their attempts to undermine by their very presence the fiscal authority of the IEE. So what if credit unions are democratically controlled, one person, one vote – and banks are not? So what if credit unions have lower fees and better rates than banks? So what if credit unions have stronger community ties and involvement than banks? So what if credit unions return revenues to their depositors rather than operate for profit like banks? So what if they remain solvent? Such feel good tripe misses every point that matters. And how can it last? Why would good vassals anywhere want credit unions to persist in this golden era of vassalism? Continue reading Lesson nine: the treason of the credit unions

Q: Anthony, why is the fiction of Jonathan Littell and Roberto Bolaño currently all the rage in educated circles?
A: Once more to the liberal cesspool. Once more to the conservative craphouse. Clear enough?

Q: Could you expand?
A: As widely reported and discussed, Littell’s prize-winning mammoth novel, The Kindly Ones, which publishers are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the rights to publish (and market), tells the fictive story of a “former Nazi SS officer, who in addition to taking part in the mass extermination of the Jews, commits incest with his sister, sodomizes himself with a sausage and most likely kills his mother and stepfather.” It’s a novel about atrocity featuring a sociopathic psychopath conveniently far removed from the sociopathic atrocities being perpetrated today by the respectable, by the more or less normal individuals and officials of the sociopathic corporate-state.

Q: And Bolaño?
A: He was instantly canonized. In the US, at least, Bolaño was instantly exalted once translated. Pervasive through his fiction is a deeply amoral pose. Established “taste” finds this deeply appealing. He strikes the pose purposefully as the centerpiece of his work. It provides a certain suspension, levity, tension – striking an amoral pose in extremely morally fraught situations. Though there are some exceptions to this general Bolaño rule, amorality pervades character and plot and setting. It is the dynamo – more alive than character and plot and setting. Similarly, the weightless is also rendered amoral. For example, early in his long novel 2666 (Time magazine’s “Best Book of 2008”), Bolaño essentially guts the writing of moral and intellectual freight and poses the characters (scholars) as perceiving weight and meaning where there is none. The narrative view remains amoral, clinical, for there is precious little apparent consequence of any kind, of anything. Bolaño’s writing is not entirely sterile, as one can see the ironies tweaked and played and driven. Bolaño has a lot of experience of the world and he shares it. And there is some value in that. He is an experienced guy building experienced worlds of, well, experience – especially as compared with much of the fluff and pap published otherwise. He has been around and he takes readers around with him in a very nonthreatening (if unpromising) amoral way. So the establishment loves him. He is no threat to anybody’s wealth. He may in passing amorally illuminate a bit of the status quo. He will not cross examine it but skips off like a spaceship approaching the atmosphere of earth at too shallow an angle. He just skips off, back into space, away from the density and the most compelling gravity. Some people like that; more have been trained to it; many others merely tolerate it, or ideologically laud the style and effect, for various reasons including those heretofore noted. Bolaño sketches scenes with play and pathos and goes relatively easy on the satire. He alludes to matters of great weight but even in Nazi Literature in the Americas draws little more than what he intends to, comic blood. Even when overviewing mass murder in gory detail in 2666, the notes, as they feel, scarcely leave the state of the clinical. This is a strategy one might plausibly adopt when writing for money. Apparently, Bolaño wrote the bulk of his fiction for money and with some desperation given the illness he died of age 50. Continue reading Q&A w/ Anthony Asc: Littell and Bolaño

Guardian Books: “’No better mind has gone to work on where we are post-9/11,’ author and judge Lee Abbott told the Washington Post,” about Joseph O’Neill and his PEN/Faulkner award winning novel Netherland. It “made the longlist for the Booker prize and was the bookies’ favourite to win before it was snubbed for the shortlist….” “It was described by the New York Times as ‘the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we’ve yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Centre fell’, while James Wood in the New Yorker called it ‘one of the most remarkable post-colonial books I have ever read’.”

Meanwhile, Shelly Ettinger at Read Red comments, O’Neill  

“means well, no doubt, and he is it seems trying to get at several complexities about identity and immigration and friendship and history with the novel’s title, but it strikes me that what he’s cooked up is more like Neverland, one more postcolonial fantasy of what life is like for those driven across the world by the crimes of colonialism – as told by the inheritor of the riches stolen from their forebears. There’s a liberal smugness to it, or at least that’s how it sits with me.”

Discussion of the notion of the post-9/11 novel and literature in general leaves out the question of whether or not 9/11 is much of an appropriate touchstone, given the great catastrophe that was kicked off in the March 2003 ground invasion of Iraq, an extension of the murderous US-UN sanctions era kicked off by invasion more than a decade prior…. Our suffering defines a literary era but the far more massive suffering we inflict on others does not.

That’s retrograde, it seems to me, even though much of the “post-9/11″ lit conceit may be of liberal or progressive intention. The unthinkable has been filtered out prior to the discussion. Along these lines, other significant moments or era shifts – the various US invasions, the shift to a finance based economy in recent decades, the rise of the PR industry beginning about a century ago, the fall and rise of widespread activist movements – seem like far more meaningful markers of changing sociopolitical and cultural eras that would most insightfully and most dramatically inform literature.

Of course, 9/11/01 is in its own right a “novel event” – as Noam Chomsky notes: Continue reading Netherland and The Notion of the Post-9/11 Novel

Cross posted from the comments at Blographia Literaria:

Too often the literature establishment produces (I’ve noted elsewhere) “almost meaningless skirmishes between the so-called ‘hysterical realists’ and Flaubertian intimatists, between the free-wheeling fabulists and the empathetic realists, and other establishment fronts and alignments.” This is a narrow formalism dominant. Continue reading Gender, Race, and Class…Culture, Power, and Control in Lit

“Anti-war ‘Trial’ worth revisiting” – by Jeff Favre:

Famed novelist Gore Vidal and peace activist Ron Kovic spoke opening night at the Actors’ Gang revival of “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine,” an indication that this seminal 1971 play still holds significance with those who protested the Vietnam War…. Though big news in 1968, the action of nine Catholics burning draft files in a Maryland town would be forgotten by nearly everyone if participant Daniel Berrigan hadn’t written a play based on the protestors’ trial….

Much of the text is taken from the actual trial. The defendants admitted to burning nearly 400 draft files with homemade napalm. The argument for their action is that stopping an immoral and possibly illegal activity – such as the Vietnam War – through nonviolent means is justified. Each draft file burned, they believe, may have saved a life. Berrigan, his brother Philip (Scott Harris), who also is a priest, and the seven others provide passionate pleas for peace, but much of their time on the stand is spent explaining how America’s involvement in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and parts of Africa establish a pattern of behavior that “forced” the Catonsville Nine to act in such a bold manner.