On 'The Phantom Tollbooth,' or, The Democratizing Principle of Literature
With all possible respect, Ms. Dean - You're prisoner, terrier, clinician, and literary actuary (keeping count of who is what and where), all rolled up into one. This is not to say that I don't agree with your whole point about what I would call 'historical editing', the who gets in and who gets cut out part of art/literature. I do. I just think you were pissed off at Franzen for his - oh I dunno - "weakness" - at permitting his picture to be on the cover of Time. It maybe should have been someone fun like Glenn Beck or one of the crazies from Alaska. (Right next to Canada on the map!).
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On 'The Phantom Tollbooth,' or, The Democratizing Principle of Literature
Thank you very much for this illuminating post. It stands as refutation to Ms. Dean's earlier. Even in her comments here, she remains committed to an ideology, rather than interested in an experience. This makes her a prisoner, not a reader.
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On Behind the Franzenfreude
Dear MS Switaj:
But what's the point of zeroing in, on using the dialectic to refute Ms Dean? Her arguments about the dead white males are old and even true, not that it's their fault. She has made up her mind, and it is a cynical one. She observes the periphery closely, brilliantly, but she has no idea of what the core IS.
She admits to forgetting her reading of The Corrections as soon as she was done with the last page. This is hyperbole and reactionary and nothing more than the provocation of a blogger who has announced her bitchiness in advance, as clearly a trademark as the Z was for Zoro.
Why be specific with ideologues? They refute nuance and texture. they refute "The Real", ie the book. Sorry to go all Lacan on you. I could have written a goddamn chapter on how that post reflected an entire mindset that misses the point of the expereince of reading and (Believe me, I could), but it would have been laughable. And yes, she's right about the 'machine'.
I used to run a book store, sometime last century. These are the kinds of jostling for position "arguments" that occur only when a sun is dying, and burnt out. Yeah - She's right about establishments and what they're like, but frankly, she's far more general (when she's not being cunty about people's typos), than I could possibly be.Do you honestly need me to argue for just how serious a writer Franzen is? Really? Let's be honest here. Do you really need me to innumerate the many ways in which the life of a serious writer is admirable?
Really? Do you? I can tell you A LOT about that. But to do so would be to dignify sarcasm, which I am too old to do.
Let's look at the book. The book itself, the thing itself and who really cares about the attendant whistling down the lane. I have no more politics. Other than those of the humanist, maybe, on my good days. I would submit that Fraszen is more than the sum of those parts Ms Dean picked over. He is more than a cog in the rusty wheel of the dead white male book biz and it's panoply of wrongs.
So that's where I stand. I think Ms Dean was snide and clever and shallow, and I will leave it at that.
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On Behind the Franzenfreude
feel sorry for anyone who reads fiction and filters it through a small and spurious little view finder.
I feel sorry for anyone whose received wisdom from the academy precludes actually reading a novel before draping it several dozen fatuous assumptions. (And please spare me the sly dodge of 'I am not actually writing about his book. Because we both know you are.)
I feel sorry for prisoners of ideology, either that of the left or the right. You are all bores.
Yes, there is something to your swipe at the lazy claims of universality that are employed in the discussion of a given work, but what you're doing is really no better, is it? it's just as lazy.
Writing serious fiction (and Franzen's Corrections IS serious despite your hipster aphasia upon completing your reading it - perhaps ginko or a brain scan might be timely) and brave. Braver than commenting in acrid little bursts from the sidelines, (for sidelines, by the way, you can safely bet that I don't necessarily mean Toronto).
Anyway, have a great weekend. I am sure there are other phonies and fakes for you to hunt to ground like a rat terrier
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On 'The Phantom Tollbooth,' or, The Democratizing Principle of Literature
I agree with you about the hijacking thing, and also apologize to Maria -- and I am not in the least bit obsessed with you. We can safely put this thing to bed. I will say, though, I have read some of your stuff and you're pretty thin skinned for someone who is quick with a very acid pen. No?
To cases, and then over -
You offer a provocation right off the bat: "But really, we're still doing the thing where we elevate a fiction-writing white men as the Greatest Thing In American Writing Today? And not blushing a little when we do this?"
Tell me what that is, if not a form of a-priori bigotry? Is that poor reading skill on my part? You haven't read the book. (Nor have I and I hope it's good, or I am gonna feel schmucky.)
Where I do agree with you, is "In the age after we've realized that white men are not the end-all and be-all of humanity, it seems worth trying to build a canon that says if we are separated from one another by class and race and gender and any number of things, the very least we can do is recognize that in a literature that's really about "what it is to be human," every single one of those experiences must be given airtime. It's not a request; it's a requirement.²"
And with that, I apologize for my rudeness, and sign off.