ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT
WE PLAN to include at least one “public intellectual” (emphasis on the public) in the Tournament. In one of the next two (7th or 8th) brackets. That is, a writer known primarily for opinions about literature and culture. A critic– but more.
The two leading candidates for the spot are both women– Susan Sontag and Camille Paglia. Which one belongs?
Or should someone else take that slot?
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THE ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT
(Photo by David Shankbone.)
IT’S A PROBLEM many esteemed contemporary writers seem to have– the lack of a philosophical foundation, a metaphysical perspective on life and the universe, which for all their talent prevents their work from having greater depth and meaning.
FOR a literary writer Mary Gaitskill is supremely talented. At her best, with a story such as “Girl on a Plane,” she reaches a level of strong emotion. Like a punch to the gut. After reading more of her fiction one realizes they’re all of a piece– the characters intelligent but superficial animals whose primary motivation is sex.
An accurate depiction of today’s society. There are no happy endings. Men and women exist in dysfunctional hate-love relationships with scarcely the possibility of getting along. Captives of their drives. The sexually liberated society; which comes across as an unending sadomasochistic nightmare. No escape. No hope of redemption or salvation. At the end of the tale one of the characters is humiliated. Or both of them. Destroyed. Shattered. Lost animals without souls to tarnish. No heroes or even anti-heroes. It’s a problem not of the writer so much as society– particularly, their urban New York City or San Francisco milieu. A typical tale is “Kiss and Tell,” in which a struggling male screenwriter is in love with a struggling actress. The sex is briefly very good, but friendship is the only way they can ultimately connect– then even that collapses. The friendship ends in betrayal and bitterness.
The writing, like the sex, is very good. But is it enough?
Has Mary Gaitskill done enough to enter the Tournament?
ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT
THE UNSTATED PREMISE of those who are touting the new movie about J.D. Salinger, “Rebel in the Rye,” is that his absence from the lit scene for decades created mystery about him. They’re hoping to capitalize on that mystery.
There’s something to be said for this viewpoint. There are multiple examples of performers and artists who achieved a level of lasting fame because they removed themselves from the scene at an early age. Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean jump immediately to mind. In the lit game, Sylvia Plath. Mystery has been an essential component of charisma for a long time. (See fan dancer Sally Rand. The brief, unsatisfied glimpse.) Or look at the most famous person in history. The mystery of Jesus’s death and resurrection is the most compelling part of the Gospel narratives.
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Yet J.D. Salinger was able to vanish because his literary celebrity had already been built. He wrote at a time when writers mattered.
How much more difficult the task is now, when even the biggest name writers walk around as virtual unknowns, not part of the conversation of general culture– a culture 1,000 times noisier than it once was.
Can one create mystery and charisma about a writer by keeping that person offstage– yet somehow still get the word out?
NEXT: “Star Power.” A Counter-Argument.
ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT
The #2 Bracket Seeds
These four literary giants are very different from one another in style, voice, background, and ideology. What they have in common is the expression of American striving.
A.) F. Scott Fitzgerald. The writer as myth. The most glamorous of all literary stars, Scott Fitzgerald wrote about the American Dream and lived it. With Fitzgerald the case to be made is why he isn’t a #1 seed. For two reasons. First, he didn’t influence and express the American voice to the same extent as our first four tourney candidates. Nobody talks like Fitzgerald or writes like him. Being the best means being unique– and he’s the best American writer, the best stylist, if not the most important. Second, Fitzgerald has never been as big on a world scale as the others. Other cultures never quite “got” him– a sign of how truly American Fitzgerald is. Still, he’s never been more appreciated– the artistic failure of the most recent “Gatsby” movie notwithstanding. Fitzgerald’s works– all his works– contain special magic, part of his uniquely American vision, which can’t be adequately translated to more superficial vehicles like movies and television.
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B.) Ayn Rand. The literary world for seventy years has refused to acknowledge this person, but it’s like trying to ignore the sun or the moon. Her influence on America is bigger than what has become quite a tiny literary world. Rand’s ideas and analysis are the world we live in now. America, with its oversized strengths and flaws, its egoism and materialism, is a Randian world. If we as advocates of literature ask literature to be a living part of the civilization, a necessary part of the argument, then Ayn Rand, more than any American writer, past or present, fulfills that role. The Reagan era took its ideas from her. The Tea Party of more recent years was part Jefferson, part Jesus, and part Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged alone sells half-a-million copies a year. Added note for the p.c. crowd: Ayn Rand was a feminist before there was feminism.
But, the writing? What about the writing? Despite the ostensible logic she claimed to express, Ayn Rand’s novels– even their ideas– are illusion. Her books are very much creative works of art. Passionate works, which is why they appeal to so many individuals. Flawed Atlas Shrugged is one of the most artistically ambitious American novels ever written. Her earlier masterwork The Fountainhead is one of the most accomplished– also one of the most overlooked, because the extreme ideology in the later novel infuriates so many establishment intellectuals, never more than in the present time. (New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul put Rand’s novels at the top of her “Hate Reading” list.)
I’ll address Ayn Rand and her work further in a separate post.
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C.) Toni Morrison. Did we include Toni Morrison as a #2 seed in the brackets to confound skeptics on both the Left and the Right? Perhaps. Toni Morrison was an essential writer to include in the tourney, not for America Future, but for America NOW.
Morrison allows us to bring American literature to its varied present while at the same time strengthening its tie to the past. Morrison has a unique voice– a big, loud, American voice– which at the same time is inextricably linked to founding American authors like Herman Melville and Harriet Beecher Stowe. If Ayn Rand’s viewpoint is part of the contemporary American argument, then so is Morrison’s. Her emergence as an author marked recognition of what had always been present; the contribution to American letters– to the creation of a unique American literature– of the African-American voice.
Our literature is NOT simply a transplant of European sensibilities onto this continent, but a fusion of many influences, many voices. From the nation’s beginnings, the black voice, which includes African folk tales, black music, black humor, has been an underground current seeping into other currents. A voice which was absorbed and changed itself by other voices. Those writers influenced by the black experience of America range from Joel Chandler to Carson McCullers to William Faulkner to the Beats. To even our verbose tourney friend Norman Mailer.
Here in this country, in this event, there’s no “white” literature or “black” literature, or this division or that one. There’s only American literature. One of the goals of the Tournament is to show that.
Besides, Toni Morrison isn’t just a renowned novelist. She’s also a dominating essayist, and has written the libretto for an opera– “Margaret Garner”– which is quite good.
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D.) Jack Kerouac. As dynamic a persona, as mythic a person, and as American a voice as anyone. On the Road, his most influential book, is quintessentially American. As much as any work of literature, it captures and defines this country, which has always, always, been about the open road– the impulse toward freedom, the need to travel ever farther. Where, we’re not always sure. Fitzgerald called it a green light. Kerouac expressed the driving and striving on a more visceral level.
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We at New Pop Lit believe in the American experiment– in Gatsby’s “green light.”
-K.W.
“Hallelujah Trail” by David Lohrey
People brag about the religious experiences.
They feel something, they tell us,
When they’re taking a crap. But
They won’t go to church.
Baseball, they say, is a kind of religion.
They are believers. Some are truer
Than others; they tell us that, too.
Why can’t they just use the toilet?
Others like to fornicate in the pews.
They’re in search of religion, they
Tell us. They don’t find it when
Praying, but they are true believers.
Call them devout. Their theatre
Is the Broadway musical. The priest:
Al Jolson. Last year: Bette Midler.
Now: Lady Gaga.
They’re gamblers. They don’t like
Religion, they tell us. Spirituality,
Yes, that. They’re very spiritual,
Especially when their stocks
Are rising. They’re very spiritual
But they love money.
They don’t like the institution. They
Like to sleep around, too. They’re
Against marriage, but they’re
Into true love. They prefer it free
Since it’s so valuable. If they
Can’t have it, they’ll take it.
They’ll give it away, often
To the highest bidder.
This generation of malcontents and
Rebels will say anything to feel better.
They’d learn to play the xylophone if they
Could play stoned. They’re stumbling
Through grad school and got low marks
In 3rd grade. They’re catching up
Now but never studied Latin.
They walk around with their
Mouths hanging open.
They complain a lot, especially
When their coffee isn’t hot.
They pride themselves on their
Needs. When they’re passed over
At the audition, they storm out,
Cursing. They’ll never sing again.
They threaten now to take
Their grievances to the street.
It’s high noon. The kids without a future
Hope to be noticed. The entire world
Is like Schwab’s Drug Store.
Maybe they’ll be seen crying at
The counter and be cast as
Zombies in next year’s
Blockbuster. They have lots of
Experience. They can play the part.
All they have to do is look
Vacant.
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(Send your provocative and/or fun poetry to funpoppoetry@gmail.com.)
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