Insightful essay as usual, and welcome to the 'Stacks! I do agree that a pervading sense of intellectual boredom probably offers as good an explanation for what happened to English departments across the country. But as you note, though, esoteric arguments about XYZ in King Lear presume that the audience has a basic familiarity with both King Lear and why, as an aesthetic achievement, it deserves close study and scrutiny. Edward Said's great essay on Mansfield Park (from "Culture and Imperialism") was so powerful when I first read it in large part due to the fact that my professor taught MP in a boring, traditional way. I think I would have actually been annoyed with Said (or my professor) if my first introduction to "Mansfield Park" was his essay, because there wouldn't be any groundwork for why I should care. Or, as someone else as noted, Howard Zinn's book works well as an alternate history book, rather than the actual thing!
Thank you! Now that the tide is receding a bit, it's very hard to articulate who exactly was in favor of over-praising terrible, politically-correct books. I don't think anyone wanted to, particularly, it's just something that happened! Omg I haven't read any Said but I should: he is such a bete noir for the anti-woke crowd. He gets mentioned in a negative way on Substack so many times.
This is very good; you have thought very clearly about some controversial subjects that others have left mystified, and you say so many thing so well in such a short newsletter! I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but I do agree with you that there's a definite artistic soullessness in our times... for-profit arts have become so corporatized, non-profit and academic arts and humanities institutions are so incoherent and cash-strapped, and added to this the left is intellectually driftless and the right is intellectually atrocious.
My only quibble with your argument is how a trend primarily affecting English departments in universities could have affected (in many ways more than those departments themselves) MFA programs, art museums, poetry circles, theaters, film studios, publishing houses... It does actually speak to the influence of literary criticism in society.
It is really impressive, no? I think a lot of people found a lot of power in, especially, CRT's critique of the race paradigm (which is truly provocative, even if I don't agree w their conclusion, which is that different races should be treated differently under the law). And people wanted to up-end their own fields in a similar way. But, in dealing with law, CRT deals with issues where outcomes matter: if a policy results in unequal impacts, it is troublesome. But in the humanities, there are no outcomes. There's no meat there, nothing to externally verify your objections
As a side note I looked up your blog and I am in love: new reviews of old books. Incredible.
This essay, like all your other ones, was fantastic! What are some examples of leftists who do avante garde stuff?
Reading this made me realize that I am not as fascinated or taken by books that perhaps other people are. I've mostly been reading non-fiction these past few years because I felt that so much fiction was overhyped, and otherwise terrible. I stopped reading things by authors on Twitter because they were often overly "political" (ie obsessed with identity politics) but their books themselves had terrible politics, perpetuated problematic tropes or were plain bad. I also found that the way authors view, and promote their books, didnt align with what the actual book was about. So I often felt lied to.
I associated it with whiteness since these never struck me as values among Black liberal writers I encountered online, who were primarily/singularly focused on race and racism (and representation).
I think I find most people dont have an interesting politic to begin with, with many getting their political opinions from social media, and then choosing to inhabit ideological bubbles both on and offline. So it's not even fun to read politically charged works because the politics themselves are just twitter ideology or halfbaked.
It's pretty cool you've read so much stuff! My reading oscillates between non fiction, manga and light novels. I cant remember the last fiction book I felt inspired enough to complete start to finish in the past three years.
In terms of avant-garde leftist artists I think the best example is Vladimir Mayakovsky. In Russia right after the October Revolution there was a huge explosion in avant-garde art, often by supporters of the revolution. They felt that the revolution had unshackled them from all old ideas, including those about form and structure. Not all of them, but many of them, were also committed supporters of some of the early Soviet regimes excesses. In her memoir of the time Nadezdha Mandelstam depicts Mayakovsky as essentially a thug--he carried a gun around, threatened people, and reveled in the lawless environment and in the aura of danger that came from his being one of Lenin's favorites (though it was unclear if Lenin actually liked or understood his work). Unlike most people with such strong ideological views, Mayakovsky is actually a good writer, and I quite enjoyed his collection "Backbone Flute". I also have a collection of his plays I've been meaning to read. But then the Soviet regime turned against the avant-garde, for rather specious reasons (it was inaccessible to the workers, bourgeois, inauthentic, decadent, etc) and Mayakovsky committed suicide.
I had never heard the term Squeecore, but I understand it all too well. Not sure if you know, but I started off writing SFF! I've published in a lot of the big SFF journals: Analog, Asimov's, F&SF, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, etc. I am a bit distanced from the scene now, but I have a lot of friends who are in it still.
Yeah, if you read contemporary fiction it's just a morass. Nonfiction is a lot safer. Much less likely to be nonsense. I've enjoyed a few contemporary books, like two by trans women: TELL ME I'M WORTHLESS, by Allison Rumfitt, and MANHUNT, by Gretchen Felker-Martin, though I don't know how well they'd hit if you're not trans.
Ah ok! So no Americans then? There could be something happening in video games, but it seems like more squee core where white liberals prefer to be happy, nonconfrontational, low stakes, etc.
Yes! I've been following your work since before your transition. I came across a short story you wrote that I loved and began to follow you online. I've been waiting YEARS for you to write some adult SFF but it seems you are commiitted to YA (a marketing category I dont egage with at all). ☹️ One day...?!?
I dabbled in both contemp and SFF, trying to focus on non-white works, and all of it underwhelming. Maybe I'll just read celebrity and cult survivor memoirs forever 😈
Oh did you ever read Carolyn Jessop's ESCAPE? I like that one. Umm, yeah there's a lot of American leftist avant-garde work. I don't really know that much about it! But a non-white example would be, say, Claudia Rankine's CITIZEN. Oh, Danez Smith's HOMIES, that's actually a good one. Lots of hybrid poetry / prose / nonfiction stuff.
I mean it's not unmissable! The slave narratives are certainly better. But it's also different because so much of the focus is on the white people in utc. I listened to the audio book, which made it easier going
Insightful essay as usual, and welcome to the 'Stacks! I do agree that a pervading sense of intellectual boredom probably offers as good an explanation for what happened to English departments across the country. But as you note, though, esoteric arguments about XYZ in King Lear presume that the audience has a basic familiarity with both King Lear and why, as an aesthetic achievement, it deserves close study and scrutiny. Edward Said's great essay on Mansfield Park (from "Culture and Imperialism") was so powerful when I first read it in large part due to the fact that my professor taught MP in a boring, traditional way. I think I would have actually been annoyed with Said (or my professor) if my first introduction to "Mansfield Park" was his essay, because there wouldn't be any groundwork for why I should care. Or, as someone else as noted, Howard Zinn's book works well as an alternate history book, rather than the actual thing!
Thank you! Now that the tide is receding a bit, it's very hard to articulate who exactly was in favor of over-praising terrible, politically-correct books. I don't think anyone wanted to, particularly, it's just something that happened! Omg I haven't read any Said but I should: he is such a bete noir for the anti-woke crowd. He gets mentioned in a negative way on Substack so many times.
This is very good; you have thought very clearly about some controversial subjects that others have left mystified, and you say so many thing so well in such a short newsletter! I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but I do agree with you that there's a definite artistic soullessness in our times... for-profit arts have become so corporatized, non-profit and academic arts and humanities institutions are so incoherent and cash-strapped, and added to this the left is intellectually driftless and the right is intellectually atrocious.
My only quibble with your argument is how a trend primarily affecting English departments in universities could have affected (in many ways more than those departments themselves) MFA programs, art museums, poetry circles, theaters, film studios, publishing houses... It does actually speak to the influence of literary criticism in society.
It is really impressive, no? I think a lot of people found a lot of power in, especially, CRT's critique of the race paradigm (which is truly provocative, even if I don't agree w their conclusion, which is that different races should be treated differently under the law). And people wanted to up-end their own fields in a similar way. But, in dealing with law, CRT deals with issues where outcomes matter: if a policy results in unequal impacts, it is troublesome. But in the humanities, there are no outcomes. There's no meat there, nothing to externally verify your objections
As a side note I looked up your blog and I am in love: new reviews of old books. Incredible.
This essay, like all your other ones, was fantastic! What are some examples of leftists who do avante garde stuff?
Reading this made me realize that I am not as fascinated or taken by books that perhaps other people are. I've mostly been reading non-fiction these past few years because I felt that so much fiction was overhyped, and otherwise terrible. I stopped reading things by authors on Twitter because they were often overly "political" (ie obsessed with identity politics) but their books themselves had terrible politics, perpetuated problematic tropes or were plain bad. I also found that the way authors view, and promote their books, didnt align with what the actual book was about. So I often felt lied to.
This idea of having politically correct fiction reminds me of a podcast I tried to listen to about "squee-core", a particular subgenre of white liberals writing SFF: https://longpaleroad.com/2022/01/17/a-quick-thought-on-squeecore/.
I associated it with whiteness since these never struck me as values among Black liberal writers I encountered online, who were primarily/singularly focused on race and racism (and representation).
I think I find most people dont have an interesting politic to begin with, with many getting their political opinions from social media, and then choosing to inhabit ideological bubbles both on and offline. So it's not even fun to read politically charged works because the politics themselves are just twitter ideology or halfbaked.
It's pretty cool you've read so much stuff! My reading oscillates between non fiction, manga and light novels. I cant remember the last fiction book I felt inspired enough to complete start to finish in the past three years.
In terms of avant-garde leftist artists I think the best example is Vladimir Mayakovsky. In Russia right after the October Revolution there was a huge explosion in avant-garde art, often by supporters of the revolution. They felt that the revolution had unshackled them from all old ideas, including those about form and structure. Not all of them, but many of them, were also committed supporters of some of the early Soviet regimes excesses. In her memoir of the time Nadezdha Mandelstam depicts Mayakovsky as essentially a thug--he carried a gun around, threatened people, and reveled in the lawless environment and in the aura of danger that came from his being one of Lenin's favorites (though it was unclear if Lenin actually liked or understood his work). Unlike most people with such strong ideological views, Mayakovsky is actually a good writer, and I quite enjoyed his collection "Backbone Flute". I also have a collection of his plays I've been meaning to read. But then the Soviet regime turned against the avant-garde, for rather specious reasons (it was inaccessible to the workers, bourgeois, inauthentic, decadent, etc) and Mayakovsky committed suicide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Mayakovsky
I had never heard the term Squeecore, but I understand it all too well. Not sure if you know, but I started off writing SFF! I've published in a lot of the big SFF journals: Analog, Asimov's, F&SF, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, etc. I am a bit distanced from the scene now, but I have a lot of friends who are in it still.
Yeah, if you read contemporary fiction it's just a morass. Nonfiction is a lot safer. Much less likely to be nonsense. I've enjoyed a few contemporary books, like two by trans women: TELL ME I'M WORTHLESS, by Allison Rumfitt, and MANHUNT, by Gretchen Felker-Martin, though I don't know how well they'd hit if you're not trans.
Ah ok! So no Americans then? There could be something happening in video games, but it seems like more squee core where white liberals prefer to be happy, nonconfrontational, low stakes, etc.
Yes! I've been following your work since before your transition. I came across a short story you wrote that I loved and began to follow you online. I've been waiting YEARS for you to write some adult SFF but it seems you are commiitted to YA (a marketing category I dont egage with at all). ☹️ One day...?!?
I dabbled in both contemp and SFF, trying to focus on non-white works, and all of it underwhelming. Maybe I'll just read celebrity and cult survivor memoirs forever 😈
Oh did you ever read Carolyn Jessop's ESCAPE? I like that one. Umm, yeah there's a lot of American leftist avant-garde work. I don't really know that much about it! But a non-white example would be, say, Claudia Rankine's CITIZEN. Oh, Danez Smith's HOMIES, that's actually a good one. Lots of hybrid poetry / prose / nonfiction stuff.
I mean it's not unmissable! The slave narratives are certainly better. But it's also different because so much of the focus is on the white people in utc. I listened to the audio book, which made it easier going