A Note on Links
More Essays by Milan
Speaking of Distraction
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Another Review of The Novel: An Alternative History
The Orange Eats Creeps
The Unconsoled and the Annihilation of Plot
At The Quarterly Conversation, Andrew Ervin ponders a writer’s responsibility to his privileged place in our society. And he does it in light of reading Wallace Shawn’s new play and book of essays:
Reading these Essays a couple times reminded me of the pressing need for white, male, middle- and upper-class authors like Shawn to think and write about race and class and all the issues our rich parents were too fucking polite to talk about in public. I can’t think of another American author more worthy of the Nobel Prize. He’s that good and that incendiary. In short, with this collection he has caused me to think, yet again, about the responsibilities of the privileged artist—that is, about my responsibilities.
As a writer myself, these privileges put me in a position of some dubious, discomforting authority . . .
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
The question of an artist’s “responsibility” is old and thorny and fraught with all kinds of paradoxes. “Responsible” art morphs too easily into melodrama, sentimentality, overt politics and, let’s face it, boredom. Think of all those explicitly political/activist authors from the past — Algren, Steinbeck, Lewis, Sinclair — and consider how many of them are widely read today…how much of their work is considered relevant?
Personally, I don’t think a writer has any responsibility to his society, nor to critiquing or dismantling the status quo. It’s great if that happens as a consequence of his or her fiction, but to mandate it is to vastly restrict the kinds of narratives we can tell. Moreover, Ervin clearly goes overboard when he writes:
“For a white male author to ignore race in his fiction is to willingly accept the most insidious privilege we have: the ability to ignore race.”
See what I mean? White male writers are now vilified for choosing to write about subjects/issues other than race…this narrow, totalitarian notion of art’s “mission” is stultifying.
Let writers write about what intrigues, inspires, angers, bewilders and challenges them. Leave prescriptive manifestos, crusades and propaganda for the birds.