I started taking notes of my favourite quotes from this conversation, and by the end of it, I had copied and pasted over half the article.
I completely agree that our job is to shine a light on the goodness of humanity without ignoring our dark side. Although it's undeniable we have a culture that's obsessed with comfort, I don't think we are unwilling to investigate and understand darkness. The popularity of shows like Breaking Bad and Black Mirrors (before the brilliant show became Americanized) show people have an interest in understanding all spectrums of humanity— at least, while comfortably sitting on their couch staring at a flatscreen and munching away at whatever snack they ordered from their smartphone.
Still, I don't think those who read/those who are willing to use their imaginations and work to engage with all sides of humanity are a small minority. There are many examples, but the success of Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor shows how many people yearn for books that make us laugh, cry, question, and sense the sublime.
So much out there shows we’re living in the age of “illumination.” Especially when we delete or ignore our mindless-scrolling apps and turn to art that takes time so it can become timeless.
Thanks for the kind words and the thoughtful response. I find it fascinating that we live in an era wherein shows about serial killers, sociopaths, and greedy megalomaniacs are so popular ... there's something to be said about the grotesque / wanton nature of "freedom" these types of people exhibit ("freedom" in the sense of believing their actions have no problematic consequences). I recently rediscovered "The Fall" by Camus and I wonder in eras of such decadent living--which surely also accompany ages of illumination--how we get back to some sense of a more holistic / universal meaning without resorting to autocracy and dictating what SHOULD or SHOULDN'T be believed in. It's a wild ride, isn't it?
How do we get back to holistic/universal meaning without resorting to autocracy and dictating what should and shouldn't be believed in?
I don’t have the answers, but I think it's our job as artists to change the culture by making people feel this meaning rather than be didactic about it. I wrote the following last night for an article I'm working on: Most pop stars are nothing more than mass hallucinations orchestrated by corporate greed and clever marketing tactics. They planted the seeds with simple texts that teens can feel, let the roots take hold with social movements that do nothing to dismantle power structures, and let the plants grow to monstrous sizes to block the view to the empty wasteland behind them.
Celebrities have a responsibility to lead by example, but these people aren’t leaders; they’re puppets with the influence given to them by those in power. Buying 20 million dollar homes with 5-car garages and flying in private jets is not the example we need. It’s the opposite.
These celebrities aren’t artists; they’re corporate-created entertainers. I don’t give a shit if AI replaces these plastic, formulaic brands. With the right marketing schemes, I promise you won’t be able to tell the difference between them and a robot in the future.
We need real artists, people brave enough to stand up to the system making us sick. We need artists who burn the masks of materialism, not those who wear and decorate them with hubris. We need artists who overwhelm us with the truth, confront us with the uncomfortable, and submerge us in the sublime.
There are many celebrities who are just celebrities, but there are certainly celebrities who are artists too. And I agree with you that all artists have a responsibility to change the culture by breathing some life into some corner of it. (Whether famous or not). I choose to be progressive with my art, to see the light. I hope there are artists with much more celebrity who choose the same. Celebrity, at the end of the day, is just more followers for the work!
(That corporate interests take advantage of these artists, doesn't take away from the fact that they are still artists!)
Yeah the linguistic idea of what a “celebrity” is should be defined. Is Frank Ocean a celebrity? I think not. Is Tom Cruise? Probably more so. But regardless of the terminology, I agree, Nolan: “We need artists who burn the masks of materialism, not those who wear and decorate them with hubris.” Killer line. And this materialist question is something we need to be particularly aware of on a platform that tells us success is related to material gains. Because in some sense it is. We’d all love to make more money from our art. But when we start making art to make money, the materialism has already defined the creation. Making sure we create in spite of “success” is the kind of artists we still uphold (a Taylor Swift comes to mind; I’m not a fan but respect her art)...but she’s also fought back at the system when possible. Subversion is ALWAYS key.
The word "modern" as applied to literature, is a slippery one. It does not mean what it means when used with "medicine" or "plumbing" -- that is, using improved methods and techniques. It also doesn't mean, the literature of the moment, since that would mean J.K. Rowling and John Grisham, not the list of largely unknown-outside-academia authors mentioned in your discussion.
The heirs of Dumas and Dickens are not any of literary writers mentioned in your conversation. They are Rowling and Grisham. Yet Rowling and Grisham don't have the bottle of Dumas or Dickens. They won't be read in a hundred years, but Dumas and Dickens still will be.
Here is the difference between writers, doctors, and plumbers, though. You would rather be treated by the least accomplished graduate of a third world medical school today that by the finest doctor of the 19th century, and the difference isn't even close. You would rather have you plumbing done to 21st century standards rather than 19th century standards as well, though the difference is perhaps not so stark. This is because modern medical schools and modern trade schools transfer a sound body of knowledge and methods of practice that have been honed and proven over the years so that todays doctors and plumbers are incomparably better informed and better trained and better regulated than their 19th century counterparts.
On the other hand, not one MFA program in the history of MFA programs has turned out a writer of the caliber of a Dickens, a Dumas, a Conrad, a Kipling, a Waugh, or a Steinbeck (and I could add many more names to that list without diminishing my point). The modern approach of research, standardization, training, and regulation as worked brilliantly in many fields, but not in the arts. At minimal its effect is neutral. A good case could be made that it is destructive.
What I think we mean when we say "modern literature" is the product of the MFA factory, and that factory produces "literature" by a curious process that has, I think, little to do with the process used by the hacks, soldiers, journalists, sea captains, and ladies of the gentry who produced the greats of the ancient tradition. It seems to be the product you get when you pull the elements of literature through a vast literary analytical function, then grind it in the mill of fashionable ideology, and then form the fine paste that emerges from this process into fantastic and grotesque shapes.
Our culture has a hole in the middle. We have the genre mill grinding out pabulum on one side and the MFA mill grinding out haute pabulum on the other. What is missing is the serious popular fiction that used to be the backbone of our culture.
I'm late to this thread but thanks Mark for your thoughts. I respect your opinion and disagree with it, in fact. I grew up reading Harry Potter and consider it to be one of the most complete and cohesive stories ever written. The characters are flat because aside from Harry's basic back story, we don't know much about any particular character's deep past, which results in everything we know about the characters coming primarily from their actions (or lack thereof). I like this idea for this time and place...whether or not it's masterful storytelling or generic is really of secondary concern when I'm read those pages because *the story* is just so damn good, and this is something I think metamodern literature needs to remember. In my mind, * any * book that keeps millions of children and adults alike in their bedroom with the lamp on is something that will be read within 100 years, if nothing else because of the cultural significance of pulling humans towards the written word versus Netflix / videogames / etc. But that's okay to disagree on Harry Potter, a lot of people do. I personally can't speak to Grisham as I've never read him, but my lawyer of an aunt seems to think he's the bees knees.
To your other point re: MFA writing, I totally agree with you in that it has commodified and plastified the "literary fiction" of many eras, and over the past 10/15 years it seems to be doing the same thing for memoir and essay. I have an MFA, and I am thankful for it, and the primary reason why I enjoyed my program is that it did not make the literary workshop the cornerstone of the program. Workshops force people to write for the professor / for other students' approval, and that's anathema to honest writing. But I also started the MFA when I was 30 years old, after I'd published a first novel, which meant I already had a style and a voice that I wanted to improve versus discover or define. But that was just my experience, and while I am a better writer because of it, I am not sure that doing literally anything else that would've kept me disciplined and engaged with a literary community for 2 years wouldn't have had a comparable, better, and cheaper effect.
Well, there are lots and lots of writers who were bestsellers 100 or 150 years ago who no one has heard of now. I don't think of highly of Rowling as you do, perhaps because I grew up reading the books she is pastiching. There is certainly a kind of genius in pastiching such a broad swath of English children's literature. I thought the first book very funny, and the next two amusing enough, but I quailed at the bulk of the fourth. As a worldwide phenomena, I think of HP as something akin to Monte Python. Anyone who grew up watching English comedy knows the debt that Python owed to all that came before, to Spike Milligan and Dudley Moore and so many more. When it debuted in America it seemed revolutionary, because American comedy was so different. Anyway, I don't suppose either of us will be around to utter "I told you so" 100 years from now.
As I look at the biographies of the greats of the 19th and 20th centuries, I can't help noticing what active lives many of them led. So many of them were war correspondents or soldiers or sea captains. It used to be a fashion to list all the dangerous and/or working class jobs a writer had had before the became famous. Now it is more likely to be a list of the writing programs they graduated from or teach at.
I haven't had those kinds of jobs, though I was briefly a journalist. And I have three degrees, though none of them in writing. So I'm not really anyone to talk on this subject. But I suspect that I would be a better writer today if I had worked on a trawler or in a mining camp for a few years. We who presume to describe life should probably have lived one.
When I think modern literature, I just think writers who are alive today. Dumas and Dickens were the commercial writers of their day. Who’s to say Rowling and Grisham won’t be considered classic literature in 100 years? Language has only become more casual, I am sure it will continue to do so. The way we speak now might be considered literary in another century!
Well, I'm willing to say it. Not that I will be around long enough to see myself proven wrong! But I find no depth of characterization there. They are both deft yarn spinners, but they are both light entertainers, and their concerns are very much of the moment.
Language has become more casual. I don't know if it will continue to do so. It has gone back and forth before, and may do so again. No one writes like Hemingway anymore.
But to me, language is not the issue. Yes, literary fiction is more concerned with artful language than genre fiction. But I don't think it is language that makes literature literature. The art is about getting to the heart of the human experience, and that is achieved primarily through story. Language can play a secondary role in that, and most of the greats have been gifted stylists. But there have been many gifted stylists who did not get to the heart of the human experience.
Indeed, style seems to be the most consistent output of MFA program, and in some sense it is decent style. I have noticed, though, that there is a certain homogenization of style in the literary fiction I have read (not that I read a lot of it). It seems almost like those writers learned their style in school, rather than developing it themselves. It is, in some sense, too slick, too polished, too uniform to admit of any distinct personality. This is probably not anything like universal, but I have seen enough of it to think I am seeing something real.
But if modern literature just means writers who are alive today, why are we talking about all the obscure writers you both referred to in your conversation and not about Rowling and Grisham?
Indeed. I found Grisham to be a decent airplane book, and Rowling is witty enough for a short book. When they started getting long, I gave up on them. They are both one-note authors. Grisham is always about the cleverness of his protagonists. Rowling is always about her protagonists being "special" in some way. Both highly appealing tropes, of course. But not a lot of meat there.
And this is the problem with modern literature. It is all about the tropes. It is deliberately thin in these ways. Literary fiction is actually thin in its own way as well -- lush prose but relying on grimness and unhappiness to create limited drama. It's hollow. We need serious popular fiction.
I mean, I think JK Rowling is great as a children’s author. I loved the books when I was younger and I loved the movies as an adult. The stories are insanely magical and in worldbuilding she could compete with Tolkien. And I obviously a lot of people love Grisham, even if that is not really my thing.
To me both are lacking that sentence-level beauty and that philosophical complexity that I love in a book, and which historically older books have. BUT- that is only what I am looking for in a book. Clearly there are millions who disagree with me and who love these novels as they are. Which is why I wonder if it’s not that writing has lost some depth, but that I have not gotten with the times. I am being nostalgic for the past and that is making me lack appreciation for the works of the present.
I’m reminded of the movie Midnight in Paris, in which each generation idolizes the one that came before them! And doesn’t appreciate their own time!
With childhood books I think a lot of it is what you read first. Those books which first awakened wonder have a special place in your heart and imagination that later works cannot supplant. For me, Rowling, clever and funny as she is, cannot hold a candle to The Wierdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath, Elidor, The Wind in the Willows, Puck of Pook's Hill, Swallows and Amazons, or, of course, the Narnia books. But those were all book I read in childhood, and I was 40 the year the first Harry Potter book was published.
Part of the problem of comparing the past and the present is that there is so much more of the past and we only tend to see the tops of the hills, not the long valleys between them. Culture is clumpy. It waxes and wanes. I don't think we have to beat ourselves up for supposing that we are currently in a valley, that our culture had waned for several decades now, or that its obsession with trauma and misery, which you have noted, is a symptom of its waning.
Our task is to make something better, or at very least something more cheerful, in hopes that we made some contribution, however small, to its waxing again. Let us gather whatever pebbles we can to start building up the next high hill.
Now that that’s out of the way — I’m a horror and dark comedy fan, which is to say: that is my own context and narrative preference, and that colors how I see things. I do think a lot of the idealism vs cynicism debate can come down to personal taste. Neither side is fully correct but people will vibe with different things, and that’s great.
Here is my take: complex emotions are hard. They’re hard to deal with and they’re hard to represent artistically. It is much easier to write non-stop dreariness, or all-consuming happiness, than it is to create something interesting. And I think a major problem of our current cultural moment* is that writers are required to churn out a constant stream of content to stay on top of the algorithms.
Is a lot of that writing very good? Yes! Of course! But a lot of it is also a *barely* touched-up first draft, or written to pivot off of the latest trend, OR written in the hopes of getting picked up as a Netflix miniseries, and it shows. When speed is prioritized and rewarded above all, writers are going to run down the well-trodden paths. The well-trodden paths are one-note; they are the easy answers.
Well-crafted cynicism is not without humor, or absurdity, or hope. Just like well-crafted idealism is not without pain, anger, or fear, something unsettling to rub against and know its limits.
We can’t talk about the Age of Illumination without also talking about the fanfic-ification of writing as a whole. There’s now a crop of writers very skilled at leading readers toward very flat, overwhelming affects at the expense of…anything else literature is capable of. So I wonder how much of this problem could genuinely be fixed by giving writers more time to think things through and actually focus on writing, not just the image of being a writer.
And I think it’s easy to forget just how unfortunate “idealism” can be! How often has idealism really just been a cover for jingoism? Or a way to maintain the illusion of perfection, or a shortcut to easy moralism? When we look back on the optimistic post-WWII culture at large, it’s worth remembering the codes and studio systems that enforced that tone. Many of the artists who wanted to deviate - or even just inject their idealism with some level of criticism - were simply shut out.
I agree with you, Elle, that not every character needs to be traumatized. There does need to be a distinction between ongoing hurt and actual trauma, which is a very specific bio-social condition that we still don’t fully understand. It is damaging to only see your identity represented as traumatized or deeply unhappy.
But it’s also damaging to see some twee version of your identity that has no human hardship or capacity for hurt. The LGBTQ characters on Schitt’s Creek were accepted, but they still had issues — those issues just had nothing to do with their sexuality. David and Stevie, especially, had a lot of characterization around fear and existential dread and desires for stability. They weren’t Tragic Gays but they also weren’t the smiling, empty-headed, fabulously-dressed puppets they would’ve been if the show came out in, say, 2005.
TL:DR; good fiction requires nuance, which is absent from the flat, ham-fisted cynicism vs idealism we keep pinging between.
*insomuch as literary fiction encapsulates the cultural moment, which I don’t think it does. Romance novels are still the pillars of publishing and that genre — by definition — requires a Happily Ever After.
I agree, there's room for nuance. And I think that's what I'm arguing for (or at least hoping to read). I don't want to trudge through something traumatic, but I also don't want to waltz through something hammy. I think Schitt's Creek does strike this balance. And I can only hope for others!
Thanks for these wise words @Sollemnia. I think you're very much onto something with this: "When speed is prioritized and rewarded above all, writers are going to run down the well-trodden paths [...] this problem could be genuinely fixed by giving writers more time to think things through and actually focus on writing, not just the image of being a writer."
I think the last few years living with the pandemic taught a lot of us how to slow down in a different way, and I'm idealistic enough to think that a lot of people aren't going back to the speed of life that kept so many of us on a hamster wheel without being aware we are on it. To your point, once that recognition has been established, this requires nuance and reflection, which, lo and behold, is exactly what good fiction requires. Here's to a world in which people line up for book signings / releases / and the film options to most good books are never made because they can't be. Idealistic, I know. But life is a dream!
I think you nail it on the head wit this "I want writing that truly engages as in grabs me and takes me for “the ride.”" The kind of story that, once finished, you look around and tell the closest person next to you, "holy shit. you have to read this story." It happens subjectively, but there is objectively good storytelling. And this, more than anything, is what I think we need to focus on the era: characters who serve the story, not the other way around. It's been too long since we've had ourselves a good old fashioned adventure.
Lovely conversation. I do like the concept of metamodernism -- whatever you might end up calling it. (I am so over post-modern everything).
And to me, this quote is gold and maybe my next quest...
"but if the author has managed to trudge across the doldrums of nihilism, still swinging that lantern of hope from across the abyss, well then there’s no greater gift, in my opinion, than this kind of novel"
Thanks Jack. I wholly approve your potential next quest. If you aren't familiar yet with Dan Harmon's (Rick and Morty) "story circle," which is a slight simplification of Joseph Campbell's theory of the "hero journey," the stages where a character must face the chaos and make a sacrifice are particularly useful for figuring out how to get our characters across that abyss with lantern-still-swinging!
It's been such a joy having this conversation on this space. It's nice to find an online tribe. Your points re: characters in fiction all having to be fundamentally defined by their trauma is an important one. There was a great article by a writer named Parul Seghal a few months back that is very much worth the read (I'll put the link down below): "The experience of uncertainty and partial knowledge is one of the great, unheralded pleasures of fiction [...] The trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority."
I think we all need a bit more mystery in our lives, and I think we all deserve characters whose pasts, to some extent, must remain a mystery. To reduce a character's purpose / personality to trauma responses and sublimation runs the risk of objectifying them and taking advantage of the reader. Characters whose past is not necessarily knowable is a simple, beautiful way to ask the reader the question just how much we all should focus on the past in order to understand the present. Now I've got another essay to start thinking about ... until then, here's to seeing what else comes out of this dialogue. It's been a treat!
Interesting you say that. My utopian novel centers around a character who has no memory of her past. I'm using this construct for the very reason you said. If she can't remember her past, there is nothing to be haunted by! She is focused on the present, and so are we!
As a young writer (15 years ago), I thought dark was “cool”. So all of my stories centered around darkness, most of the time literally since my villains spawned from the Dark side. But I can see how I was possibly part of a generational thing, sort of like how Zack Snyder made Superman and JL have a dark tone.
I’ve obviously changed a lot in the past 15 years and I still want to write those stories because I think they are good ideas, but I’ve become hesitant to add to the overall zeitgeist of depressing and trauma-driven fiction. I’d more like to enjoy fictional worlds where the stakes are lower and the plot is character driven. So I’ve got a few ideas brewing thankfully.
It’s all so very subjective though, and I’m only able to elaborate on my personal journey. I enjoyed this discussion. Very thought-provoking!
I do think there is space for darkness. The show True Blood, for instance, might be considered dark. And yet it's fun? But Grey's Anatomy is dark, AND the characters are constantly suffering. Not as fun.
I don't think the darkness is the problem, it's the response to it! (And lord knows I went through my own dark phase. I wrote a gothic novel during it hahahahahaha!)
I started taking notes of my favourite quotes from this conversation, and by the end of it, I had copied and pasted over half the article.
I completely agree that our job is to shine a light on the goodness of humanity without ignoring our dark side. Although it's undeniable we have a culture that's obsessed with comfort, I don't think we are unwilling to investigate and understand darkness. The popularity of shows like Breaking Bad and Black Mirrors (before the brilliant show became Americanized) show people have an interest in understanding all spectrums of humanity— at least, while comfortably sitting on their couch staring at a flatscreen and munching away at whatever snack they ordered from their smartphone.
Still, I don't think those who read/those who are willing to use their imaginations and work to engage with all sides of humanity are a small minority. There are many examples, but the success of Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor shows how many people yearn for books that make us laugh, cry, question, and sense the sublime.
So much out there shows we’re living in the age of “illumination.” Especially when we delete or ignore our mindless-scrolling apps and turn to art that takes time so it can become timeless.
Thanks for the kind words and the thoughtful response. I find it fascinating that we live in an era wherein shows about serial killers, sociopaths, and greedy megalomaniacs are so popular ... there's something to be said about the grotesque / wanton nature of "freedom" these types of people exhibit ("freedom" in the sense of believing their actions have no problematic consequences). I recently rediscovered "The Fall" by Camus and I wonder in eras of such decadent living--which surely also accompany ages of illumination--how we get back to some sense of a more holistic / universal meaning without resorting to autocracy and dictating what SHOULD or SHOULDN'T be believed in. It's a wild ride, isn't it?
How do we get back to holistic/universal meaning without resorting to autocracy and dictating what should and shouldn't be believed in?
I don’t have the answers, but I think it's our job as artists to change the culture by making people feel this meaning rather than be didactic about it. I wrote the following last night for an article I'm working on: Most pop stars are nothing more than mass hallucinations orchestrated by corporate greed and clever marketing tactics. They planted the seeds with simple texts that teens can feel, let the roots take hold with social movements that do nothing to dismantle power structures, and let the plants grow to monstrous sizes to block the view to the empty wasteland behind them.
Celebrities have a responsibility to lead by example, but these people aren’t leaders; they’re puppets with the influence given to them by those in power. Buying 20 million dollar homes with 5-car garages and flying in private jets is not the example we need. It’s the opposite.
These celebrities aren’t artists; they’re corporate-created entertainers. I don’t give a shit if AI replaces these plastic, formulaic brands. With the right marketing schemes, I promise you won’t be able to tell the difference between them and a robot in the future.
We need real artists, people brave enough to stand up to the system making us sick. We need artists who burn the masks of materialism, not those who wear and decorate them with hubris. We need artists who overwhelm us with the truth, confront us with the uncomfortable, and submerge us in the sublime.
There are many celebrities who are just celebrities, but there are certainly celebrities who are artists too. And I agree with you that all artists have a responsibility to change the culture by breathing some life into some corner of it. (Whether famous or not). I choose to be progressive with my art, to see the light. I hope there are artists with much more celebrity who choose the same. Celebrity, at the end of the day, is just more followers for the work!
(That corporate interests take advantage of these artists, doesn't take away from the fact that they are still artists!)
Yeah the linguistic idea of what a “celebrity” is should be defined. Is Frank Ocean a celebrity? I think not. Is Tom Cruise? Probably more so. But regardless of the terminology, I agree, Nolan: “We need artists who burn the masks of materialism, not those who wear and decorate them with hubris.” Killer line. And this materialist question is something we need to be particularly aware of on a platform that tells us success is related to material gains. Because in some sense it is. We’d all love to make more money from our art. But when we start making art to make money, the materialism has already defined the creation. Making sure we create in spite of “success” is the kind of artists we still uphold (a Taylor Swift comes to mind; I’m not a fan but respect her art)...but she’s also fought back at the system when possible. Subversion is ALWAYS key.
The word "modern" as applied to literature, is a slippery one. It does not mean what it means when used with "medicine" or "plumbing" -- that is, using improved methods and techniques. It also doesn't mean, the literature of the moment, since that would mean J.K. Rowling and John Grisham, not the list of largely unknown-outside-academia authors mentioned in your discussion.
The heirs of Dumas and Dickens are not any of literary writers mentioned in your conversation. They are Rowling and Grisham. Yet Rowling and Grisham don't have the bottle of Dumas or Dickens. They won't be read in a hundred years, but Dumas and Dickens still will be.
Here is the difference between writers, doctors, and plumbers, though. You would rather be treated by the least accomplished graduate of a third world medical school today that by the finest doctor of the 19th century, and the difference isn't even close. You would rather have you plumbing done to 21st century standards rather than 19th century standards as well, though the difference is perhaps not so stark. This is because modern medical schools and modern trade schools transfer a sound body of knowledge and methods of practice that have been honed and proven over the years so that todays doctors and plumbers are incomparably better informed and better trained and better regulated than their 19th century counterparts.
On the other hand, not one MFA program in the history of MFA programs has turned out a writer of the caliber of a Dickens, a Dumas, a Conrad, a Kipling, a Waugh, or a Steinbeck (and I could add many more names to that list without diminishing my point). The modern approach of research, standardization, training, and regulation as worked brilliantly in many fields, but not in the arts. At minimal its effect is neutral. A good case could be made that it is destructive.
What I think we mean when we say "modern literature" is the product of the MFA factory, and that factory produces "literature" by a curious process that has, I think, little to do with the process used by the hacks, soldiers, journalists, sea captains, and ladies of the gentry who produced the greats of the ancient tradition. It seems to be the product you get when you pull the elements of literature through a vast literary analytical function, then grind it in the mill of fashionable ideology, and then form the fine paste that emerges from this process into fantastic and grotesque shapes.
Our culture has a hole in the middle. We have the genre mill grinding out pabulum on one side and the MFA mill grinding out haute pabulum on the other. What is missing is the serious popular fiction that used to be the backbone of our culture.
I'm late to this thread but thanks Mark for your thoughts. I respect your opinion and disagree with it, in fact. I grew up reading Harry Potter and consider it to be one of the most complete and cohesive stories ever written. The characters are flat because aside from Harry's basic back story, we don't know much about any particular character's deep past, which results in everything we know about the characters coming primarily from their actions (or lack thereof). I like this idea for this time and place...whether or not it's masterful storytelling or generic is really of secondary concern when I'm read those pages because *the story* is just so damn good, and this is something I think metamodern literature needs to remember. In my mind, * any * book that keeps millions of children and adults alike in their bedroom with the lamp on is something that will be read within 100 years, if nothing else because of the cultural significance of pulling humans towards the written word versus Netflix / videogames / etc. But that's okay to disagree on Harry Potter, a lot of people do. I personally can't speak to Grisham as I've never read him, but my lawyer of an aunt seems to think he's the bees knees.
To your other point re: MFA writing, I totally agree with you in that it has commodified and plastified the "literary fiction" of many eras, and over the past 10/15 years it seems to be doing the same thing for memoir and essay. I have an MFA, and I am thankful for it, and the primary reason why I enjoyed my program is that it did not make the literary workshop the cornerstone of the program. Workshops force people to write for the professor / for other students' approval, and that's anathema to honest writing. But I also started the MFA when I was 30 years old, after I'd published a first novel, which meant I already had a style and a voice that I wanted to improve versus discover or define. But that was just my experience, and while I am a better writer because of it, I am not sure that doing literally anything else that would've kept me disciplined and engaged with a literary community for 2 years wouldn't have had a comparable, better, and cheaper effect.
Well, there are lots and lots of writers who were bestsellers 100 or 150 years ago who no one has heard of now. I don't think of highly of Rowling as you do, perhaps because I grew up reading the books she is pastiching. There is certainly a kind of genius in pastiching such a broad swath of English children's literature. I thought the first book very funny, and the next two amusing enough, but I quailed at the bulk of the fourth. As a worldwide phenomena, I think of HP as something akin to Monte Python. Anyone who grew up watching English comedy knows the debt that Python owed to all that came before, to Spike Milligan and Dudley Moore and so many more. When it debuted in America it seemed revolutionary, because American comedy was so different. Anyway, I don't suppose either of us will be around to utter "I told you so" 100 years from now.
As I look at the biographies of the greats of the 19th and 20th centuries, I can't help noticing what active lives many of them led. So many of them were war correspondents or soldiers or sea captains. It used to be a fashion to list all the dangerous and/or working class jobs a writer had had before the became famous. Now it is more likely to be a list of the writing programs they graduated from or teach at.
I haven't had those kinds of jobs, though I was briefly a journalist. And I have three degrees, though none of them in writing. So I'm not really anyone to talk on this subject. But I suspect that I would be a better writer today if I had worked on a trawler or in a mining camp for a few years. We who presume to describe life should probably have lived one.
When I think modern literature, I just think writers who are alive today. Dumas and Dickens were the commercial writers of their day. Who’s to say Rowling and Grisham won’t be considered classic literature in 100 years? Language has only become more casual, I am sure it will continue to do so. The way we speak now might be considered literary in another century!
Well, I'm willing to say it. Not that I will be around long enough to see myself proven wrong! But I find no depth of characterization there. They are both deft yarn spinners, but they are both light entertainers, and their concerns are very much of the moment.
Language has become more casual. I don't know if it will continue to do so. It has gone back and forth before, and may do so again. No one writes like Hemingway anymore.
But to me, language is not the issue. Yes, literary fiction is more concerned with artful language than genre fiction. But I don't think it is language that makes literature literature. The art is about getting to the heart of the human experience, and that is achieved primarily through story. Language can play a secondary role in that, and most of the greats have been gifted stylists. But there have been many gifted stylists who did not get to the heart of the human experience.
Indeed, style seems to be the most consistent output of MFA program, and in some sense it is decent style. I have noticed, though, that there is a certain homogenization of style in the literary fiction I have read (not that I read a lot of it). It seems almost like those writers learned their style in school, rather than developing it themselves. It is, in some sense, too slick, too polished, too uniform to admit of any distinct personality. This is probably not anything like universal, but I have seen enough of it to think I am seeing something real.
But if modern literature just means writers who are alive today, why are we talking about all the obscure writers you both referred to in your conversation and not about Rowling and Grisham?
Because I don’t like Rowling and Grisham. I haven’t found much modern fiction I’ve read, to be honest, and that’s the trouble!
Indeed. I found Grisham to be a decent airplane book, and Rowling is witty enough for a short book. When they started getting long, I gave up on them. They are both one-note authors. Grisham is always about the cleverness of his protagonists. Rowling is always about her protagonists being "special" in some way. Both highly appealing tropes, of course. But not a lot of meat there.
And this is the problem with modern literature. It is all about the tropes. It is deliberately thin in these ways. Literary fiction is actually thin in its own way as well -- lush prose but relying on grimness and unhappiness to create limited drama. It's hollow. We need serious popular fiction.
I mean, I think JK Rowling is great as a children’s author. I loved the books when I was younger and I loved the movies as an adult. The stories are insanely magical and in worldbuilding she could compete with Tolkien. And I obviously a lot of people love Grisham, even if that is not really my thing.
To me both are lacking that sentence-level beauty and that philosophical complexity that I love in a book, and which historically older books have. BUT- that is only what I am looking for in a book. Clearly there are millions who disagree with me and who love these novels as they are. Which is why I wonder if it’s not that writing has lost some depth, but that I have not gotten with the times. I am being nostalgic for the past and that is making me lack appreciation for the works of the present.
I’m reminded of the movie Midnight in Paris, in which each generation idolizes the one that came before them! And doesn’t appreciate their own time!
With childhood books I think a lot of it is what you read first. Those books which first awakened wonder have a special place in your heart and imagination that later works cannot supplant. For me, Rowling, clever and funny as she is, cannot hold a candle to The Wierdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath, Elidor, The Wind in the Willows, Puck of Pook's Hill, Swallows and Amazons, or, of course, the Narnia books. But those were all book I read in childhood, and I was 40 the year the first Harry Potter book was published.
Part of the problem of comparing the past and the present is that there is so much more of the past and we only tend to see the tops of the hills, not the long valleys between them. Culture is clumpy. It waxes and wanes. I don't think we have to beat ourselves up for supposing that we are currently in a valley, that our culture had waned for several decades now, or that its obsession with trauma and misery, which you have noted, is a symptom of its waning.
Our task is to make something better, or at very least something more cheerful, in hopes that we made some contribution, however small, to its waxing again. Let us gather whatever pebbles we can to start building up the next high hill.
Since another commenter linked to the Parul Seghal trauma piece, I wanted to very quickly link to the OG trauma plot analysis by Yasmin Nair, written back in 2018. It’s much much longer and more thorough, and calls into question the economic incentives of trauma as a current trend: https://yasminnair.com/your-trauma-is-your-passport-hannah-gadsby-nanette-and-global-citizenship/?fbclid=IwAR3vTaQd2UJpDkt1OCDnwszdP-bQU2fKhE88v3dZ0WmCR9ay9u6QYEa-Yu4
Now that that’s out of the way — I’m a horror and dark comedy fan, which is to say: that is my own context and narrative preference, and that colors how I see things. I do think a lot of the idealism vs cynicism debate can come down to personal taste. Neither side is fully correct but people will vibe with different things, and that’s great.
Here is my take: complex emotions are hard. They’re hard to deal with and they’re hard to represent artistically. It is much easier to write non-stop dreariness, or all-consuming happiness, than it is to create something interesting. And I think a major problem of our current cultural moment* is that writers are required to churn out a constant stream of content to stay on top of the algorithms.
Is a lot of that writing very good? Yes! Of course! But a lot of it is also a *barely* touched-up first draft, or written to pivot off of the latest trend, OR written in the hopes of getting picked up as a Netflix miniseries, and it shows. When speed is prioritized and rewarded above all, writers are going to run down the well-trodden paths. The well-trodden paths are one-note; they are the easy answers.
Well-crafted cynicism is not without humor, or absurdity, or hope. Just like well-crafted idealism is not without pain, anger, or fear, something unsettling to rub against and know its limits.
We can’t talk about the Age of Illumination without also talking about the fanfic-ification of writing as a whole. There’s now a crop of writers very skilled at leading readers toward very flat, overwhelming affects at the expense of…anything else literature is capable of. So I wonder how much of this problem could genuinely be fixed by giving writers more time to think things through and actually focus on writing, not just the image of being a writer.
And I think it’s easy to forget just how unfortunate “idealism” can be! How often has idealism really just been a cover for jingoism? Or a way to maintain the illusion of perfection, or a shortcut to easy moralism? When we look back on the optimistic post-WWII culture at large, it’s worth remembering the codes and studio systems that enforced that tone. Many of the artists who wanted to deviate - or even just inject their idealism with some level of criticism - were simply shut out.
I agree with you, Elle, that not every character needs to be traumatized. There does need to be a distinction between ongoing hurt and actual trauma, which is a very specific bio-social condition that we still don’t fully understand. It is damaging to only see your identity represented as traumatized or deeply unhappy.
But it’s also damaging to see some twee version of your identity that has no human hardship or capacity for hurt. The LGBTQ characters on Schitt’s Creek were accepted, but they still had issues — those issues just had nothing to do with their sexuality. David and Stevie, especially, had a lot of characterization around fear and existential dread and desires for stability. They weren’t Tragic Gays but they also weren’t the smiling, empty-headed, fabulously-dressed puppets they would’ve been if the show came out in, say, 2005.
TL:DR; good fiction requires nuance, which is absent from the flat, ham-fisted cynicism vs idealism we keep pinging between.
*insomuch as literary fiction encapsulates the cultural moment, which I don’t think it does. Romance novels are still the pillars of publishing and that genre — by definition — requires a Happily Ever After.
I agree, there's room for nuance. And I think that's what I'm arguing for (or at least hoping to read). I don't want to trudge through something traumatic, but I also don't want to waltz through something hammy. I think Schitt's Creek does strike this balance. And I can only hope for others!
And thank you for the rec!
Thanks for these wise words @Sollemnia. I think you're very much onto something with this: "When speed is prioritized and rewarded above all, writers are going to run down the well-trodden paths [...] this problem could be genuinely fixed by giving writers more time to think things through and actually focus on writing, not just the image of being a writer."
I think the last few years living with the pandemic taught a lot of us how to slow down in a different way, and I'm idealistic enough to think that a lot of people aren't going back to the speed of life that kept so many of us on a hamster wheel without being aware we are on it. To your point, once that recognition has been established, this requires nuance and reflection, which, lo and behold, is exactly what good fiction requires. Here's to a world in which people line up for book signings / releases / and the film options to most good books are never made because they can't be. Idealistic, I know. But life is a dream!
What a great post/conversation. Thank you for doing this.
I’m already looking forward to more. I completely agree
with your trudging comments. And I am not sure at all
that we need to trudge through yet more “doldrums of
nihilism” although I’m up for a good “swinging . . . lantern
of hope” anytime. Abysses, not so much. Have already
crawled out of enough of them. Not that I don’t want to
work for my literature, but I want writing that truly engages
as in grabs me and takes me for “the ride.”
I totally support your wish for a literary idealism direction,
especially given the doldrums of the daily paper/post/newsfeed/
etc., but that is so hard to do. I find your positive comments
about Schitt’s Creek quite laudable as I have yet to break
through my slightly petty/latent bourgeois attitude toward it.
(Any day now, however.) I totally agree with your thoughts on
the trauma obsession of today’s many narratives. Sadly, it is
too “easy” to write from a story perspective even though from
real-life perspective true trauma is hell to live through. So
now the question for me is what does a literary idealism look
like? The protagonist in my not-yet-debuted novel(s) is a librarian
who has her troubles with life like everyone, but takes them on
coming from a foundation of knowing right and wrong. That
is hard to do today as so many “rights” and “wrongs” are being
redefined. Still, I think good needs to defeat evil, in the end.
I think you nail it on the head wit this "I want writing that truly engages as in grabs me and takes me for “the ride.”" The kind of story that, once finished, you look around and tell the closest person next to you, "holy shit. you have to read this story." It happens subjectively, but there is objectively good storytelling. And this, more than anything, is what I think we need to focus on the era: characters who serve the story, not the other way around. It's been too long since we've had ourselves a good old fashioned adventure.
Thanks for you comments Sam. I think we're on the same hunt.
Yes, what does literary idealism look like? That is exactly what I intend to find out.....
Lovely conversation. I do like the concept of metamodernism -- whatever you might end up calling it. (I am so over post-modern everything).
And to me, this quote is gold and maybe my next quest...
"but if the author has managed to trudge across the doldrums of nihilism, still swinging that lantern of hope from across the abyss, well then there’s no greater gift, in my opinion, than this kind of novel"
Thanks Jack. I wholly approve your potential next quest. If you aren't familiar yet with Dan Harmon's (Rick and Morty) "story circle," which is a slight simplification of Joseph Campbell's theory of the "hero journey," the stages where a character must face the chaos and make a sacrifice are particularly useful for figuring out how to get our characters across that abyss with lantern-still-swinging!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XGUVkOmPTA&ab_channel=StudioBinder
Thank you, Samuel. I am familiar with Campbell, but not Dan Harmon. I will definitely check it out.
It's been such a joy having this conversation on this space. It's nice to find an online tribe. Your points re: characters in fiction all having to be fundamentally defined by their trauma is an important one. There was a great article by a writer named Parul Seghal a few months back that is very much worth the read (I'll put the link down below): "The experience of uncertainty and partial knowledge is one of the great, unheralded pleasures of fiction [...] The trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority."
I think we all need a bit more mystery in our lives, and I think we all deserve characters whose pasts, to some extent, must remain a mystery. To reduce a character's purpose / personality to trauma responses and sublimation runs the risk of objectifying them and taking advantage of the reader. Characters whose past is not necessarily knowable is a simple, beautiful way to ask the reader the question just how much we all should focus on the past in order to understand the present. Now I've got another essay to start thinking about ... until then, here's to seeing what else comes out of this dialogue. It's been a treat!
[link for "The Case Against the Trauma Plot"]
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/the-case-against-the-trauma-plot
Interesting you say that. My utopian novel centers around a character who has no memory of her past. I'm using this construct for the very reason you said. If she can't remember her past, there is nothing to be haunted by! She is focused on the present, and so are we!
As a young writer (15 years ago), I thought dark was “cool”. So all of my stories centered around darkness, most of the time literally since my villains spawned from the Dark side. But I can see how I was possibly part of a generational thing, sort of like how Zack Snyder made Superman and JL have a dark tone.
I’ve obviously changed a lot in the past 15 years and I still want to write those stories because I think they are good ideas, but I’ve become hesitant to add to the overall zeitgeist of depressing and trauma-driven fiction. I’d more like to enjoy fictional worlds where the stakes are lower and the plot is character driven. So I’ve got a few ideas brewing thankfully.
It’s all so very subjective though, and I’m only able to elaborate on my personal journey. I enjoyed this discussion. Very thought-provoking!
I do think there is space for darkness. The show True Blood, for instance, might be considered dark. And yet it's fun? But Grey's Anatomy is dark, AND the characters are constantly suffering. Not as fun.
I don't think the darkness is the problem, it's the response to it! (And lord knows I went through my own dark phase. I wrote a gothic novel during it hahahahahaha!)