Great newsletter. Imo one of the great tragedies of our time is the number of people who should clearly be writing novels or screenplays or something else who instead play the essayist-pundit. Wesley Yang should be writing the next Invisible Man or Notes From Underground instead of yelling about transgenders on Twitter, Andrea Long Chu should be writing deranged plays etc etc. The footnote about the metrocons going home is very true and very funny and partly why I’ve never been able to maintain that sensibility despite flirting with it in college.
Thanks and definitely agreed on the first point. That's why I put in that huge block quote from Geoff Dyer in the Kundera piece. I remember reading it in about 2005 and thinking it pointed toward a beautiful future of nonfictional fiction, but in retrospect the influence of such ideas was a disaster and we need magical realism back! On the metrocon-to-shitlib-and-back pipeline, I think it partially illustrates the diversity of American political communities and their differing axes of polarization. In the city or the academy, it can seem shockingly right-wing to side with Camus over Sartre, but Camus is still the degenerate looney-left as far as the suburban homeowners' association is concerned. In each place, you forget the other place exists.
I’m never completely sure if I agree with the idea that bringing back an illiberal art would soothe political polarization across the board – we might just be too big of a country to all be in each others heads at the same time- but I often wonder if things might not be a little calmer amongst the intellectual take-haver set if they were all writing novels or something. I’ve never read Ta-Nehisi Coates novel (and I think I like his nonfiction a little more than you do) but I can imagine that sensibility, that sense of America as an ongoing tragedy with no solution being in some ways maybe better suited to a novel than essays.
Paradoxically we accept certain things as true (or true enough or true in X conditions or certainly as belonging to the "possible") if they're fictional whereas the walls go up against a directly stated thesis that is supposed to implicate us. I think normie conservatives, for example, are reaching toward this idea when they yearn for 80s/90s popular cinema and, upon being (rightly) told it was often liberal in implication, protest that it still wasn't, well, "woke," generally because the implication was lodged pretty deep in the whole affect of the production, subtext rather than today's bludgeoning supertext. So in short you may be right. (I've strayed from fiction vs. nonfiction into fiction vs. propaganda but I think the same principle applies.)
There's a curious and ironic rejoinder to your "Protestantism’s approach to scripture (requiring for its transmitted truth no priestly intermediary)" comment—the Protestant approach has itself fostered an enormous orchard of differing interpretations, courtesy in part of both ancient and modern theologians who themselves can function similar to intermediaries. Taken as a whole, these traditions are both richer and somwhat more inscrutable.
To my (Protestant) mind, intra-denominational antagonisms are usually a sign of arrogance or distortion of the foundational matters of the faith, whereas ecclesiastical teaching among Protestants better respects human humility before Scriptures (humility reminiscent of "the distance between God’s truths and ours," funny enough). In reading and interpreting the Scriptures with input from all these thinkers, they become more of a mosaic or stained-glass window, no real "window pane."
Thanks, yes, I wasn't speaking of the result and didn't intend to make Protestantism sound simplistic—its revolution was probably inevitable and on balance beneficial even for non-Protestants—I just meant that translating the Bible into the vernacular for all literate people to read for themselves implied a greater faith in language not to be an impediment than did a priest-driven system with the Bible in Latin. But with "every man a priest," every man learns the difficulties of interpretation the priests alone used to face.
Dyer is wrong about Kundera. He was a great essayist and a great novelist. It’s interesting in this context that Dyer’s recent book on Gary Winogrand is a total failure precisely because he tried to shoehorn him into a contemporary political framework, which is at odds with Winogrand’s unruly vision.
Thanks, I haven't kept up with Dyer but I'll take your word for it. I accept that I'm not really on the same frequency with what Kundera wants to do with the novel, as Sam Kahn and Felix Purat brilliantly explain, but they compare the heroine to Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina on the back cover of Immortality. I'll never forget Emma burning her bridal bouquet or Anna hot and flushed with her romantic novel on the train after she meets Vronsky, but I don't even remember the lady in Immortality's name let alone anything she did, and I read Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina 20 years ago and Immortality 10 years ago. Not his fault for the marketing copy, but still...of what I read I do prefer the essays.
Immortality wouldn’t be my choice as representative of Kundera. The Joke, Life is Elsewhere, The Unbearable Lightness of Being are what I think of. Excellent writing and an original vision. The Art of the Novel is also excellent.
Very glad the essay was compelling enough for you to respond to it, John. The points you make are subtle and important. (Also the writing here—the ocean & light metaphors—is unexpectedly beautiful.) For me, what you call “political intelligence” is better rendered as something more like worldview or philosophy, though these terms feel too drab for what we mean by them. This was the point I tried to make re Oppen: that the precise (i.e. unparaphrasable) understanding of humanity’s relation to itself (and to what it builds, sustains, corrupts, and so on) disclosed in Oppen’s poetry is not itself “political” in any first-order sense, but can be taken to have political *consequences.* Perhaps, again, the difference is more semantic than substantive.
Thanks, Alice! I think we're basically in agreement, just differing a bit on vocabulary. For the thing we're inadequately calling political intelligence, philosophy, worldview, we probably need a big German word like Weltanschauung, not necessarily because it means something different but because it sounds more intimidating (aesthetics!). BTW, I've been reading Oppen based on your and Emmalea's allusions. I like this part from "Of Being Numerous," it may have to do with what we're talking about:
One must not come to feel that he has a thousand threads in his hands,
Great newsletter. Imo one of the great tragedies of our time is the number of people who should clearly be writing novels or screenplays or something else who instead play the essayist-pundit. Wesley Yang should be writing the next Invisible Man or Notes From Underground instead of yelling about transgenders on Twitter, Andrea Long Chu should be writing deranged plays etc etc. The footnote about the metrocons going home is very true and very funny and partly why I’ve never been able to maintain that sensibility despite flirting with it in college.
Thanks and definitely agreed on the first point. That's why I put in that huge block quote from Geoff Dyer in the Kundera piece. I remember reading it in about 2005 and thinking it pointed toward a beautiful future of nonfictional fiction, but in retrospect the influence of such ideas was a disaster and we need magical realism back! On the metrocon-to-shitlib-and-back pipeline, I think it partially illustrates the diversity of American political communities and their differing axes of polarization. In the city or the academy, it can seem shockingly right-wing to side with Camus over Sartre, but Camus is still the degenerate looney-left as far as the suburban homeowners' association is concerned. In each place, you forget the other place exists.
I’m never completely sure if I agree with the idea that bringing back an illiberal art would soothe political polarization across the board – we might just be too big of a country to all be in each others heads at the same time- but I often wonder if things might not be a little calmer amongst the intellectual take-haver set if they were all writing novels or something. I’ve never read Ta-Nehisi Coates novel (and I think I like his nonfiction a little more than you do) but I can imagine that sensibility, that sense of America as an ongoing tragedy with no solution being in some ways maybe better suited to a novel than essays.
Paradoxically we accept certain things as true (or true enough or true in X conditions or certainly as belonging to the "possible") if they're fictional whereas the walls go up against a directly stated thesis that is supposed to implicate us. I think normie conservatives, for example, are reaching toward this idea when they yearn for 80s/90s popular cinema and, upon being (rightly) told it was often liberal in implication, protest that it still wasn't, well, "woke," generally because the implication was lodged pretty deep in the whole affect of the production, subtext rather than today's bludgeoning supertext. So in short you may be right. (I've strayed from fiction vs. nonfiction into fiction vs. propaganda but I think the same principle applies.)
There's a curious and ironic rejoinder to your "Protestantism’s approach to scripture (requiring for its transmitted truth no priestly intermediary)" comment—the Protestant approach has itself fostered an enormous orchard of differing interpretations, courtesy in part of both ancient and modern theologians who themselves can function similar to intermediaries. Taken as a whole, these traditions are both richer and somwhat more inscrutable.
To my (Protestant) mind, intra-denominational antagonisms are usually a sign of arrogance or distortion of the foundational matters of the faith, whereas ecclesiastical teaching among Protestants better respects human humility before Scriptures (humility reminiscent of "the distance between God’s truths and ours," funny enough). In reading and interpreting the Scriptures with input from all these thinkers, they become more of a mosaic or stained-glass window, no real "window pane."
Thanks, yes, I wasn't speaking of the result and didn't intend to make Protestantism sound simplistic—its revolution was probably inevitable and on balance beneficial even for non-Protestants—I just meant that translating the Bible into the vernacular for all literate people to read for themselves implied a greater faith in language not to be an impediment than did a priest-driven system with the Bible in Latin. But with "every man a priest," every man learns the difficulties of interpretation the priests alone used to face.
Dyer is wrong about Kundera. He was a great essayist and a great novelist. It’s interesting in this context that Dyer’s recent book on Gary Winogrand is a total failure precisely because he tried to shoehorn him into a contemporary political framework, which is at odds with Winogrand’s unruly vision.
Thanks, I haven't kept up with Dyer but I'll take your word for it. I accept that I'm not really on the same frequency with what Kundera wants to do with the novel, as Sam Kahn and Felix Purat brilliantly explain, but they compare the heroine to Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina on the back cover of Immortality. I'll never forget Emma burning her bridal bouquet or Anna hot and flushed with her romantic novel on the train after she meets Vronsky, but I don't even remember the lady in Immortality's name let alone anything she did, and I read Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina 20 years ago and Immortality 10 years ago. Not his fault for the marketing copy, but still...of what I read I do prefer the essays.
Immortality wouldn’t be my choice as representative of Kundera. The Joke, Life is Elsewhere, The Unbearable Lightness of Being are what I think of. Excellent writing and an original vision. The Art of the Novel is also excellent.
Thank you—I've read Unbearable Lightness, and Life Is Elsewhere does look good.
Very glad the essay was compelling enough for you to respond to it, John. The points you make are subtle and important. (Also the writing here—the ocean & light metaphors—is unexpectedly beautiful.) For me, what you call “political intelligence” is better rendered as something more like worldview or philosophy, though these terms feel too drab for what we mean by them. This was the point I tried to make re Oppen: that the precise (i.e. unparaphrasable) understanding of humanity’s relation to itself (and to what it builds, sustains, corrupts, and so on) disclosed in Oppen’s poetry is not itself “political” in any first-order sense, but can be taken to have political *consequences.* Perhaps, again, the difference is more semantic than substantive.
Thanks, Alice! I think we're basically in agreement, just differing a bit on vocabulary. For the thing we're inadequately calling political intelligence, philosophy, worldview, we probably need a big German word like Weltanschauung, not necessarily because it means something different but because it sounds more intimidating (aesthetics!). BTW, I've been reading Oppen based on your and Emmalea's allusions. I like this part from "Of Being Numerous," it may have to do with what we're talking about:
One must not come to feel that he has a thousand threads in his hands,
He must somehow see the one thing;
This is the level of art
There are other levels
But there is no other level of art