Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books - Posts Tagged "american"
The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2005, 2007) by Olga Grushin
I don’t know about you, but as I grow older, I rarely read a book with the total abandonment I used to experience as a child or a teenager. Olga Grushin, a young(ish) American writer who emigrated from Russia at eighteen, must have some special powers in order to cast this spell with both her novels, The Line and The Dream Life of Sukhanov.
The first thing that separates Grushin’s novels from those written by her American contemporaries is that, unlike them, she is still interested in something called “the human condition.” I am always puzzled by the fact that, while apparently political, most (relatively) young American writers, don’t integrate this interest into something one might call “our universal condition.” But then, how could they, when those of them who are in academia, are taught to run away from notions of the “universal” as if they were plague? On the other hand, many writers who integrate a contemporary political experience into their writings—usually poets—do this in such a righteous, sloganeering way that one is instantly tempted to become apolitical. I am thinking here of the numerous bad poems simmering with righteous indignation at W. Bush that I had to listen to during endless poetry readings.
All this to say that it may take a writer who has actually lived in a country where one couldn’t run away from politics, where every gesture ended up being political whether one was aware of it or not, to write in a mature way about the individual versus the collective, the singular versus the universal, fate versus will, and the relationship between the individual destiny and history. One cannot deal with such subjects when one has that nihilist ironic tone many contemporary American writers feel obligated to exhibit.
The historical background of The Dream Life of Sukhanov is that of Russia between the 1930s and the 1980s. The protagonist is the director of the main arts magazine in Moscow, and son-in-law of the most famous painter of day. Both titles implied a privileged position under communism, since one couldn’t get them without bowing to the Communist Party, and they came with numerous perks: access to special stores of the nomenklatura, a private chauffeur, etc.
Little by little, the reader is drawn into the hero’s dream life, and finds out that he had grown up in poverty and fear, having witnessed the killings of the Stalinist era and his father’s suicide. As a young man he fell in love with surrealism, and despised the official rhetoric and the socialist realist paintings depicting optimist laborers singing the beauty of their tractors. And then, one day he had to choose between continuing to be a poor, unrecognized painter, faithful to his ideals, and selling out to those in power in order to provide for his family.
At the heart of the novel is the choice, or rather, the question: what would you do if you had to choose? Sukhanov has to choose between killing the artist in himself and collaborating with the regime, on one hand, and keeping his artistic integrity, but having to survive by doing hard, low paid jobs, on the other hand. But choosing the latter also means committing suicide as an artist, since he wouldn’t be able to exhibit his paintings, and what good is a painting without a viewer?
In appearance, the novel gives us the story of a man who has betrayed his youth, but the closer we get to the end, the more we realize that the novel doesn’t have any easy answers, and that whatever the man would have chosen, he would have failed. At the end of the novel, a character introduced in the very first pages reappears: Sukhanov’s friend, Belkin, who had taken the opposite path, that of artistic honesty and everyday misery. Belkin, who is poor and whose wife has left him, finally gets his first show when he is in his mid-fifties, but then he realizes that he is a mediocre painter.
Until his world suddenly unravels, Sukhanov is rich, happily married to a gorgeous woman, respected (or rather, feared) by those in his profession. In the end, his entire world falls apart, and although as readers we know that he is justly punished, the author doesn’t give us a straight answer regarding the better choice. As Sukhanov’s wife says during their younger (and poorer) days, “There is more than one way to lose one’s soul.”
This is an extremely mature novel, and it is amazing that a writer who left Russia at such a young age can recreate so well not only the people’s daily lives and the country’s atmosphere, but the existential choices communism imposed on people. As rooted as the novel is in a particular time and place, this very anchoring makes it universal insofar as in many ways we are all products of our choices. Last but not least, Olga Grushin is a great stylist, and her paragraphs on art are among the best in the novel.
The first thing that separates Grushin’s novels from those written by her American contemporaries is that, unlike them, she is still interested in something called “the human condition.” I am always puzzled by the fact that, while apparently political, most (relatively) young American writers, don’t integrate this interest into something one might call “our universal condition.” But then, how could they, when those of them who are in academia, are taught to run away from notions of the “universal” as if they were plague? On the other hand, many writers who integrate a contemporary political experience into their writings—usually poets—do this in such a righteous, sloganeering way that one is instantly tempted to become apolitical. I am thinking here of the numerous bad poems simmering with righteous indignation at W. Bush that I had to listen to during endless poetry readings.
All this to say that it may take a writer who has actually lived in a country where one couldn’t run away from politics, where every gesture ended up being political whether one was aware of it or not, to write in a mature way about the individual versus the collective, the singular versus the universal, fate versus will, and the relationship between the individual destiny and history. One cannot deal with such subjects when one has that nihilist ironic tone many contemporary American writers feel obligated to exhibit.
The historical background of The Dream Life of Sukhanov is that of Russia between the 1930s and the 1980s. The protagonist is the director of the main arts magazine in Moscow, and son-in-law of the most famous painter of day. Both titles implied a privileged position under communism, since one couldn’t get them without bowing to the Communist Party, and they came with numerous perks: access to special stores of the nomenklatura, a private chauffeur, etc.
Little by little, the reader is drawn into the hero’s dream life, and finds out that he had grown up in poverty and fear, having witnessed the killings of the Stalinist era and his father’s suicide. As a young man he fell in love with surrealism, and despised the official rhetoric and the socialist realist paintings depicting optimist laborers singing the beauty of their tractors. And then, one day he had to choose between continuing to be a poor, unrecognized painter, faithful to his ideals, and selling out to those in power in order to provide for his family.
At the heart of the novel is the choice, or rather, the question: what would you do if you had to choose? Sukhanov has to choose between killing the artist in himself and collaborating with the regime, on one hand, and keeping his artistic integrity, but having to survive by doing hard, low paid jobs, on the other hand. But choosing the latter also means committing suicide as an artist, since he wouldn’t be able to exhibit his paintings, and what good is a painting without a viewer?
In appearance, the novel gives us the story of a man who has betrayed his youth, but the closer we get to the end, the more we realize that the novel doesn’t have any easy answers, and that whatever the man would have chosen, he would have failed. At the end of the novel, a character introduced in the very first pages reappears: Sukhanov’s friend, Belkin, who had taken the opposite path, that of artistic honesty and everyday misery. Belkin, who is poor and whose wife has left him, finally gets his first show when he is in his mid-fifties, but then he realizes that he is a mediocre painter.
Until his world suddenly unravels, Sukhanov is rich, happily married to a gorgeous woman, respected (or rather, feared) by those in his profession. In the end, his entire world falls apart, and although as readers we know that he is justly punished, the author doesn’t give us a straight answer regarding the better choice. As Sukhanov’s wife says during their younger (and poorer) days, “There is more than one way to lose one’s soul.”
This is an extremely mature novel, and it is amazing that a writer who left Russia at such a young age can recreate so well not only the people’s daily lives and the country’s atmosphere, but the existential choices communism imposed on people. As rooted as the novel is in a particular time and place, this very anchoring makes it universal insofar as in many ways we are all products of our choices. Last but not least, Olga Grushin is a great stylist, and her paragraphs on art are among the best in the novel.
Calling Mr. King by Ronald De Feo
When I opened Ronald De Feo’s Calling Mr. King I was convinced I wasn’t going to read more than a few pages. I had received a free copy at the BEA from the publisher, Other Press, and since I normally don’t read novels about hit men, I thought I would just take a quick look at the hit man’s travels between Paris, London, New York and Barcelona, and get some vicarious tourist enjoyment this way. And then…I couldn’t stop reading. This novel turned out to be a faux thriller written in a minimalist, witty style, in the voice of a man who, after having worked as a hit man for all his adult life, starts to wonder one day about the life and the world inhabited by his “marks.” He begins to do research on Georgian style houses because one of his targets lived in such a house, and eventually, becomes fascinated with art and architecture. The hit man goes through some Sartrian moments of existential nausea, and even begins to change by the end, but the change is credible and not at all moralizing—that is, the author is smart enough not to tell us a story of “redemption” (though one may frame it this way). A very entertaining and witty novel.
The Wavering Knife by Brian Evenson (FC2, 2004)
Among the writers we read there are some who entertain us, some we can appreciate but don’t feel any particular affinity with, some we intensely dislike, and some we admire so much we’d like to be them. And then, there is a small category that transcends all the categories above: the writers we are simply in awe of. I had such a feeling when I read Th. Mann, or Maurice Blanchot. And now—reading Brian Evenson’s The Wavering Knife.
I should say that I didn’t “like” all the stories in this collection—in fact, I disliked some of them because of their violence and cruelty (though this violence makes me think of Georges Bataille, since in many of the stories it’s directed against the first-person narrator—that is, against the author’s alter ego—and is, therefore, a very different kind of violence that the one in, say, Hollywood movies). One could say that the dismembering of the narrator’s body—a leitmotif in many of these stories—is akin to the falling apart of language and its meaning (sorry for the cliché, but it’s hard to put into a language that doesn’t sound ridiculous the experience of reading these stories). Or, one could say exactly the opposite: that in order for language to be born, the writer has to experience a kind of death: “language being the only thing worth living, or dying, over” (from “One Over Twelve”).
Evenson’s descriptions of the various mutilations of the body are, for me, among the most authentic expressions I’ve ever come across of the attempt to capture a lost sacredness of language (again, the word “sacredness” should be taken here in the sense given to it by Bataille or Blanchot). Another author in whose work I felt a similar authenticity is the poet Ghérasim Luca—not by accident are both Luca and Evenson praised by Gilles Deleuze. Evenson doesn’t have Luca’s stammered language—on the contrary, he is a master of the proper word (i.e., of the perfect word in the right place) but there is a pain coming through the page, which can only originate in the author’s body, and which seals the text with an authenticity that refuses to accept any kind of (mimetic) “representation” of the experience.
But there are also stories in this collection that are extremely funny—a dark humor, to be sure—such as “The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette.” In this story, the characters’ names and “relationships” have a Beckettian absurdness; in other stories this absurdness goes even farther, as the “relationships” are stripped of causality and psychology, and the settings are reduced to their essential elements. It is also interesting that this book is written (for the most part) in two voices: one, infused with Beckettian detachment; and another one, very different, impersonating a Christian, alcoholic, government-hater fundamentalist who, obviously, “doesn’t express the author’s point of view.”
I should say that I didn’t “like” all the stories in this collection—in fact, I disliked some of them because of their violence and cruelty (though this violence makes me think of Georges Bataille, since in many of the stories it’s directed against the first-person narrator—that is, against the author’s alter ego—and is, therefore, a very different kind of violence that the one in, say, Hollywood movies). One could say that the dismembering of the narrator’s body—a leitmotif in many of these stories—is akin to the falling apart of language and its meaning (sorry for the cliché, but it’s hard to put into a language that doesn’t sound ridiculous the experience of reading these stories). Or, one could say exactly the opposite: that in order for language to be born, the writer has to experience a kind of death: “language being the only thing worth living, or dying, over” (from “One Over Twelve”).
Evenson’s descriptions of the various mutilations of the body are, for me, among the most authentic expressions I’ve ever come across of the attempt to capture a lost sacredness of language (again, the word “sacredness” should be taken here in the sense given to it by Bataille or Blanchot). Another author in whose work I felt a similar authenticity is the poet Ghérasim Luca—not by accident are both Luca and Evenson praised by Gilles Deleuze. Evenson doesn’t have Luca’s stammered language—on the contrary, he is a master of the proper word (i.e., of the perfect word in the right place) but there is a pain coming through the page, which can only originate in the author’s body, and which seals the text with an authenticity that refuses to accept any kind of (mimetic) “representation” of the experience.
But there are also stories in this collection that are extremely funny—a dark humor, to be sure—such as “The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette.” In this story, the characters’ names and “relationships” have a Beckettian absurdness; in other stories this absurdness goes even farther, as the “relationships” are stripped of causality and psychology, and the settings are reduced to their essential elements. It is also interesting that this book is written (for the most part) in two voices: one, infused with Beckettian detachment; and another one, very different, impersonating a Christian, alcoholic, government-hater fundamentalist who, obviously, “doesn’t express the author’s point of view.”
Stories on Contemporary China
Vertical Motion by Can Xue (Open Letter, 2011. Trans. from the Chinese by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping)
The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel (Other Press, 2009)
I had read Five Spice Street—one of the most original novels I’ve ever come across—by Can Xue, so I knew what to expect when I opened Vertical Motion. The latter is a rather eclectic collection, from the title story, written in a dry, impersonal tone, in the voice of a “little critter” that lives deep under the earth, to more emotionally-colored stories, such as “Cotton Candy,” in which a child, fascinated with a cotton-candy machine, daydreams about being a vendor.
This collection, although less captivating than Five Spice Street, confirmed my impression that Can Xue is one of the most interesting contemporary world writers. Several months later, the power of her novel is undiminished: I am still thinking about it, in spite of a less-than-average translation (which makes it all the more impressive). Surprisingly, Vertical Motion, which has been translated by the same team, is quite a good translation. I am not sure how to explain this: a better editor, more revisions, or simply the fact that the translators are now more experienced?
Immediately after finishing Vertical Motion, I discovered The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel. Considering that this too is about contemporary China, and the stories in both collections have been published roughly around the same time, I thought that a parallel discussion might be interesting.
Tel lives in both Beijing and New York, and, if one is to believe his bio note, he has worked as a quantum physicist and an opera librettist. I am a little skeptical simply because the tone and style of the book are those of someone who could make up his bio. On the other hand, Tel’s writing is so different than that of his American (MFA-ized) contemporaries that maybe he is telling the truth.
The Beijing of Possibilities is one of the wittiest books by an American writer I’ve read in a while. The writing often sounds journalistic (if this were a film, I would say “like a documentary”): few adjectives and apparently simple sentences, but which delve into the described reality in an immediate way (that is, a way that sounds un-mediated, raw and honest); but this narrative approach sometimes takes unexpected turns and veers toward the fairy tale mode or the allegoric-fantastic. I can tell that Jonathan Tel lives in two parallel worlds because the structure of his stories is often “bipolar”: he would start with a story about ancient China, and then move to a story about contemporary China. Little by little the reader realizes that the two are different versions of the same story.
Because of his unusual approach to storytelling, Jonathan Tel has been compared to Sebald and Calvino, but, frankly, I don’t see many parallels, except for the photographs inserted in some of the stories. Personally, I think he is a very original writer, and I am at a loss regarding a possible comparison (which is impressive: how many writers do you know who don’t write like anyone else?)
Whether you are looking for an intelligent book of fiction, or a book on cotemporary China, The Beijing of Possibilities is a great read: as in many places undergoing profound transformations, contemporary Chinese reality is sometimes more surreal than fiction (I’ll only mention the Gorilla man, i.e., a man dressed as a gorilla, whose job is to sing celebratory songs on special occasions to office employees all across the city).
The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel (Other Press, 2009)
I had read Five Spice Street—one of the most original novels I’ve ever come across—by Can Xue, so I knew what to expect when I opened Vertical Motion. The latter is a rather eclectic collection, from the title story, written in a dry, impersonal tone, in the voice of a “little critter” that lives deep under the earth, to more emotionally-colored stories, such as “Cotton Candy,” in which a child, fascinated with a cotton-candy machine, daydreams about being a vendor.
This collection, although less captivating than Five Spice Street, confirmed my impression that Can Xue is one of the most interesting contemporary world writers. Several months later, the power of her novel is undiminished: I am still thinking about it, in spite of a less-than-average translation (which makes it all the more impressive). Surprisingly, Vertical Motion, which has been translated by the same team, is quite a good translation. I am not sure how to explain this: a better editor, more revisions, or simply the fact that the translators are now more experienced?
Immediately after finishing Vertical Motion, I discovered The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel. Considering that this too is about contemporary China, and the stories in both collections have been published roughly around the same time, I thought that a parallel discussion might be interesting.
Tel lives in both Beijing and New York, and, if one is to believe his bio note, he has worked as a quantum physicist and an opera librettist. I am a little skeptical simply because the tone and style of the book are those of someone who could make up his bio. On the other hand, Tel’s writing is so different than that of his American (MFA-ized) contemporaries that maybe he is telling the truth.
The Beijing of Possibilities is one of the wittiest books by an American writer I’ve read in a while. The writing often sounds journalistic (if this were a film, I would say “like a documentary”): few adjectives and apparently simple sentences, but which delve into the described reality in an immediate way (that is, a way that sounds un-mediated, raw and honest); but this narrative approach sometimes takes unexpected turns and veers toward the fairy tale mode or the allegoric-fantastic. I can tell that Jonathan Tel lives in two parallel worlds because the structure of his stories is often “bipolar”: he would start with a story about ancient China, and then move to a story about contemporary China. Little by little the reader realizes that the two are different versions of the same story.
Because of his unusual approach to storytelling, Jonathan Tel has been compared to Sebald and Calvino, but, frankly, I don’t see many parallels, except for the photographs inserted in some of the stories. Personally, I think he is a very original writer, and I am at a loss regarding a possible comparison (which is impressive: how many writers do you know who don’t write like anyone else?)
Whether you are looking for an intelligent book of fiction, or a book on cotemporary China, The Beijing of Possibilities is a great read: as in many places undergoing profound transformations, contemporary Chinese reality is sometimes more surreal than fiction (I’ll only mention the Gorilla man, i.e., a man dressed as a gorilla, whose job is to sing celebratory songs on special occasions to office employees all across the city).
Middle C by William H. Gass
There are writers one respects and admires, but doesn’t necessarily enjoy reading. William Gass—for me—falls into this category. Middle C is an impressive and ambitious novel, which—hard as I tried—I couldn’t finish. The protagonist, Joseph, is the son of an Austrian man who, in order to get his family away from the Nazis, took the identity of a Jewish man, then, when the war ended, disappeared. The family moved from England to America—where Joseph’s story begins.
Like his father, Joseph is a musician—and if you are a lover of classical music, Gass’s outstanding knowledge on the subject is certainly a plus. Joseph keeps reflecting on the fate of humanity by way of rephrasing a sentence, “The fear that the human race might not survive has been replaced by the fear that it will endure.” Raymond Queneau did something similar in Exercises in Style—but Queneau is a very playful, funny writer, while Gass is a very serious one, and his numerous variations on the above sentence become tiresome. In fact, turning the pages of this book was the equivalent of a heavy lifting, in spite of Gass’s amazingly intricate-beautiful style.
As unenthusiastic as this review sounds, I want to thank Knopf for having published this “reader-unfriendly,” challenging novel. These days, it is a treat to feel, as a reader, that a publisher wants to lift you (up), rather than satisfy your lowest impulses.
Like his father, Joseph is a musician—and if you are a lover of classical music, Gass’s outstanding knowledge on the subject is certainly a plus. Joseph keeps reflecting on the fate of humanity by way of rephrasing a sentence, “The fear that the human race might not survive has been replaced by the fear that it will endure.” Raymond Queneau did something similar in Exercises in Style—but Queneau is a very playful, funny writer, while Gass is a very serious one, and his numerous variations on the above sentence become tiresome. In fact, turning the pages of this book was the equivalent of a heavy lifting, in spite of Gass’s amazingly intricate-beautiful style.
As unenthusiastic as this review sounds, I want to thank Knopf for having published this “reader-unfriendly,” challenging novel. These days, it is a treat to feel, as a reader, that a publisher wants to lift you (up), rather than satisfy your lowest impulses.
My Top Ten Fiction Books for 2014
1. The Art of Joy by Goliarda Sapienza (2013, Italian)
2. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante (2005, Italian)
3. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante (2014, Italian)
4. The Bridge over the Neroch by Leonid Tsypkin (2012, Russian)
5. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (2006, British)
6. Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim (1995, 1919, British)
7. Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott (2003, 1984, American)
8. Kinder than Solitude by Yiyun Li (2014, American-Chinese)
9. Slow Homecoming by Peter Handke (2009, Austrian)
10. The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tampinar (2014, Turkish)
2. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante (2005, Italian)
3. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante (2014, Italian)
4. The Bridge over the Neroch by Leonid Tsypkin (2012, Russian)
5. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (2006, British)
6. Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim (1995, 1919, British)
7. Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott (2003, 1984, American)
8. Kinder than Solitude by Yiyun Li (2014, American-Chinese)
9. Slow Homecoming by Peter Handke (2009, Austrian)
10. The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tampinar (2014, Turkish)
Story and Belonging: Reading, Writing and Cultural Appropriation
As someone who was formed by several different cultural traditions and languages, I am very aware of the different ways in which concepts such as "story" and "writing" are framed. For instance, in English one can say “You stole my story!” in order to mean “You stole my life experience”—an absurd claim, since stealing anyone’s life experience would be equivalent to stealing one's body and mind. It used to be that “You stole my story” could only mean “you stole my (published) story”—that is, the word “story” meant an artifact made of words, images, musical notes, etc. The American culture ended up conflating both meanings of “story” (artifact AND experience) and then, in good American tradition, it exported them to the rest of the world.
To begin with, this conflation can only happen in a very materialist culture: if my life experience is transferable, it means that anyone can “use” it, and I can “sell” it—again, a very specific American idea, which started, very likely, in the movie industry where I could “sell” my life “story,” and which by now has been instilled in both readers and writers by the publishing industry. Because of this vision, other concepts that have nothing to do with literature and are specific to American culture are being added to this already-perverted idea of “story.” All these other concepts are time- and space-specific, that is, they happen to reflect the (American) society’s preoccupations at present. Take race, for instance. It is very obvious that the current racial tensions are being abusively transferred onto the topic of "story"--by "abusively" I mean that these are completely different issues, but they have become intermingled for many Anglophone writers. Why? For the simple reason that today in America race relations are on everyone’s mind.
Here, I would ask my fellow American writers to step back for a second and try to imagine being a writer in, say, the Czech Republic, or Japan, or Iceland. All these countries have great literary traditions: the Czechs have given us the greatest modern writer, Kafka; Japan has not only an extremely sophisticated contemporary literature; it has given us the first world novel; and Iceland is probably the country with the highest percentage of readers in the world. None of these countries has a serious reason (at least so far--this may change in the future) to be concerned with race relation But when American writers reframe the discussion about literature in way that makes race and “cultural appropriation” part of its definition, that is, when they redefine what a story is by making the claim that a story “belongs” to the raw material that may have inspired it, that claim affects not only American writers; it affects also Japanese, Icelandic and Czech writers. It affects them because we live in a global world, and publishing industries influence each other—though the influence comes in most cases from the American publishing industry to the rest of the world, and not the other way around.
In a world of pre-packaged things, the way we write about anything is, by necessity, genre-specific. Journalism is by essence of its time, and even when it claims to be neutral it still tries in some way to deal with (ie, “fix”) the reality it talks about. Journalism is always second-degree writing (it’s ABOUT something). By contrast, fiction is not of its time. The better it is, the more it transgresses its own space and time. And unlike what many writers seem to believe, fiction is not necessarily about “something.” Like “Seinfeld” (a work of TV fiction), it can be about nothing, yet still be (good) fiction. Fiction re-creates the world, and in this sense it is always first-degree writing. Which brings me—again—to the concept of story in contemporary American culture, as both artifact AND life experience. According to this concept, a story must necessarily be “about something.” When writers accuse each other of “cultural appropriation,” their implicit vision of a story is that of an “about-something:” as such, a story has different “ends” or “goals” than a story based on a vision of literature as re-creation of the world. When you “appropriate,” you use things; when you (re)create, you reshape every single thing.
The fact is that what (we think) a story should do changes each time we reframe the question. For example, Roxana Robinson asks, “To whom does a story belong?”—which has the merit of bringing back the discussion on the terrain of literature. This is a question that has been asked in different ways by writers and literary critics in the past. I will give only one name: Umberto Eco, whose concept of “opera aperta” (open work) means that works of art do not hold a single, enclosed meaning, but rather, as many meanings as readers. What Eco and many other 20th century critics argue is that meaning in art/literature is given both by the reader and the writer, which means that the work belongs (in different ways) to anyone who reads/sees/hears it. My answer is different from both that of Roxana Robinson (it belongs to the writer) and that of certain activists preoccupied with race relations (it belongs to the one who has lived it): it belongs to no one and everyone. By its very essence, a story doesn’t belong. (By the way, “be-long” is a very beautiful word in the English language). People may belong and dwell, stories pass, and the more a story moves through time toward us the greater it is. If it weren’t great, it would belong only to its time and its contemporaries.
One reason many writers of color hate "cultural appropriation" (and these words should be put in quotes because they represent a way of framing literature that is--again--specific to contemporary Anglophone cultures, and therefore, is not universal) is because of "exploitation"--but "exploitation" is invoked--and for good reason--only when a book or its author becomes famous. In other words: exploitation only exists if the publishing industry has framed the discussion already by deciding that it wants certain "stories" on the market." Let’s face it, no one would want to "appropriate" anyone's story if they weren't rewarded for it (and as writers, we all know that being "rewarded" means being published and being paid attention to). So, these days when people yell at each other and accuse each other of "appropriating" one's story it usually means that the thing they care least about is literature. What they really mean is that they are upset because they aren't getting published, or they are upset for the current racial situation in American society. These are two legitimate reasons for being upset, but again, they are entirely different, and they require different approaches. It seems to me that what we need to change is the REALITY in which we live, not the way we frame art/literature. Reality is always time-space specific—our vision of art should go beyond our limited reality. Storytelling is universal, and by attempting to change its concept, American writers are assuming that their (racial) experience is universal—when, in fact, it’s not. The fact is that no one can really appropriate "one's story"--if you "appropriate" it it is no longer the same story. It becomes a different story. I could give many examples of "cultural appropriation" no one gives a damn about. For instance: I grew up in Eastern Europe under communism. Whenever I read an American novel set in Eastern Europe it sounds very phony to me--clearly a cultural appropriation done by someone who cannot really understand life in such a different world. Yet, no one would ever think to blame these authors for cultural appropriation, even though this is exactly what they did. Which means, again, that "exploitation" and "cultural appropriation" have such weight in the current debate only because of the current racial tensions. In fact, “exploitation” of one’s cultural/racial/ethnic identity can only occur, paradoxically, if the people/identity being exploited are enjoying a certain recognition or if their status has changed in a way that could—at least in theory—make the appropriation of this identity beneficial to other groups of people. Logically, if some “white” writers choose to “exploit” the experiences or “stories” of people of other races, doesn’t this mean that there is something to be “gained” by this choice? And if there is something to be gained by impersonating life experiences of people of color, or other minorities, doesn’t this mean that, at least as far as the publishing industry is concerned, the stories of “white people” may have become less “hot” than the stories of non-whites? Personally, I have no idea what the publishing industry favors these days, as the publishing industry and I are not the best of friends. I am simply using logic here: why would anyone want to “exploit” or “appropriate” anyone’s identity/story unless the society rewarded them for it? In fact, this discussion reminds me of a debate years ago when James Frey wrote a very successful “memoir” about having been a drug-addict—which turned out to be fiction. I never read more than two or three lines in that novel, and I don’t know if Frey is black or white, or if race has any place in the book, but I do know that the book’s success was due to the fact that this was one of those so-called “stories of redemption” in which someone with a criminal past is redeemed because they become successful (ie, write a book). There you have it: a story of victimhood and success: the ur-arch of American ideology that all mainstream American publishers want. Or, here is another story of “exploitation:” about ten years ago a man who wrote a “memoir” about being in a Nazi concentration camp, which proved to be fake. Predictably, the discovery resulted in a scandal, though no one talked, as far as I remember, about cultural appropriation. And then, what kind of “appropriation”? If the man was Jewish but not a Holocaust survivor, he “used” the experience of other members of his community, but claimed it was his. If he wasn’t even Jewish, he also “used” the cultural identity of another group. Both the Frey story and that of the fake Holocaust memoir are relevant for our discussion, yet in the current debate references are being made only to African-Americans and Latinos—which, again, proves that the concern is less about literature and more about American’s present—a different topic altogether.
Current racial tensions are very real and they need to be dealt with--they need to be dealt with in real life, not by reframing the whole concept of literature. If one reframes the whole concept of literature because of racial problems specific to American society one assumes that all societies have the same problems--which is false. In fact, I would say that this act of reframing is imperialist in essence insofar as it attempts to convince the rest of us that it is universal (ie, this is what a "story" should be). As in the past, the consequence of the globalization (ie. “universal-ization”) of the current debate in American culture will be: publishers, writers and agents around the world will start reframing their intentions, and as a result, talented writers will be even more marginalized than before because from now on they can always be accused of cultural appropriation. But how do you define “cultural appropriation” in a global world in which many writers live in more than one country in their lifetime? How about writers—like me—who had to “appropriate” even the language in which they write because they are immigrants from a non-Anglophone country? Or who had to appropriate several languages—I write in two languages that are not my native tongue—and cultures? Writers—like me—who are by their very existence—a monument to cultural appropriation? I’m afraid that most American writers would never address the questions above because American writers (whatever their color) tend to imagine (yes, it needs repeating) that their experience is universal, and since they never immigrate (in the rare instances they do it’s called “ex-patriation,” a difference in lexicology that underlines the difference in framework) and, most importantly, NEVER CHANGE THEIR LANGUAGE, theses questions are (for them) non-existent. Yet they are essential to the rest of the world. For the rest of the world a writer is no longer a representative of a nation or even a language, never mind an ethnic or racial group. It used to be that Dante= Italy=Italian language; Shakespeare=England= English language. But the world has changed: today, Yoko Tawada can equal both Japan and Germany; or, Aleksandar Hemon both Bosnia and the United States. This is evident to the entire world—except the United States. While on the rest of the planet, the vision of literature has progressed from a local space (that of the nation) to a global one (that of the entire world), in the United States the reverse has been happening: now it is considered unacceptable to take on other identities than that of your own ethnic/racial group. This phenomenon, which is framed as "progressive," is, in fact, part of the same tribalism that has taken over American society.
In 19th century France Flaubert was writing stories like “Madame Bovary” and not “The Scarlet Letter” not because (he thought that) it was morally wrong for a Frenchman to write an American story, but because it would have been ridiculous for him to write about something with which he had no experience whatsoever (the American people and their culture). In other words: writers have the freedom (of imagination) to identify with whomever they want, but their imagination has limits—and these limits are simply human. The truth is that no human being can really, fully understand another human being: it is an existential impossibility. But this impossibility doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it. How and, just as importantly, why we do it would then be the question. Kafka wrote America not because it was a “hot” topic in Czechia during his lifetime, but because he wanted to say something essential about the world and times in which he lived. Of course, an American may find his representation of America unrealistic, or may even think that the act of representation itself is equivalent to a cultural appropriation. To which Kafka could retort that his America has nothing to do with the Americans’ America, in which case, what exactly is being appropriated?
To begin with, this conflation can only happen in a very materialist culture: if my life experience is transferable, it means that anyone can “use” it, and I can “sell” it—again, a very specific American idea, which started, very likely, in the movie industry where I could “sell” my life “story,” and which by now has been instilled in both readers and writers by the publishing industry. Because of this vision, other concepts that have nothing to do with literature and are specific to American culture are being added to this already-perverted idea of “story.” All these other concepts are time- and space-specific, that is, they happen to reflect the (American) society’s preoccupations at present. Take race, for instance. It is very obvious that the current racial tensions are being abusively transferred onto the topic of "story"--by "abusively" I mean that these are completely different issues, but they have become intermingled for many Anglophone writers. Why? For the simple reason that today in America race relations are on everyone’s mind.
Here, I would ask my fellow American writers to step back for a second and try to imagine being a writer in, say, the Czech Republic, or Japan, or Iceland. All these countries have great literary traditions: the Czechs have given us the greatest modern writer, Kafka; Japan has not only an extremely sophisticated contemporary literature; it has given us the first world novel; and Iceland is probably the country with the highest percentage of readers in the world. None of these countries has a serious reason (at least so far--this may change in the future) to be concerned with race relation But when American writers reframe the discussion about literature in way that makes race and “cultural appropriation” part of its definition, that is, when they redefine what a story is by making the claim that a story “belongs” to the raw material that may have inspired it, that claim affects not only American writers; it affects also Japanese, Icelandic and Czech writers. It affects them because we live in a global world, and publishing industries influence each other—though the influence comes in most cases from the American publishing industry to the rest of the world, and not the other way around.
In a world of pre-packaged things, the way we write about anything is, by necessity, genre-specific. Journalism is by essence of its time, and even when it claims to be neutral it still tries in some way to deal with (ie, “fix”) the reality it talks about. Journalism is always second-degree writing (it’s ABOUT something). By contrast, fiction is not of its time. The better it is, the more it transgresses its own space and time. And unlike what many writers seem to believe, fiction is not necessarily about “something.” Like “Seinfeld” (a work of TV fiction), it can be about nothing, yet still be (good) fiction. Fiction re-creates the world, and in this sense it is always first-degree writing. Which brings me—again—to the concept of story in contemporary American culture, as both artifact AND life experience. According to this concept, a story must necessarily be “about something.” When writers accuse each other of “cultural appropriation,” their implicit vision of a story is that of an “about-something:” as such, a story has different “ends” or “goals” than a story based on a vision of literature as re-creation of the world. When you “appropriate,” you use things; when you (re)create, you reshape every single thing.
The fact is that what (we think) a story should do changes each time we reframe the question. For example, Roxana Robinson asks, “To whom does a story belong?”—which has the merit of bringing back the discussion on the terrain of literature. This is a question that has been asked in different ways by writers and literary critics in the past. I will give only one name: Umberto Eco, whose concept of “opera aperta” (open work) means that works of art do not hold a single, enclosed meaning, but rather, as many meanings as readers. What Eco and many other 20th century critics argue is that meaning in art/literature is given both by the reader and the writer, which means that the work belongs (in different ways) to anyone who reads/sees/hears it. My answer is different from both that of Roxana Robinson (it belongs to the writer) and that of certain activists preoccupied with race relations (it belongs to the one who has lived it): it belongs to no one and everyone. By its very essence, a story doesn’t belong. (By the way, “be-long” is a very beautiful word in the English language). People may belong and dwell, stories pass, and the more a story moves through time toward us the greater it is. If it weren’t great, it would belong only to its time and its contemporaries.
One reason many writers of color hate "cultural appropriation" (and these words should be put in quotes because they represent a way of framing literature that is--again--specific to contemporary Anglophone cultures, and therefore, is not universal) is because of "exploitation"--but "exploitation" is invoked--and for good reason--only when a book or its author becomes famous. In other words: exploitation only exists if the publishing industry has framed the discussion already by deciding that it wants certain "stories" on the market." Let’s face it, no one would want to "appropriate" anyone's story if they weren't rewarded for it (and as writers, we all know that being "rewarded" means being published and being paid attention to). So, these days when people yell at each other and accuse each other of "appropriating" one's story it usually means that the thing they care least about is literature. What they really mean is that they are upset because they aren't getting published, or they are upset for the current racial situation in American society. These are two legitimate reasons for being upset, but again, they are entirely different, and they require different approaches. It seems to me that what we need to change is the REALITY in which we live, not the way we frame art/literature. Reality is always time-space specific—our vision of art should go beyond our limited reality. Storytelling is universal, and by attempting to change its concept, American writers are assuming that their (racial) experience is universal—when, in fact, it’s not. The fact is that no one can really appropriate "one's story"--if you "appropriate" it it is no longer the same story. It becomes a different story. I could give many examples of "cultural appropriation" no one gives a damn about. For instance: I grew up in Eastern Europe under communism. Whenever I read an American novel set in Eastern Europe it sounds very phony to me--clearly a cultural appropriation done by someone who cannot really understand life in such a different world. Yet, no one would ever think to blame these authors for cultural appropriation, even though this is exactly what they did. Which means, again, that "exploitation" and "cultural appropriation" have such weight in the current debate only because of the current racial tensions. In fact, “exploitation” of one’s cultural/racial/ethnic identity can only occur, paradoxically, if the people/identity being exploited are enjoying a certain recognition or if their status has changed in a way that could—at least in theory—make the appropriation of this identity beneficial to other groups of people. Logically, if some “white” writers choose to “exploit” the experiences or “stories” of people of other races, doesn’t this mean that there is something to be “gained” by this choice? And if there is something to be gained by impersonating life experiences of people of color, or other minorities, doesn’t this mean that, at least as far as the publishing industry is concerned, the stories of “white people” may have become less “hot” than the stories of non-whites? Personally, I have no idea what the publishing industry favors these days, as the publishing industry and I are not the best of friends. I am simply using logic here: why would anyone want to “exploit” or “appropriate” anyone’s identity/story unless the society rewarded them for it? In fact, this discussion reminds me of a debate years ago when James Frey wrote a very successful “memoir” about having been a drug-addict—which turned out to be fiction. I never read more than two or three lines in that novel, and I don’t know if Frey is black or white, or if race has any place in the book, but I do know that the book’s success was due to the fact that this was one of those so-called “stories of redemption” in which someone with a criminal past is redeemed because they become successful (ie, write a book). There you have it: a story of victimhood and success: the ur-arch of American ideology that all mainstream American publishers want. Or, here is another story of “exploitation:” about ten years ago a man who wrote a “memoir” about being in a Nazi concentration camp, which proved to be fake. Predictably, the discovery resulted in a scandal, though no one talked, as far as I remember, about cultural appropriation. And then, what kind of “appropriation”? If the man was Jewish but not a Holocaust survivor, he “used” the experience of other members of his community, but claimed it was his. If he wasn’t even Jewish, he also “used” the cultural identity of another group. Both the Frey story and that of the fake Holocaust memoir are relevant for our discussion, yet in the current debate references are being made only to African-Americans and Latinos—which, again, proves that the concern is less about literature and more about American’s present—a different topic altogether.
Current racial tensions are very real and they need to be dealt with--they need to be dealt with in real life, not by reframing the whole concept of literature. If one reframes the whole concept of literature because of racial problems specific to American society one assumes that all societies have the same problems--which is false. In fact, I would say that this act of reframing is imperialist in essence insofar as it attempts to convince the rest of us that it is universal (ie, this is what a "story" should be). As in the past, the consequence of the globalization (ie. “universal-ization”) of the current debate in American culture will be: publishers, writers and agents around the world will start reframing their intentions, and as a result, talented writers will be even more marginalized than before because from now on they can always be accused of cultural appropriation. But how do you define “cultural appropriation” in a global world in which many writers live in more than one country in their lifetime? How about writers—like me—who had to “appropriate” even the language in which they write because they are immigrants from a non-Anglophone country? Or who had to appropriate several languages—I write in two languages that are not my native tongue—and cultures? Writers—like me—who are by their very existence—a monument to cultural appropriation? I’m afraid that most American writers would never address the questions above because American writers (whatever their color) tend to imagine (yes, it needs repeating) that their experience is universal, and since they never immigrate (in the rare instances they do it’s called “ex-patriation,” a difference in lexicology that underlines the difference in framework) and, most importantly, NEVER CHANGE THEIR LANGUAGE, theses questions are (for them) non-existent. Yet they are essential to the rest of the world. For the rest of the world a writer is no longer a representative of a nation or even a language, never mind an ethnic or racial group. It used to be that Dante= Italy=Italian language; Shakespeare=England= English language. But the world has changed: today, Yoko Tawada can equal both Japan and Germany; or, Aleksandar Hemon both Bosnia and the United States. This is evident to the entire world—except the United States. While on the rest of the planet, the vision of literature has progressed from a local space (that of the nation) to a global one (that of the entire world), in the United States the reverse has been happening: now it is considered unacceptable to take on other identities than that of your own ethnic/racial group. This phenomenon, which is framed as "progressive," is, in fact, part of the same tribalism that has taken over American society.
In 19th century France Flaubert was writing stories like “Madame Bovary” and not “The Scarlet Letter” not because (he thought that) it was morally wrong for a Frenchman to write an American story, but because it would have been ridiculous for him to write about something with which he had no experience whatsoever (the American people and their culture). In other words: writers have the freedom (of imagination) to identify with whomever they want, but their imagination has limits—and these limits are simply human. The truth is that no human being can really, fully understand another human being: it is an existential impossibility. But this impossibility doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it. How and, just as importantly, why we do it would then be the question. Kafka wrote America not because it was a “hot” topic in Czechia during his lifetime, but because he wanted to say something essential about the world and times in which he lived. Of course, an American may find his representation of America unrealistic, or may even think that the act of representation itself is equivalent to a cultural appropriation. To which Kafka could retort that his America has nothing to do with the Americans’ America, in which case, what exactly is being appropriated?
Notes on Books
Book reviews and occasional notes and thoughts on world literature and writers by an American writer of Eastern European origin.
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