Monstrous Possibility: An Invitation to Literary Politics

by Curtis White

In Monstrous Possibility, Curtis White provides a unique collection of essays written in styles ranging from the criti-fictional to the deeply theoretical. These essays are often funny, usually polemical, and always urgent. White creates in these essays a lucid perspective on what it means to be a writer and a human being in the so-called postmodern moment.

Intent on describing and accounting for the impact of theory and pomo on contemporary fiction writing, White contemplates the coincidence of the simultaneous arrival in the 1960s and '70s on American university campuses of writers, poets, continental literary theory and that monstrous creature "Postmodernism."

White's efforts lead him in surprising directions: revealing arguments about postmodernism's politics and ethics; telling critiques of the anti-humanist theories of Louis Althusser, Jean Baudrillard and post-Marxism; trenchant appeals for the continued relevance of Marcuse and Theodor Adorno; and a funny but finally dead-serious reinvocation of the idea of Beauty.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hotchpotch of essays on literary theory and the state of “experimental” fiction (or non-mainstream or “potential” literature, if you prefer) circa 1983-1996. Most of the pieces on theory have dated but as someone who shrieks like a big-bosomed college girl at a Freddy Kruger convention at Derrida and Baudrillard, pieces like ‘The War on Theory’ help demystify several complications about theoretical discourse(s) in literature, which seem only to exist within an academic bubble, or in small academic presses and their bubbles. More fun are White’s snarky pieces ‘Writing the Life Postmodern’ (which first appeared in Foster Wallace’s Future of Fiction RCF issue) and the pseudonymously devastating ‘The Culture of Everyday Venality, or A Life in the Book Industry,’ whose title says it all. White, as past co-editor of FC2, basically preaches to the choir (i.e. me) with his encomiums on small presses like Dalkey and his contempt for mainstream lit-rags, and the brevity of this collection makes for an all-too-brief mini-polemic, when a fatter volume of acerbic rants would have been more welcome. As for theory, I respect its place in engineering fiction and its importance in freeing novels from the shackles of a Tradition and literary Order (capital letters mean theoretical concepts!), but I really can’t fathom half of the stuff—brain capacity too small. The last essay on Marx I had to skip, lest my neurons split. [Edit: I read the essay. It was an academic paper not an essay. I’m tempted to dock a star for that].

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edit: wrote this in 2021 and forgot to post haha!

Much of this book feels a bit like a time capsule, as coming from his later books of essays to this one (from 1998), we witness the author jousting with postmodernism—the philosophical, as well the literary kind, and, of course, in 2021 who outside of a theory class talks about the former anymore?

I jest a bit, but really, post 9/11 and post-2008, the end of history and the New Economy (or era of permanent prosperity), well, ended, didn't they, and while the best of the postmodern critiques of 'metanarratives' of modernity (I dunno: Foucault, Lacan, Derrida) are still relevant, I guess I was expecting more actual politics in a book whose subtitle is "An Invitation to Literary Politics".

And I a veritable fanboi, here to praise Caesar not to bury him, but really, this is not the book to start a love affair with the impressive oeuvre of Curtis White. For completists only, I'd say.

Except, except, there's this ONE essay that you just gotta read, if you are alive in 2021, cos it coulda been written yesterday (and I'll get to it after the requisite synopsis)

The book starts auspiciously enough, with an attempt to recuperate the depthlessness and soullessness of the PoMo for (get this!) humanity's beating heart—via Italo Calvino's interest in the tropes of infinite regress and the monstrous. In White's view, PoMo extends the modernist critique of metaphysics via a scepticism of infinite regress (think about how the hare can never catch the tortoise in Zeno's paradox), and the impossibility of ever arriving at Self, Truth, or the perfect Pint. Calvino, sez White, incarnates that problem in his hero Qfwfq, who lives in that liminal state of the invention of language, and so has no way of telling the difference between an oak or a maple, as there is not yet even the sign for tree. Language changes all that, of course (else Qfwfq couldn't tell us the tale), but before it settles into the seemingly stable system of signs which creates kitsch art and perpetuates ossified ideologies and helps to naturalize and hide unjust, unnatural and unnecessary inequal states of power, wealth, and privilege, language has its initial 'Eureka!' moment, where the thing-unveiled by the sign becomes a 'monstrous' Other for the first and last time. Qfwfq is relating to us what it feels like to create, or experience, real art for the first time, art that destabilizes the settled, estranges the familiar, art that is at one and the same time a threat, an offence, a marvel and an open door.

Like a said, a good start to the book! The second essay, however, is a score-settler in which White goes after two critics (Charles Newman and Stanley Fish), who themselves took a run at postmodern American fiction (for being mere "aesthetic juggling", "obscene giggling", and the "cutting-edge of nihilistic perplexity") and postmodern theory (which for Fish is literally inconsequential, has no implications for praxis whatsoever, and has been merely politically—that is, institutionally—successful . Ahh, the straw-man argument, in other words, times two! But like I said, this would have all made more of an impact on me back when the PoMo was seen as such a cultural succés de scandale, perhaps, but now? Not so much. White does make something of this mash-up by the end of the piece, however: theory and fiction can still be our buckler & shield (as it were), IF we deploy them in our struggle to (again) defamiliarize the familiar, unsettle the comfortable and complacent, and show how the de facto is not usually de jure. Let's get physical, I mean political, in other words, not programmatically or tendentiously, but as shit-disturbers.

After defending postmodernism in one sense, White critiques another, particular (but hugely influential, in academic circles) rendering of it in the third full essay of the volume. It is Frederic Jameson's massive, Postmodernism; or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism that we're talking about, a book that both fascinated, puzzled and infuriated me as well when it came out and quickly became (at least before David Harvey's superior The Condition of Postmodernity) the seminal tome on the subject in the English-speaking world. If 'Late Capitalism' is capitalism's highest or purest stage (or 'Mode of Production'), Jameson argues (following Ernst Mandel), is one marked (in the West) by the 'simulacra' of experience in a post-industrial landscape in which no oppositional gestures are possible, as all art and politics are subsumed into capital and 'reified as commodities' to be sold back to us, and capitalism itself can no longer be perceived or critiqued as any kind of 'system' or 'totality'. Going forward, not only is there no longer any 'going' or 'forward', artists are condemned to be mere 'bricoleurs' or pastiche-ists, sampling and reassembling the detritus of works from previous eras. As White notes, however, the examples Jameson uses to illustrate his thesis all come from official culture, from sources which have been vetted by the same corporate publishers and grant-endowment types who stand to gain from a maintenance of the status quo. In terms of fiction, such an understanding of the present's relation to recent history looks something like the following:

Between 1965 and 1973 we published postmodern fiction because hippies liked to read weird fiction. But in the mid-seventies we reexamined the sixties and concluded […]that postmodernism was an abberation. Then, thank God, Raymond Carver gave us minimalism and the New Realism. Postmodern fiction died, by commercial fiat, at that moment. Right now, we don't know where the hell we are, but we at least can say that we're making money and we're not publishing weird fiction. (43)

Of course (and as White points out), outside of the corporate publishing world, innovative fiction continued to be produced, and possibly even read, though from our point of view in 2021, perhaps in ever-diminishing numbers (the reading part, that is). White is entirely correct to castigate Jameson for ignoring innovative artists, but the question remains: who, in 1998 is listening to this argument? Certainly not Jameson and his ivory tower colleagues, one suspects, nor writers themselves, who are either carrying on fighting the good fight with the more innovative of the small presses, or are busy furthering their 'brand' or scrambling to establish their 'platform' within the belly of the beast. Perhaps White is writing for other writers who exist in the liminal space between the 'scholarly' and the 'creative' realms (or silos 'spheres' as the 'Culture Cop'-types might describe them. But, as we shall see in his final essay, White is still looking for his real audience here, I suspect, an audience he finally identifies and addresses some six years later in his much more successful (and, relatively speaking, even popular) book, The Middle Mind: Why Consumer Culture is Turning Us Into the Living Dead

In his next piece (which is a bit scattershot, to be honest), White widens his field of critique to include the increasingly hegemonic discourse of Cultural Studies as an object of some (partially deserved) scorn, for while it has (equally deservedly) displaced the Great Books tradition and its white male canon from its pride of place at the centre of (that admittedly increasingly marginal) the domain of the 'Humanities', it has offered nothing of value in its place—has indeed largely blown apart the entire notion of literary value, which for White resides in that enigmatic quiddity, the 'poetic', which, unlike postmodern theorizing, is agile and adept enough to keep pace with the changing times, even with theory. Defined (via Charles Bernstein) as 'turbulent thought', it is perhaps the very, heh-heh, essence of (post)modernist writing, as it is committed to always leaving the object of its discourse "unsettled, unresolved—leav[ing] you knowing less than you did when you started" (46), which is something that (Derrida aside, I think White would agree) runs counter to much academic writing on the postmodern, which rarely subjects its own "signifying practices" or truth-claims to the same level of critique as it does its object (and foe), literature. Theory, rather, sees (or saw, especially in the 1990s) itself as quite the match for artistic praxis. Literature as pure ideology, in other words, and theory as critique—a bit of a straw man in some ways, perhaps, but having lived through this period myself, also, in some academic circles, all too true as well.

One byproduct of the flattening of distinctions and the evisceration of value, is that we no longer have any clear notions of who out major writers even are, White argues, and while I am not so sure that this is a bad thing, I too am a bit nostalgic for that brief moment in the past where (yes, all too white, and oh so male) writers like "Mailer, Bellow, Malamud, Roth and Updike" were duking it out with the likes of "Barth, Hawkes, Barthelme, Vonnegut, Gass, [and]Cheever" to be present kings of the literary fiefdom (or sandhill), but, alas, that was not about to be part of the literary future—and it's not (entirely) the 'fault' of the feminists, Marxists, queer theory and post-colonial types who (again, justifiably) took on the white male canon. Unfortunately, in removing the fences from around the margins of sanctioned discourse, while previously barred or suppressed literatures gained access to the cultural stomping grounds, so, too did Micky Mouse, Madonna, and Harry Potter—i.e. all distinctions were flattened. And though White ends this piece in a bit of a celebratory mood, listing the various writers and fringe publishers who also stormed the bastille at the time, from 23 years on this popular front of Sans Culottes seems to have scored a Pyrrhic and transient victory, because it is just not at all true in 2021 that the "New York and commercial presses are precisely nowhere" or that their "hegemonic cultural machinery that has [previously] defined literature […] is paralyzed". If anything, the commercial hegemony machine has, seemingly, declared total victory, as the Penguin-Bertelsmann-Everyman-Everywhere Group is in charge of the discourse, or of what remains of it, as well as the prize-giving and reviewing apparatus… And of the numerous writers listed by White at the end of the piece (including William Vollmann, Gilbert Sorrentino, Mark Leyner and Joseph McElroy), who other than Don Delillo, Paul Auster, Richard Powers and William Gibson (again, all white men, all Yanks) survived the charge over the hill? DFW planted the flag, and, and…

Still, White's point is taken: even if our present moment is marked by the proliferation more small presses (and still more writers) than by serious, interested readers of innovative fiction, at least that which is produced is "beautifully unmanaged ideologically". The, or a, Counterforce still exists, I suppose! (?)

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series of essays take us, mostly chronologically, through Curtis White's developing thoughts on what Art can do outside of the boxes people (of all stripes) want to place it in.

Here's a quote:
+ + + +

It is precisely art's obscurity, its unwillingness to capitulate to simple formulations of "position," that makes it suspicious to Politics. What are artists doing? What art is "doing" is creating the possibility for meanings that cannot be limited by the simple sense of the world provided by politics. What feminism, multiculturalism, the Christian Right, Democratic liberals, and anyone else with nothing more than a "position" are saying to artists is: echo our ideas or else. (96)

+ + + +
The book advocates artists taking advantage of the possibility to make meanings that, in this postmodern world, are still available to us, few though they may be. Art is the "most central place" we have yet found to discuss "what we are and what we want to become." (98) How not to lose this place is one of the main concerns of the book.

As a collection, Monstrous Possibility doesn't have the momentum that The Middle Mind contains, nor is it more than intermittently fuelled by the anger (and hope for the sublime) that fills the later book. However, White's humour is still there, as when he writes: "Beyond its obvious advantage in proportion, however, it is also true that bourgeois culture is more beautiful than so-called 'alternative' culture. (This is one of those things that you are really not supposed to say. It's boho PC. It is like saying, 'The problem with socialists is that they are boring.')" (57)

This book is worth reading for many reasons, not least of all for what White says about what it means today to be an artist (specifically, a writer), and his view of Realism as "a State Fiction, a part of the machinery of the political state." (17) (Not a good thing, obviously.) His work makes you think, gets you to discuss things with others, and those are two valuable contributions.

(Three and a half stars, really.)

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an odd book to read in 2009. Most of the book is a polemic in defense of postmodern literature and specifically postmodern literature as a literature of opposition. For the most part, this is a debate I am uninterested in, but my fondness for Curtis White made me read this book anyway. These essays were written in the 80's and 90's, when deconstruction et al were still controversial. They are not totally outdated or useless now, but they certainly aren't as compelling or pressing as I imagine they once were.

I am unconvinced by the idea that postmodern literature or philosophy are oppositional or that any literature can be oppositional. I am especially unconvinced by the idea that small printing presses are somehow not capitalist or operate under a logic different from the rest of the economy.

In some ways, the essays at the end of the book are critical of those in the beginning and less optimistic, but they still carry an odd optimism about the possibility and promise of postmodern culture and high technology. I do not share White's optimism about the possibilities created by either.

Of course, I agree with a lot here too. I agree that literature and theory are meaningful and important - and not in competition with each other. I agree that the book industry is horrible (the semi-fictional account of a small literary press trying to survive in a world of large chain book stores is hilarious and spot-on). I agree that Derrida is an important thinker and that his critics, for the most part, 'don't get it'.

At the end of the day, the real question about this book is why White did not mention Thomas Pynchon, even when he rattled off a list of 30 or so 'postmodern' fiction writers. I kept waiting for a discussion of Pynchon, whose ouvre probably the best example of ethics and politics in postmodern literature, but it never came.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

White connects the political and the literary in a highly compelling way in this book.

[kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

curtis white is the shit.