Jonathan Lethem (and Rosie, Naturally)

Lethem-01So I've picked up this awe-inspiring quotation by Jonathan Lethem, set loose in conversation with Robert Birnbaum, and published in The Morning News, but what I really wanted to do was post this awesome photo of JL and a dog (I'm assuming the dog is Mr. Birnbaum's “Rosie,” but maybe he'll come by here and correct me). I could literally do that all day long... post photos of boys and dogs (and girls and dogs, of course), and it's probably what will keep me out of the litblog ghetto for one more day... so be it.
When you encounter the argument that there is a hierarchy where certain kinds of literary operations—which we’ll call ‘realism,’ for want of a handier term, though I’ll insist on the scare quotes—represent the only authentic and esteemed tradition, well, it’s a load of horseshit. When you see or hear that kind of hierarchy being proposed, it’s not a literary-critical operation. It’s a class operation. In that system of allusions, of unspoken castes and quarantines, mimetic fiction is associated with propriety, with the status quo defending itself, anxiously, against incursions from the great and wooly Beyond. When ‘realism’ is esteemed over other kinds of literary methods, you’re no longer in a literary-critical conversation; you’ve entered a displaced conversation about class. About the need for the Brahmin to keep an Untouchable well-marked and in close proximity, in order to confirm his role as Brahmin. Once something has been relegated or outcast or quarantined from propriety, you’re seeing a kind of burnishing of class credentials, a hastening to the redoubt, a drawing-up of the drawbridge of the castle, because the moat is too full of terrifying fish and fowl.

The Fortress of Solitude (Vintage Contemporaries) by Jonathan Lethem

A critic who expends much energy on delineating quarantines—“This sort of material is legitimate” is testifying as to their own anxieties as to whether or not they themselves are on the legitimate side of some imagined moat or gulf. “We’re going to draw a line here, and feel very relieved and superior about the people on one side of the line and very disappointed and sorry for the people on the other side.” It’s not a literary critical distinction of any usefulness whatsoever.
Thanks to Maud for the directions.

And thanks to you for your patience. Would you look at that dog?

♻ Maud
♻ The Morning News postscript: The formatting of this page was utterly messed up for awhile. Sorry if you turned up and saw that. My bad.

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