Burn Them Down
Sam Clemens, John Gardner, Marshall Mathers, and the Artistic Impulse to Polemical Speech
When you’re hot enough to melt hell, and burn Satan, too, it’s tempting to play with fire all the time. Sometimes pyromaniacs set a brushfire that clears the artistic wilderness—and sometimes they get burned.
“It seems to me,” Mark Twain wrote, “that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on [James Fenimore] Cooper’s literature without having read some of it.”
Thus begins Samuel Clemens’s incendiary essay “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” From the moment he opens, a reader can hear Twain’s implied author cackling as he systematically and mercilessly burns Cooper to the ground. He makes short work of it. The attack is no dismissal, despite the bitter and condescending tone: Twain wades deep into the texts of Cooper’s novels and carves out their hearts. When the bloodbath is over, Twain delivers his coup de grâce: “Now I feel sure, deep down in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our language, and that the English in Deerslayer is the very worst that even Cooper ever wrote.”
As Jane Smiley observes in Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, Clemens “killed” his literary ancestor outright. The essay crippled Cooper’s popular legacy.
Is this assessment too dramatic? Consider the following: Although The Last of the Mohicans is still in print, and although some academics have since rallied to protect Cooper’s reputation, a quick Google search for “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Defenses”—the name of an article by Lance Schachterle and Kent Ljungquist defending the romanticist—prompts a did you mean? listing the title of Twain’s 1894 polemic. Even when you only type “Fenimore Cooper” into the search box, Mark Twain’s essay is the third hit.
But haters sometimes burn themselves in the process of crusading. Some, in fact, have burned themselves so badly that their reputations never recovered, and instead of making extra room in the canon—as Mark Twain did when he reduced Fenimore Cooper to ashes—these firebrands have consumed their own inheritance. So why, if the danger is so great, do artists lash out at their fellows? Surely a quick glance at the history books would show the risks outweigh the benefits?
A case study: John Gardner was no intellectual lightweight. A talented writer, he published several novels to popular acclaim, including Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, and October Light, which won the National Book Award. He was beloved by his students, and respected, for the most part, by his peers. Gardner never let himself be confined by genre, and he worked widely in the fields of translation, criticism, and even opera.
He also published three books of nonfiction. This is when the trouble began. In his The Art of Fiction and in On Becoming a Novelist, Gardner advocates fiercely for fiction that tests society's deepest convictions. He also touches, briefly, on what it is that infuriates writers when they see poppy fiction on the bestseller lists. It isn't jealousy, he wrote. Feelings of rage regarding these fakers has only partly to do with professional envy. The majority of a writer's anger, Gardner says, is aimed at the devaluing process that popular fiction inflicts on true, moral fiction. If a writer writes well, and people love it, that's wonderful... But if another writer writes badly, and people love that, too, then what's the point? If a reader can't tell trash from treasure, why try to find treasure when you can knock off trash and get rich? This is a sort of interesting argument, but to many people, including to some very intelligent people, it sounds like an excuse for snobbery. Despite the danger, in On Moral Fiction, John Gardner unleashed his rage (and his contempt).
“His own publisher, Knopf, would not touch the book,” Liz Rosenberg, his second wife, wrote of On Moral Fiction in the Boston Globe. “The book was wildly misunderstood on every side… Fellow writers attacked him on the cover of The New York Times as a hatchet man out to get them. Right-wing spokespeople welcomed him, and he was invited to join the American Nazi Party, which so enraged him that he instantly sent back a telegram with expletives he somehow convinced the operator to include.”
As David Stanton recounts in The Washington Post, the literary world retaliated with good reason. “[In On Moral Fiction, Gardner] calls Philip Roth ‘creepy’ and dismisses Saul Bellow as ‘an essayist disguised as a writer of fiction,’” Stanton wrote. “Mailer, Albee, Vonnegut and many others come in for similar drubbings. Their work was not just bad, in Gardner’s view, but dangerous. Is it any wonder that some in the publishing world came to want Gardner’s blood?”
Other authors Gardner attacked by name included John Updike, John Barth, and Norman Mailer. And On Moral Fiction was not a one-off. Gardner had a history of polemical speech in public and private. He once told The Paris Review that he was writing the best fiction being written in his time. His hubris and erratic behavior are now the stuff of writerly legend (for one of the only complete biographies on Gardner, see Barry Silesky's John Gardner: Literary Outlaw).
In her article, Liz Rosenberg wrote that she believes Gardner wanted to do the right thing regardless of the backlash. He named names in On Moral Fiction because he needed to prove to himself that he was not afraid of retaliation.“Perhaps he should have been,” she wrote. “Even now, his reputation as a writer is overcast by resentment, and it may take twenty or thirty years to get the grudge-bearers off his back.”
Gardner later repented, admitting he had written some of On Moral Fiction in jealousy, that he had gotten some things wrong, especially about Updike. But it was too late—the damage was done.
Why did Gardner’s polemic backfire? After all, Leo Tolstoy wrote a similar book (What is Art?) and Mark Twain survived his own destruction of Fenimore Cooper. He survived, in fact, despite a systematic campaign of vicious speech. Is it because John Gardner wasn’t as good a writer as these two men? At first it’s a compelling argument, and works well with the mystification of these other writers, but on closer inspection this seems unlikely. A quick glance at a novel like Mickelsson’s Ghosts reveals Gardner’s talent. To point to his bitterness doesn’t explain it either. No one is more bitter than Twain in his old age. But Twain, at least, is funny. Tolstoy and Twain (and Hemingway for that matter) have survived their outbursts and continue to be read.
Some artists, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, have survived attacks and held their place in the canon. John Updike also survives, and not just from Gardner’s attack (see David Foster Wallace’s “John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One: Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?”).
In an effort to see how far this kind of behavior can go—that is, to find the limits of an artist’s polemical sensibilities—it’s interesting to close this article with a look at someone outside the realm of literature. Feuds do not confine themselves to the world of prose, and maybe no industry is more riddled with hurt feelings than pop music. For that matter, hip-hop specializes in feuds, and in the rap game, no one has perfected the polemical tirade more thoroughly than Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, aka Fire Marshall, aka Slim Shady.
“I’m sick of you little girl and boy groups,” Mathers spewed at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. “All you do is annoy me, so I have been sent here to destroy you.” He’s hardly slowed down since. The hit list (no pun intended) encompasses too many celebrities to count, but some notables include Michael Jackson, Michael J. Fox, and Christopher Reeve. Gems from his albums include “By the way, N’Sync, why do they sing—am I the only one who realizes they stink?” and “Damn, I think Kim Kardashian’s a man.”
Many of his assaults are as merciless as he claims. Like Twain, they usually stay funny, despite their obvious venom. They are also enmeshed in detailed, complicated, and admittedly dazzling lyrics. Almost all of these tirades aren’t fit to repeat to your grandmother. But even rap’s most feared MC has limits.
On his album Recovery, Mathers confesses he almost went too far, which is remarkable for a man who made it his specialty to blast pop icons. When he details his hiatus from hip-hop, Mathers writes of his drug-fuelled depression, his intense jealousy, and his self-destructive behavior. “On the verge of goin’ insane,” he admits, “I almost made a song dissin’ Lil Wayne… Are you stupid? You gon’ start dissin’ people for no reason? ‘Specially when you can’t even write a decent punchline even?”
Mathers may be glad he spared Lil Wayne and Kanye West, two other popular rappers, but it’s hard to imagine him turning down his caustic wit in the future: “Shady ease up! Man chill!” a voice calls to him on the first track of Recovery. “No I can’t, goddamnit,” he snaps. “Rap is a landfill.”
The world of artistic feuds is much wider and deeper than this short article can explore correctly. For example, many of the artists mentioned above are writers, specifically novelists, since that is the art I am most familiar with. And although they are very different, they are all white men, even Tolstoy and Updike and Hemingway, who are only mentioned briefly. Whole books could be written—and some have been—on the wrath and polemics of, say, Ayn Rand. The question of polemical speech in artistic situations, which might include composers or painters, is a tricky one. I would invite anyone who wishes to further explore this subject to comment on this article with their own observations.
What does seem clear from the limited examples above is that a polemic can backfire on an artist. So it’s safe to say, if you’re going to be a hater, watch your back, because if you play with fire you might get burned.
Or, as Eminem might put it, “Instead of gettin’ crowned you’re gettin’ capped.”
A Mug’s Game
Trying to predict the future is a mug's game. But increasingly it's a game we
all have to play because the world is changing so fast and we need to
have some sort of idea of what the future's actually going to be like
because we are going to have to live there, probably next week.
~Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
I know, in part, what my future looks like: I'm happy to announce I will accept a position at the University of Kansas (KU). I'll be sending the paperwork off this week to make everything official. Next fall I will be studying in the English Department's three-year MFA program, which is writing intensive (hooray), and then, I hope, I'll go on to complete my Ph.D. in the same department.
Write Well
This site is now available (thanks to the brilliance of Shan Pesaru and the Sharp Hue team) as Write-Well.net. That means, for example, that you can reach the same content by typing in
or
Politics & Writing
"I do not follow the fashions in politics, letters, religion, etc..." Ernest Hemingway wrote to Paul Romaine in 1932. "If the boys swing to the left in literature you may make a small bet the next swing will be to the right and some of the same yellow bastards will swing both ways. There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.... I'm no goddamned patriot nor will I swing to left or right."
Hemingway was notorious for his dislike of politics. His ideas stemmed from concern, of course, about a lack of understanding on either side of a political debate.
"Books should be about the people you know, that you love and hate, not about the people you study about. If you write them truly they will have all the economic implications a book can hold.... Read another book called War & Peace by Tolstoi and see how you will have to skip the big Political Thought passages, that he undoubtedly thought were the best things in the book when he wrote it, because they are no longer either true or important, if they ever were more topical, and see how true and lasting and important the people and the action are. Do not let them deceive you about what a book should be because of what is in fashion now."
That said, I politely agree, since politics is all wrapped up (especially today) in hurt feelings and resentment and misunderstanding. The lack of give and take in American political dialogue is frightening. But how much of this is true. Hemingway's own writing, including his epic novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, echoes through with political implications.
America was founded on politics and on politics it continues forward, through corruption, disillusionment, disappointment, hope, triumph, and redemption. In fact, if the mindfulness of fiction and poetry were brought to the political arena (as in Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men), perhaps our political system would not suffer, but would be reformed.
The trick, I think, is in choosing a subject of politics and then draining the prose of idealogical bullshit, talking points, lies, and other distortions. If one writes about politics and "gives everyone an even shake," as Hemingway liked to say, even the people he or she despises the most, then two sides might reach some kind of understanding. Dialogue implies give and take on both sides and not just shouting of positions. As Jon Stewart once pointed out, shows like the canceled Crossfire are not honest debate. They are partisan hackery. If you have time, you can watch Jon Stewart scold the hosts of Crossfire below, shortly before the show was canceled forever.
LitQuake 2008
My great-uncle tells a story about when I visited him in San Francisco. I was a little kid. My mom, dad, and sister were on vacation in San Francisco, where we did all the things tourist families from Kansas are supposed to do: Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, Golden Gate Park, Alcatraz Island, City Lights Bookstore. I can't remember a happier time. This is about when I fell in love with the city by the bay.
Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Val live across the bay in Marin County, on the way to the Redwood Forests, so we decided to see them around the same time we went North. Lloyd picked us up at our hotel and I rode in the backseat with mom and Jenny. As we crossed the Golden Gate, I noticed raised bumps on the concrete that reminded me of braille.
"Are those so blind drivers can stay on the road?" I asked Lloyd.
The memory of it was still sufficient, 15 years later, to make him and Aunt Val bust out laughing. Me, too.
San Francisco is my favorite city. A year ago I took Sarah and we flew out for a week or so. Fresh sushi in Japan Town. A smashed LP of Drift Away in the Park. A five-mile hike to lunch at the Beach Chalet. Lamb ravioli on Telegraph Hill at a 5-star restaurant. I can't wait to go back. And now I have the perfect excuse.
Amy Tan on Creativity
A friend who also teaches at the university (in the music department) sent me this video clip on TED of Amy Tan's lecture on creativity. Amy Tan is the best-selling novelist who wrote Saving Fish from Drowning. Thanks to Taylor Baldwin for the link, and to TED for hosting it. You can find the original page here.
No One Is Talking
I have refrained, so far, from posting about politics. I care deeply about this upcoming election, and I've read the books and studied the positions of the candidates. Now I need to say something. This will probably be my first (and one of my only) posts on the subject. I don't really feel like blogging about politics is my job.
It concerns an article, well written and informative (unlike American news) from the BBC. The subject is Hillary Clinton's win in West Virginia.
I want to know how come no one in America is talking about this. Over at the BBC, where England is blessed with competent journalists, the facts are always reported. Whether it is Saddam Hussein's emotional state or the fact of West Virginia's apparent reluctance to see a black man in the White House.
In the coal mining town of Logan, where Senator Clinton made one of her last
campaign stops before election day, Democratic voters spoke openly about their
reluctance to vote for an African-American.Several said they might switch their allegiance to the Republican candidate
John McCain, if Hillary Clinton didn't prevail in the nominating process.The exit polls seem to confirm that tendency. Around a fifth of the state's
predominantly white Democratic primary voters admitted that the issue of race
had played a role in their choice of candidate. This was a higher figure than in
almost any other state.Of course, it's hard to tell how many of those voters really will break with
generations-old Democratic traditions and favour Mr McCain in November, but it's
safe to assume that some will.Among them, I would guess, will be 77-year-old Miss Hale, who told me in
Yesterdays diner in Logan that she didn't like Obama's "Muslim faith" and
Eugene, who casually mentioned - as he was sitting in the barber's chair - that
his father didn't want blacks in his house, let alone in the White House.
Well, tell me, Wolf Blitzer, why didn't you say anything about it? Did you not want to embarrass West Virginia?
Writing Fiction
The Missouri State Creative Writing faculty has decided that next semester, all sections of English 215 will use Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction.
Writing What We Teach, Part II
Today in my practicum, Dr. Cadle turned back our "Writing What We Teach" assignments without grades. The class had not done the work, she said. Big elements were missing from the packets, peer reviews, instructor comments, and reflective blog entries. I'm proud to say I had completed the work correctly, and I was able to hand mine back in without incident. I don't even need to blog about the whole thing, but I decided I would, since I have nothing better to do.
In composition, supreme importance is placed on the process of writing, the holy path that leads to a final written document. We stress drafts and revision to our students. We don't particularly grade the final papers. This is because most student papers aren't worth the time it takes to read them. Again, that's not to say students shouldn't write. Of course their writing will be hard to read! They're learning. Part of learning to write well is looking deeply at how you write. Do you write a little at a time? Do you write in binges? How long do you let a piece of writing cool before you revise it?
I'll give you an example. Hemingway wrote every morning. He tried to avoid reading other people's work before writing his own (to not have the greats looking over his shoulder, he said). He would write for five or six hours, then knock off and go swimming, or fishing. He would exercise to keep the body tired and read literature to keep the mind tired. Alcohol was consumed, I'm sure. The important thing, he said, we to let his subconscious work on it until the next morning. He didn't want his "well" to "dry up." Every morning he would read over what he wrote the previous day, making corrections as he went, and when he was done he would let the whole book cool for three or four months and then go over it again. Stephen King has a similar cooling process.
Now, writers generally know their processes. It can be very different for some people. John Gardner wrote all night like a crazy person, slept with his head on the kitchen table, and then woke up to write again. He wrote all the time. But he had a process.
I think the role of process in the composition classroom is simple: Let students know their individual processes are important. Suggest processes that writers have used in the past, but don't become a dictator of any given way of writing. Just relax and let the kids find their own way. Our students are capable of being intelligent (some will argue this point). With such a focus on process, though, things have become complicated.
By focusing on grading the process and not the product, writing teachers have become obsessed with grading first drafts, then having those drafts turned in with the final paper, and so on. Even I did this my first semester teaching. It seems like a good idea at first, because it makes students start the papers early, then go back and revise. What could be better?
But do we write that way? Who among us really write like that? I write my papers the night or two nights before they are due. The reason Writing What We Teach failed is that graduate students, unconsciously or consciously, know our processes already. We don't need to explore our process. If you don't know how you write, then what are you doing in a graduate program in writing? I think you had better figure it out quickly. (Not everyone knows how he or she writes. For some, it is intuitive. But even those who don't like to talk about the process because they fear it will take away from the magic
Recent Posts
- Burn Them Down
- Tip #2: Writing for Its Own Sake
- Tip #1: One Piece At a Time
- The Hemingway Solution
- Big Tent at the Raven Bookstore
What I'm Doing...
- Kansas City Race for the Cure 5k. 2010-08-08
- #Reading "13 Ways of Looking at the #Novel quot; by Jane Smiley http://amzn.to/d1O4KP 2010-07-22
- Ian McDonald's DERVISH HOUSE, superb novel of the mystical nano future of Istanbul - Boing Boing http://bit.ly/aIOp3u 2010-07-12
- Wow, fiction works!—By @colsonwhitehead (Harper's Magazine) http://bit.ly/cQUHjA 2010-07-12
- NPR: Michael Chabon: On What 'Manhood' Means-More at http://n.pr/128087770 2010-07-05
- More updates...