The post I’d planned first for you this Rumpus Saturday keeps growing and growing and growing, like Violet Beauregarde in the Wonka factory. I need to hack at it a little. It will have to wait.
Meanwhile, courtesy of the Millions, I was this morning alerted that Geoff Dyer has a piece in the Guardian analyzing the literary establishment. “There is no such thing as the literary establishment,” he writes. “I know this because I am a part of it.”
Now, I enjoy Geoff Dyer, often enough I do, anyway, but his is exactly the sort of piece that makes me wonder whether I still have any wine left in the fridge. At 10 a.m., on a Saturday.
I won’t quote much, just go read it, and know that I actually had to get up and Walk Away From the Laptop at this particular juncture:
I don’t detect anything monolithic or impregnable about this literary establishment except a belief in the importance of spelling and punctuation.
Look. If what Dyer means is that there is no locked room somewhere in which a cabal of writers — mostly male, many with pale and withered skin, all clutching Philip Roth novels to their chests like teddy bears — plot to exclude everyone, well: of course he’s right. Of course there isn’t. Writers don’t have that kind of time to hang out in rooms together. A friend of mine once wrote a critique of a list of reasons to date writers. To reason #18, “Writers are surrounded by interesting people,” my friend replies, aptly I think, “Every last one of whom is imaginary.”
And that’s perhaps how it should be.
That said, it’s hard to trust the “detections” of the porousness of certain literary borders from one who’s already inside them. And Dyer’s not exactly within spitting distance of the Customs desk – he’s barricaded in the Capitol. It’s natural for him to believe that he got there by dint of hard work and literary merit, not least because that’s probably true: Dyer is an amazing writer. I hate D.H. Lawrence, but I love Out of Sheer Rage to pieces.
But there are certain other forces at work. And here’s the thing I will never understand about these discussions: if you are already inside the admittedly creaky and misshapen House of Literature, why wouldn’t you want to add another wing? Why is it a problem for people to argue that the air’s getting a little stale in there? Don’t you want to open those windows?
And if you do want a little more sunlight in the room, why on earth aren’t you writing about the ways that can happen, instead of writing what amounts to an endorsement of the status quo?
6 responses
“If you are already inside the admittedly creaky and misshapen House of Literature, why wouldn’t you want to add another wing?” Because you might lose your place at the head table of the moveable feast?
I dig your perspective, though. There’s always room for more writers, more literature, more reading, more poetry. But equally important, as Bukowski said, “We need more poetry, not more poets.”
Does he come back to my planet after this?
“One does not speak of the music, art or film establishment…”
“I think there is no such thing as the literary establishment. I can’t see it because I am inside of it.â€
Someone mentioned moveable feasts. *Midnight in Paris* pisses me off for the same reasons.
how can you not be a part of something that there’s no such thing as. god. was he masturbating as he was writing or was the writing itself a masturbatory act. thanks for a fun sunday morning, michelle!
@martha – i don’t understand the midnight in paris reference. wasn’t that a movie mostly about nostalgia? i loved it.
Sorry, Dyer didn’t say the “I am inside of it” thing in my comment above — that was supposed to be sarcastic imputation but it kind of slipped.
About *Midnight in Paris*, there’s a terrible sad left-out feeling, a fear of not making the cut, under those happy nostalgia scenes — or what need were they invented to fill? It’s like the loneliness that must have inspired the Beach Boys couplet, “We always take my car cause it’s never been beat/ And we’ve never missed yet with the girls we meet…”
And if you’re not in a category of person who can fantasize realistically about impressing Hemingway with your manuscript (“Shakespeare’s sister” thoughts come to mind), you can choose between flattering yourself on getting the literary references (“Ah, then you are not a mere tourist, you are an educated litterateur…”) or letting yourself be patronized (“You can’t even construct this fantasy by yourself. I have to explain your dream to you and be your tour guide through it. So, this way, stay together please, follow my raised umbrella…”).
And it’s kind of hard to feel sorry for a successful screenwriter character who is disappointed because he isn’t a successful novelist.
And, minor point, but that stage set is a pretty extreme tidying-up of 1920s Left Bank Paris. I could suspect that’s why Anthony Bourdain reportedly hated it.
Have been reading through your posts this morning, commenting/thanking you. Let me thank you one more time. Loved “a grammar.”
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