Interesting read. When I read literature, I tend to think about Thucydides' stated reason for writing his History-- he wants to write a work that would be a "possession for all time". He wants to understand the present through particulars, and wants the reader to understand their own contemporary times by looking at his (Thucydides') own account of his own times to unearth the human political things, and calls the reader look for such things in their own time.
This is a tough order, but I think that a great writer of literature is one that is able to separate from their contemporary inner desires/culture etc to examine their own times, is one that is able to "become" another person, and can express what they now see in a different way. Shakespeare is a tough act to follow, but his works did not take place in his contemporary England, but miles and centuries away.
Political "propaganda" may be beautifully executed, but it is too caught up in its own time to move beyond the next political cycle.
Not the point of your post, but J. hasn't been arrested and gone missing "due to political activity." It's far worse. She's been detained where no one can locate her because "although J. is a citizen, she forfeited certain rights and privileges by declining to offer the requested info on G. & M. " In other words, she wouldn't inform on G., who was undocumented, and M., who "does not lack proper paperwork but did know, all the while, that G. did lack it". Later, the grandfather says that loyalists would say that "although J. is a citizen, she forfeited certain rights and privileges by declining to offer the requested info on G. & M. " And he also recounts the story of a florist who refused to comment on a friend's voting past to a "friend" he met at his gym, and then couldn't re-register his work vehicle.
Thanks for the corrections. I only listened to the story once and missed and misconstrued some of those plot points. But I think the differences only strengthen my case as it shows the story was even more hysterically dystopian than I realized. Would you mind if I incorporated your plot summary into a corrected version?
Really interesting from the point of view of an illiterate hack almost half way through a "poem" series I call "Americans Meet their VP". Truth be told, I know these masterpieces are neither poetry nor art, but a couple of them have made their way around the world with multiple restacks, which means they had some value to some folks, irrespective of label. If people liked the dump on the table story, maybe it wasn't crap after all. One man's art is another man's….
I believe that any artist worth a shit creates for herself, and if someone happens to like her work,that's peachy, but that's not why we write.
I've observed the trapped illiberal leftist mind long enough to know that it cannot be moved by written word of any nature, so I get that my polemics are pointless as persuasion and are intended only for self-amusement and when I get lucky, my particular echo chamber. I fail to see why "art" must be written so as to NOT have modern day political application in order to be taken seriously as art. If you're thinking along such lines when writing, you are writing for the audience, which to me, has more bearing on whether art will result than the arbitrary kinetic / static distinction.
Much of what today's critics consider modern "art", whatever checklist is used, is in my estimation, what the masters (and I) would consider total drek. I have spent enough time at the Louvre and Borghese and other wonderful art museums to scoff at the prices of Jackson Pollock paint salad. Some of my worst "poetry" is better than that. Fun read though!
"I fail to see why "art" must be written so as to NOT have modern day political application in order to be taken seriously as art. If you're thinking along such lines when writing, you are writing for the audience, which to me, has more bearing on whether art will result than the arbitrary kinetic / static distinction. "
--So, of course, everyone is free to define art as they like, and I appreciate your comments.
In my aesthetic, though, I distinguish art from many activities that may be artistic, such as commercials, say, or political ads. I make this distinction in part to keep my own work, when I'm trying to create art, in a lane I find valuable. As a teacher I make this distinction because a lot of students don't even realize there can be such a distinction and because I've noticed as a reader that didactic impulses interfere with good, i.e. entertaining, memorable, relatable, story telling. And I make this distinction as a reader because when I open a novel or start a short story I find it off putting when the author telegraphs who they vote for and demonizes those on the other side.
As for writing for an audience, I consider that an essential part of art. One has to consider how a work will be received. This is why in classes we "workshop" creative writing, so people will get an idea of how others react to their work. It may be helpful when writing a first draft to "forget the audience," but in my view and experience artists ultimately do think about who is going to read their work and what affect it's going to have on them.
Tom, I felt this exact way when I read this story. It won an O'Henry, which is where I first encountered it, in the anthology that comes out each year. Neurotic allegory, almost to the point of fan-fiction, passed off as literature, celebrated by everyone you would expect, all the literary gatekeepers whose brains were completely broken after Trump's 2016 win. You see this almost everywhere, the tidal shift in popular culture, particularly any kind of storytelling. Otherwise excellent --whether it be showrunners on HBO or editors at journals--have almost completely lost their nerve and now need everything they do to be "about something," and that something is always a facile rejection of a shallow understanding of who Trump is and what he "represents." Aside from being genuinely ahistorical, economically illiterate, and hypocritical (what policy differences really exist, broadly, between the Democrats and the Republicans on issues of significance, like financial regulation or international policy?), they are aesthetically impoverished. Tension has been replaced with moralizing.
And I always wonder about these people who throw away their life's work over Trump. How could you betray your tradition like this? And it makes me think, what are Trump's greatest obsessives, the ones who feed off of every story about his badness, every word he utters that proves him to be the fool is, but superfans, a voracious audience in need of him to understand/define their own identity? They need him. They need to define themselves against him. This is my only answer, that he offers them identity-by-difference that feels more significant than the identity-by-affirmation they received from writing, publishing, literary tradition. To borrow a Trumpian phrase, "Sad!"
(Another hobby-horse I like to get on: as writers, we should probably respect Trump immensely for his many gifts to language. How many phrases has he invented or popularized? He's changed our common parlance more than any writer of the past 100 years. 'Sad!' 'People have been saying...' 'More and more people are noticing...' etc. Maybe he should poet laureate. Read any given press release, and you'll find he writes more gripping, surprising sentences with more evocative imagery than just about anyone whose held that position recently.)
Completely agree with you about Saunders on the craft level in his other stories. There is astounding work in Tenth of December and Pastoralia in particular. A Swim in the Pond in the Rain also looms large in my story-craft education (as do you).
I think I'm saying the opposite? And I would say reality proves me wrong if that were what I was saying--Saunders did win the O'Henry, afterall. And as far as "preachiness" goes, depending on what you mean, I think preachy can be ok, actually...you just need to be preaching more than "Man who was president and almost perfectly represents my culture and country's values is bad, because I don't like him, and I'm better than him and anyone who supports him because I know he's bad, and that removes me from the equation entirely and actually by talking about how bad he is I absolve myself of any meaningful involvement with him." Marylinne Robinson's "Gilead" and "Housekeeping" come to mind as novels that could be considered "preachy" at times that I welcome, because their narrators/protagonists don't posture their virtue (or, at least, the books don't allow for their posturing to go uncomplicated).
I want to feel something, be moved, and I want the protagonist to be implicated, for them to be complicated, otherwise I won't be able to empathize with/"identify" with/"relate" to them. I won't care or be moved if the book that contains them is massaging the narrative, like a PR strategist, to portray them as perfect victims or victors. I will never trust that account. In short, I think some fiction writers are untruthful to the fictitious worlds that they themselves create. Anyway...
What do you think about long soliloquies on abstract ideas? I know there is one in Brothers Karamazov and in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, it lasts 70 pages, I think. I can imagine those not being real fiction or storytelling.
I think what you're saying is that today, in the literary world as it is, corrupted by partisan politics, overtly political writing does get rewarded, providing, of course, that is overtly political in the right way.
It's interesting, I recall hearing writers say that to write you MUST be political or it is not really art. I never bought that argument, but it seems to have won the day.
This is fantastic analysis - thank you. I subscribe to Saunders’ Substack (Story Club) and I absolutely love him and his writing and have learned so much from him. But I agree that Love Letter is one of his weaker stories for exactly the reasons you discuss. If I’m remembering correctly, I believe George mentioned on his Substack that Treisman rejected the story at first because it was too political/polemical and then he revised it (I can only imagine what the rejected version looked like).
I have to admit, I’ve never found Sedaris particularly funny - I smile (at best) when reading his stuff, never laugh. And compared to some of the incredibly lame fiction the New Yorker publishes, Love Letter is a masterpiece.
Interesting read. When I read literature, I tend to think about Thucydides' stated reason for writing his History-- he wants to write a work that would be a "possession for all time". He wants to understand the present through particulars, and wants the reader to understand their own contemporary times by looking at his (Thucydides') own account of his own times to unearth the human political things, and calls the reader look for such things in their own time.
This is a tough order, but I think that a great writer of literature is one that is able to separate from their contemporary inner desires/culture etc to examine their own times, is one that is able to "become" another person, and can express what they now see in a different way. Shakespeare is a tough act to follow, but his works did not take place in his contemporary England, but miles and centuries away.
Political "propaganda" may be beautifully executed, but it is too caught up in its own time to move beyond the next political cycle.
Not the point of your post, but J. hasn't been arrested and gone missing "due to political activity." It's far worse. She's been detained where no one can locate her because "although J. is a citizen, she forfeited certain rights and privileges by declining to offer the requested info on G. & M. " In other words, she wouldn't inform on G., who was undocumented, and M., who "does not lack proper paperwork but did know, all the while, that G. did lack it". Later, the grandfather says that loyalists would say that "although J. is a citizen, she forfeited certain rights and privileges by declining to offer the requested info on G. & M. " And he also recounts the story of a florist who refused to comment on a friend's voting past to a "friend" he met at his gym, and then couldn't re-register his work vehicle.
Thanks for the corrections. I only listened to the story once and missed and misconstrued some of those plot points. But I think the differences only strengthen my case as it shows the story was even more hysterically dystopian than I realized. Would you mind if I incorporated your plot summary into a corrected version?
Be my guest.
Really interesting from the point of view of an illiterate hack almost half way through a "poem" series I call "Americans Meet their VP". Truth be told, I know these masterpieces are neither poetry nor art, but a couple of them have made their way around the world with multiple restacks, which means they had some value to some folks, irrespective of label. If people liked the dump on the table story, maybe it wasn't crap after all. One man's art is another man's….
I believe that any artist worth a shit creates for herself, and if someone happens to like her work,that's peachy, but that's not why we write.
I've observed the trapped illiberal leftist mind long enough to know that it cannot be moved by written word of any nature, so I get that my polemics are pointless as persuasion and are intended only for self-amusement and when I get lucky, my particular echo chamber. I fail to see why "art" must be written so as to NOT have modern day political application in order to be taken seriously as art. If you're thinking along such lines when writing, you are writing for the audience, which to me, has more bearing on whether art will result than the arbitrary kinetic / static distinction.
Much of what today's critics consider modern "art", whatever checklist is used, is in my estimation, what the masters (and I) would consider total drek. I have spent enough time at the Louvre and Borghese and other wonderful art museums to scoff at the prices of Jackson Pollock paint salad. Some of my worst "poetry" is better than that. Fun read though!
"I fail to see why "art" must be written so as to NOT have modern day political application in order to be taken seriously as art. If you're thinking along such lines when writing, you are writing for the audience, which to me, has more bearing on whether art will result than the arbitrary kinetic / static distinction. "
--So, of course, everyone is free to define art as they like, and I appreciate your comments.
In my aesthetic, though, I distinguish art from many activities that may be artistic, such as commercials, say, or political ads. I make this distinction in part to keep my own work, when I'm trying to create art, in a lane I find valuable. As a teacher I make this distinction because a lot of students don't even realize there can be such a distinction and because I've noticed as a reader that didactic impulses interfere with good, i.e. entertaining, memorable, relatable, story telling. And I make this distinction as a reader because when I open a novel or start a short story I find it off putting when the author telegraphs who they vote for and demonizes those on the other side.
As for writing for an audience, I consider that an essential part of art. One has to consider how a work will be received. This is why in classes we "workshop" creative writing, so people will get an idea of how others react to their work. It may be helpful when writing a first draft to "forget the audience," but in my view and experience artists ultimately do think about who is going to read their work and what affect it's going to have on them.
Good luck with that poem!
I take your points and agree. Thanks very much for responding.
Thanks, I appreciate it!
This actually helped me think some things through as reflected in my most recent post
This is a great analysis. There is absolutely no comparison between a brilliant piece of writing, like The Lottery, and what is, in fact, propaganda.
Yes, Calvin, that was you who gave me the book. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!
Excellent.
Tom, I felt this exact way when I read this story. It won an O'Henry, which is where I first encountered it, in the anthology that comes out each year. Neurotic allegory, almost to the point of fan-fiction, passed off as literature, celebrated by everyone you would expect, all the literary gatekeepers whose brains were completely broken after Trump's 2016 win. You see this almost everywhere, the tidal shift in popular culture, particularly any kind of storytelling. Otherwise excellent --whether it be showrunners on HBO or editors at journals--have almost completely lost their nerve and now need everything they do to be "about something," and that something is always a facile rejection of a shallow understanding of who Trump is and what he "represents." Aside from being genuinely ahistorical, economically illiterate, and hypocritical (what policy differences really exist, broadly, between the Democrats and the Republicans on issues of significance, like financial regulation or international policy?), they are aesthetically impoverished. Tension has been replaced with moralizing.
And I always wonder about these people who throw away their life's work over Trump. How could you betray your tradition like this? And it makes me think, what are Trump's greatest obsessives, the ones who feed off of every story about his badness, every word he utters that proves him to be the fool is, but superfans, a voracious audience in need of him to understand/define their own identity? They need him. They need to define themselves against him. This is my only answer, that he offers them identity-by-difference that feels more significant than the identity-by-affirmation they received from writing, publishing, literary tradition. To borrow a Trumpian phrase, "Sad!"
(Another hobby-horse I like to get on: as writers, we should probably respect Trump immensely for his many gifts to language. How many phrases has he invented or popularized? He's changed our common parlance more than any writer of the past 100 years. 'Sad!' 'People have been saying...' 'More and more people are noticing...' etc. Maybe he should poet laureate. Read any given press release, and you'll find he writes more gripping, surprising sentences with more evocative imagery than just about anyone whose held that position recently.)
Completely agree with you about Saunders on the craft level in his other stories. There is astounding work in Tenth of December and Pastoralia in particular. A Swim in the Pond in the Rain also looms large in my story-craft education (as do you).
You might like this review from Valerie Stivers, a staff writer at the Paris Review, who takes his most recent story collection, Liberation Day, to task: https://www.compactmag.com/article/against-kindness/
And was it me who gave you that book? I feel like it was, but can't remember right now.
Hope you're well, Tom!
-CC
If there were a religious book that got preachy, it would win no award of any kind. That’s what this sounds like.
I think I'm saying the opposite? And I would say reality proves me wrong if that were what I was saying--Saunders did win the O'Henry, afterall. And as far as "preachiness" goes, depending on what you mean, I think preachy can be ok, actually...you just need to be preaching more than "Man who was president and almost perfectly represents my culture and country's values is bad, because I don't like him, and I'm better than him and anyone who supports him because I know he's bad, and that removes me from the equation entirely and actually by talking about how bad he is I absolve myself of any meaningful involvement with him." Marylinne Robinson's "Gilead" and "Housekeeping" come to mind as novels that could be considered "preachy" at times that I welcome, because their narrators/protagonists don't posture their virtue (or, at least, the books don't allow for their posturing to go uncomplicated).
I want to feel something, be moved, and I want the protagonist to be implicated, for them to be complicated, otherwise I won't be able to empathize with/"identify" with/"relate" to them. I won't care or be moved if the book that contains them is massaging the narrative, like a PR strategist, to portray them as perfect victims or victors. I will never trust that account. In short, I think some fiction writers are untruthful to the fictitious worlds that they themselves create. Anyway...
What do you think about long soliloquies on abstract ideas? I know there is one in Brothers Karamazov and in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, it lasts 70 pages, I think. I can imagine those not being real fiction or storytelling.
I think what you're saying is that today, in the literary world as it is, corrupted by partisan politics, overtly political writing does get rewarded, providing, of course, that is overtly political in the right way.
It's interesting, I recall hearing writers say that to write you MUST be political or it is not really art. I never bought that argument, but it seems to have won the day.
Thanks for the link to the Compact mag article. That’s as good an analysis of Saunders’ faults as I’ve seen.
This is fantastic analysis - thank you. I subscribe to Saunders’ Substack (Story Club) and I absolutely love him and his writing and have learned so much from him. But I agree that Love Letter is one of his weaker stories for exactly the reasons you discuss. If I’m remembering correctly, I believe George mentioned on his Substack that Treisman rejected the story at first because it was too political/polemical and then he revised it (I can only imagine what the rejected version looked like).
I have to admit, I’ve never found Sedaris particularly funny - I smile (at best) when reading his stuff, never laugh. And compared to some of the incredibly lame fiction the New Yorker publishes, Love Letter is a masterpiece.
Agreed, a not-so-great Saunders story is better than most!