The Unbearable Lightness of Serious Literature

[bellatrys]

A while back I subbed to the Powell's Review A Day Newsletter, which sometimes tells me about books I'd be interested in reading, though more often does not. But sometimes the commentary in the reviews - which seem to be chosen from a fairly small pool, by a sorting algorithm I cannot fathom - is itself of interest. Which is not always a good thing

Comments

[david_wisdom]

The fact that neither Jack nor Theroux address the role of race and racism, when speaking of American poverty (or not speaking of European poverty), is telling; it's also strange and telling that there doesn't seem to be any awareness on the part of either of them that relative Otherness is involved in both gaining answers and in understanding them.

In a number of on-line conversations, I've heard a few British fellows claim that America's social ills are primarily about class, not race (and, in follow-up, that Americans who think they're primarily about race are wrong). Which, while an interesting perspective, utterly fails to address things like Driving While Black, and if you don't know what that is you don't know enough to participate in the discussion.

It's not like the UK doesn't have to deal with racism - they've got the BNP, for Primus' sake - so I guess my point is "people are stupid everywhere".

[fridgepunk]

What's bestest though is the people from the UK who assert that there is no racism in the UK (for various lying/ignorant reasons ranging from "we haven't had non-white people in the country long enough" to "but we're a meritocracy!"). These are the people I suspect are in fact not from the UK. Or are just really really stupid and have never left Shropshire.

Why Shropshire?

[bellatrys]

Is it, like, more vanilla than even Manch-Vegas?

(I always find it kind of macabre when I can point out that my downtown on *any* given day is more diverse than supposed-LA on many a movie screen, given that it's over 90% white here. )

Denial - not just an American disease

[bellatrys]

It's not like the UK doesn't have to deal with racism - they've got the BNP, for Primus' sake - so I guess my point is "people are stupid everywhere".

You know what's even more special than the white British fans who apparently NEVAR read the Beeb? The ones who go on insisting this shit in threads where black British fans are also posting, like Fragano or Shewhohashope or Spiralsheep or Deluxe_Vivens et alia.

It's for situations like this that you need, not the Clue-bat nor even the Clue-by-four, but the Clue-ram.

[ann_leckie]

The fact that neither Jack nor Theroux address the role of race and racism, when speaking of American poverty (or not speaking of European poverty), is telling

Very, very telling. It seems to me, in fact, that Theroux is assuming you'll (the reader, that is) understand that race is behind what he's saying. The only reason India's poor are less scary than East St. Louis' is that Theroux would be a white man in East St. Louis. And black people, you know, are scary. Not like regular people, you know. I know plenty of folks here in the St. Louis area who are afraid of going within St. Louis city limits, let alone downtown, who consider the idea of being in East St. Louis (not just driving quickly through on the way to Chicago or whatever) unthinkably dangerous. In fact, it was one of the more disgusting aspects of that Jonathan Franzen novel set in Alternate-St. Louis you posted about a while ago, that the ending involved the main character's wife getting lost in East St. Louis, and of course she was in horrible danger from the

Huh, Theroux's a Yank, too--

[bellatrys]

tho' a literary expat one. That makes it even worse, imo - no clueless Britisher dependent on US media stereotypes excuse for him.

It seems to me, in fact, that Theroux is assuming you'll (the reader, that is) understand that race is behind what he's saying.

Yeah, there's enough disingenuous there all around to choke a camel, I barely scraped the surface let alone dug down, being in a rush and seriously undercaffeinated.

The only reason India's poor are less scary than East St. Louis' is that Theroux would be a white man in East St. Louis. And black people, you know, are scary. Not like regular people, you know.

Which, you know, isn't that long ago (and might still be, for actual old-fashioned John Bulls abroad) the way that a white dude in his place would have felt the same way about Injah and all those Furrin Parts. Narcissism & Irony go tripping hand in hand...

In fact, it was one of the more disgusting aspects of that Jonathan Franzen novel set in Alternate-St. Louis you posted about a while ago, that the ending involved

Re: Huh, Theroux's a Yank, too--

[ann_leckie]

Research is apparently as anathema to them as empathy...

And Franzen's from here, too. He went to high school where I work. He probably did do some research, but he also, probably, thought that his explicit choice of an "alternate" St. Louis absolved him of the responsibility to get everything right. Yes, I know, you're laughing. This mindset, it is foreign to our people.

And whatever research he did, he likely already "knew" that East St. Louis is scary and dangerous, so why research it any further? Of course when the character finds herself there, the only people she meets are thugs and prostitutes who mock her or threaten her. Everyone knows that's what East St. Louis is like!

Bleah.

Of course I can't help but think of lines unseen, and certain monocultural humans blundering through boundaries they don't even realize exist, creating a most terrible tangle behind them, all with "the best of intentions"...

Dang, no Atevi smiley!

that reminds me of the rich people here

[bellatrys]

from the neighboring exurbs, some a mere two miles away, who are afraid to drive into West Manchester because of the scary ethnic populations.

I'm not sure if they're more afraid of the black immigrants, the Latino immigrants, or the Greek-Polish-French Canadian ones, though, since they've ALWAYS been scared of West Manchester as a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" even when it was 98% white, which, you know, is really sad and pathetic if it weren't so offensive. ("Manch-Vegas" is an ironic nickname, because, well, kind of the polar opposite.) It's amazing how insular and sheltered people can be in their "own" communities and lacking no advantage of time or money.

[nenya_kanadka]

I was thinking, "Hey, it isn't very polite to go up to strangers and ask 'intrusive questions', is it? Just because they're poor Indians, you think you can get away with it?" Not knowing anything about the racial makeup of St. Louis, I thought maybe he was saying it'd be harder to ask questions of Americans because they, like Real People, might get offended.

****
OT, more or less, but I wondered if you'd seen this article on Michelle Obama. I thought it was really really interesting.
American Girl

[ann_leckie]

East St. Louis isn't part of St. Louis--it's across the river in Illinois. And it's very poor, and very black. And, if you ask the average St. Louisan, very scary and dangerous. A St. Louisan who said that East St. Louis scared him more than, say, the slums in Benares would be saying, essentially, that he'd be afraid of being a white man in a poor black area.

Frankly, I'd be more scared in Benares--on the assumption that the slums there held just as many dangerous people as American ones, and knowing that I wouldn't necessarily know how to find the people who might help me if I needed it. Or know the most effective way to ask for that help.

[fridgepunk]

Not to nitpick, but was the fourth estate ever not decayed? I mean, Citizen Kane is a movie mocking exactly the same kind of self-centred "yellow journalism" as seen here, based on the behaviour of actual newspapers of the early 20th century, and it came out during the period when journalism involved publishing the equivalent of those websites that are full of nothing but horrific accident pictures. /nitpick

One thing that stands out with the report is that Theroux and the reviewer seem to be less interested in the actual experiences of the people who live in the poverty stricken areas of places, so much as they're looking to discover some sort of intrinsic "poverty qualia", which only the poverty stricken can truly experience because buying a place in east st. Louis and living the life of people there is hard. Like a person hanging around a smoker - not talking to them or anything, just hanging around them creepily - expecting to experience what lung cancer feels like.

[tlachtga]

was the fourth estate ever not decayed?

Why should it be any different from the other estates?

[fridgepunk]

It's just that i'd have thought that they'd be able to afford a grounds keeper or two really.

Well, when the term was coined

[bellatrys]

a lot of newspaper writers and editors spent a lot of time in jail and/or on the lam, but the institution did get coopted and corporatized and tamed, and has been coasting on those 17th and 18th and early 19th century laurels for a long, long time. But it's become demonstrably worse, the past twenty years, with the faith that "edutainment" was What The Masses Really Want, and the cash-cow-killing emphasis on profits over everything else.

[violaswamp]

Excellent take-down. For me the most interesting part is when the "savages" themselves, or at least the elite among them, begin to accept the white man's Noble Savage view of them. I've met more than one Indian-American upper-middle-class professional who claimed with a straight face that poor people and criminals (conjunction of those two things is theirs, not mine) are more dangerous here than in India because of Indian values and also America has bad single mothers and drugs and black people.

This is complex and difficult and outside my purview mostly

[bellatrys]

but it seems to be a *class* thing, the elite indeed, in my experience with Desi defenders of the Raj, just as with umpteenth-generation-fraction never-within-100-miles-of-a-res Americans of distant tribal ancestry who say things like "I don't care about the Trail of Tears, I'm better off and I think we all are", or indeed people like Alan Keyes et al who say that slavery was a blessing - this is exactly what the term "colonized minds" was invented for. You self-identify with the conquerer because that's the side *your* personal bread is buttered on. (See also: Schlafly, Phyllis.)