Frum and literature
David Frum makes a familiar argument in several parts:
1) “Literature is a declining presence in our modern society.”
2) “What happens all too often in high school and college literary classes is this: Students are assigned work of very low literary quality. These works are chosen to provide sexual/racial/ethnic diversity.”
3) “Why not treat comic books as literature? After all, that's how we treat Alice Walker!”
Look, I’m a literature professor. It is my job, and also my joy, to spend many of my days celebrating and investigating some of the most wonderful books ever written. I love to argue, as passionately as I can, that some books really are greater — deeper, wiser, more beautiful, more continually rewarding of the reader’s attention — than others. And it’s wonderful that Frum takes the time to give Kafka’s The Trial the praise that eerie masterpiece deserves.
But I can't give full assent to the three claims listed above.
1) What Frum shows — what almost all people who make this kind of argument show — is that literature is a minority taste: Look at how many more hits there are for the Sopranos than for Kafka! But literature has always been a minority taste. If you want to argue that that minority is shrinking, you going to have to acquire some comparative data. You’ll need to define literature, and you need to gather as much information as you can about literacy rates, book sales relative to population, library use, and so on. You’ll need to figure out what time frame you’re talking about: the past thirty years? Seventy-five? Two hundred? You’ll need to get as much historical context as possible, and context from other societies, by reading historians of reading like Robert Darnton and Jonathan Rose. Once you’ve done all that work, you will be entitled to draw some tentative conclusions about whether the reading of literature is declining or not, and, if there is a decline, whether it’s from a well-established norm or from a unique high point.
2) Yes, a lot of crap gets taught because of “political correctness.” But a great deal of major literature has been discovered as a result of paying attention to cultures beyond the West. Harold Pinter never wrote a play worthy to be compared with Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman. I would give up the complete works of John Updike and Philip Roth for Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day, Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, and a handful of the gently brilliant comic novels of R. K. Narayan. And yes, I’m serious.
3) I don't know what Frum means by “comic books,” but there are graphic novels that are significant works of art, that need to be reckoned with. Books like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth, and David B.’s Epileptic defy condescension — and indeed, I might give up a good chunk of Updike and Roth for them too.
So three cheers for The Trial, and three cheers for David Frum’s celebration of The Trial. But I don't really know whether literature is declining or not; and I believe that at least some of the changes in literary culture in recent decades have been for the better.
Just wanted to get that off my chest.
(Cross-posted at Text Patterns.)
I am glad that in responding to Frum’s third point you defended the literary merit of comic books and not Alice Walker.
— Alykhan Velshi · Dec 31, 12:45 PM · #
David Frum speaks of literature touching something universal, and you offer some examples of literature which are “major works”. But what about the study of literature as part of the historical development of western civilization? The choices I worry about are not the Roth vs. Narayan kind, but, say, Wilkie Collins vs. Narayan or the Song of Roland vs. Narayan.
— David T · Dec 31, 01:30 PM · #
Good catch, Alykhan. ;-)
And David, you raise an important issue. I was speaking in terms only of artistic merit, and of the private reader like Frum, but it’s true that those of us who teach literature, in making up our syllabi, have to balance the claims of artistic merit against the claims of cultural influence and significance. That’s actually one of the tougher things about the job, especially in a climate where few universities try to cover the classics in their general education courses. (Though at Wheaton, where I teach, we’re still pretty traditional.)
— Alan Jacobs · Dec 31, 02:29 PM · #
I worry less about what gets introduced because of politics and more about what gets axed (although I guess that’s a common point).
I had never read the USA trilogy until the year I left college, and remember picking it up as I was looking for jobs that fall, and having one or another of the books in my pocket as I met with various people. I was floored — damn, damn, damn this thing was good, and it suddenly seemed impossible to understand the place in literature of, say, Faulkner, without knowing about these books. Once in a rare while somebody, usually much older, would comment on how those books used to be in the high-school-required reading canon and I’d say, well, they sure aren’t anymore. The explanation I’d then hear was that JDP had been remarkably left-wing (and indeed there’s that paean to Sacco and Vanzetti as America’s founding fathers) when those books were written, and then he bacame very right-wing, and so one way or another pissed off everybody and wasn’t taught. Then a generation later when people might’ve been willing to judge the works on their own merit, they were unknown. I’m not sure that that story captures exactly how those works slipped from American consciousness but to the extent it’s right, damn.
Somebody help me with Roth, man. Every couple years I read another Roth magnum opus because everybody I respect seems to think he’s the bomb, he’s the toast of those NPR book reviewers and apparently our Great American Novelist. And every couple of years I finish and put down Sabbath’s Theatre or Portnoy’s Complaint or American Pastoral or what-have-you and think, eh, this dude’s ridiculously overrated and underfucked. What the hell am I missing? I know I’m missing something. I mean, sure, there’s no accounting for taste, but even with the stuff I don’t like I can usually see why somebody thinks it’s Da Shit, and with Roth I’m clearly outvoted by smarter people than me. Somebody give me (and Alan?) the code-word, please.
— Sanjay · Dec 31, 03:47 PM · #
“But literature has always been a minority taste. If you want to argue that that minority is shrinking, you going to have to acquire some comparative data. You’ll need to define literature, and you need to gather as much information as you can about literacy rates, book sales relative to population, library use, and so on.”
That’s absolutely right; I get so sick of these esteemed ivory tower types who wring their hands over the ‘decline of literature’ in the wake of ‘the age of the screen.’ Not a single damn person, not even Henry James, thought that Moby Dick was a good novel when it was published. No one bought or read Moby Dick; everyone at the time thought it was nonsensical drivel written by an insane crackpot. And yet there was no evil TV, movie theater, or internet to distract these esteemed cultured people of a long lost age.
— Bert · Jan 1, 06:03 AM · #
All I can say about Moby Dick is that WFB liked it, and that seems good enough.
I think Maus is another graphic novel that merits serious attention, as well.
— Matt · Jan 1, 02:02 PM · #
Sanjay — Roth is massively overrated. There’s no code word. Just smile and nod if you ever happen to meet a fan.
— right · Jan 1, 08:41 PM · #
“Once you’ve done all that work, you will be entitled to draw some tentative conclusions about whether the reading of literature is declining or not, and, if there is a decline, whether it’s from a well-established norm or from a unique high point.”
Everyone is entitled to draw conclusions from whatever they know; your phrasing aligns with the assumptions of the authoritarian elite.
— Withywindle · Jan 2, 02:04 AM · #
Everyone is entitled to draw conclusions from whatever they know; your phrasing aligns with the assumptions of the authoritarian elite.
Huh?
— Alan Jacobs · Jan 2, 02:46 AM · #
Sanjay – thanks for the reminder about the USA books. Back in junior high, when I was a slavering Hemingway fan, that was on my list of influences to trace backwards, like how Green Day fans eventually start wondering about the Buzzcocks (I hope).
— Matt Frost · Jan 2, 03:21 AM · #
AJ: To say that someone is not entitled to draw conclusions is not that far from saying they have no right to speak on a subject; only a credentialed, mutually recognizing elite may speak. I.e., a soft authoritarianism, in implication paving the way toward a hard one. Or, if you find that overblown, at any rate a mildly unpleasant turn of phrase that raises my hackles.
— Withywindle · Jan 2, 05:02 AM · #
All I have to add is that no one should be expected to read the parts of “Ulysses” that don’t make sense. If all books were written like that one, literature would definitely be on the decline.
— Joules · Jan 2, 05:18 AM · #
Withywindle, my point is simply that the question of whether liyerature is declining or not is an empirical question, to be settled by presenting evidence, not by making assertions. Isn’t that just the opposite of authoritarianism?
— Alan Jacobs · Jan 2, 05:24 AM · #
What if you look at the essence of “literature” as collection of certain attitudes towards, and techniques for, telling stories. Sure, different mediums are going to modify some of that collection but the basics are inherent in human mind. If so, then it can’t decline. That’s like saying humans are going to stop telling stories. The printed book as we know it may no longer be the primary form for transmiting “literature”, but that just means that there are other forms out their developing.
— cw · Jan 2, 06:38 AM · #
CW,
Literature in the sense that Frum uses it — generative of meaning, fecund at multiple depths in multiple ways, incompressible.
— JA · Jan 2, 05:37 PM · #
JA,
Exactly. There are always going to be people who want to tell stories and there are always people who are going to excell at it.
— cw · Jan 2, 05:49 PM · #
AJ: No, the question of the decline of literature is fundamentally one of aesthetic judgment, which empirical evidence may enrich, but which is neither prerequisite nor compelling.
— Withywindle · Jan 2, 05:58 PM · #
Yes, Sanjay and Matt, thank you for the reminder of the USA Trilogy. I attended high school in far western Kansas and Dos Passos somehow made it on to my senior English reading list — in fact, I wrote my final high school English paper on the USA Trilogy (a long paper was a requirement at that time, and this is many years ago) and managed a hard-earned C. I introduced my son to JDP his final year of college and he was similarly “floored” by its scope and ambition and sort of mystified that he had never heard of the books before. And, yes, JDP was part of my introduction to Faulkner, too, and then eventually on to Joyce.
— John Atkins · Jan 2, 06:55 PM · #
That whole “Decline of ….” schtick is just a by-product of old age and/or a type conservative temperment. Things aren’t what they were in my youth or in some imagined past. People have said that so many times and been wrong so many times that I almost have to automatically discount it.
I think that when we talk about “literature” we are talking about a collection of sensibilities, ambitions, skills in story telling. When we say a story is literature we are saying that it posseses these sensibilities and ambitions expressed extermely skillfully. Literature is not some secret static formula discovered by trolls in a cave in Iceland and passed down from initiate to initiate, though that is how it is presented sometimes. But in the end it’s just someone telling a story well, and people will always be telling stories.
— cw · Jan 2, 07:42 PM · #
Define literature, and … gather as much information as you can about literacy rates, book sales relative to population, library use, and so on. You’ll need to figure out what time frame you’re talking about: the past thirty years? Seventy-five? Two hundred? You’ll need to get as much historical context as possible, and context from other societies…. Once you’ve done all that work, you will be entitled to draw some tentative conclusions about whether the reading of literature is declining or not, and, if there is a decline, whether it’s from a well-established norm or from a unique high point.
That warms the heart of this non-literary, quantitative analyst. We need to SCOPE THE PROBLEM with definitions of literature and specified time frames. We need COMPARATIVE DATA like literacy rates and book sales, collected across both time and space. We need measurement in CONTEXT, taking care to identify whether recent change marks something new or a return to an old status quo.
— William Woodward · Jan 2, 07:54 PM · #
I have not read many graphic novels at all, but I’m glad Alan mentioned Persepolis. It’s such a great work! If you have not read it, please do so (in the US it’s divided in three, but it’s all one work.) I cannot recommend her other works and the movie was a let down. Don’t watch the movie, but do read Persepolis.
— Kolya · Jan 2, 08:45 PM · #
Withywindle, you’re conflating two distinct sets of questions. Whether The Trial is a great work (better than what tends to get assigned in literature classes) or whether Wole Soyinka is a better playwright than Harold Pinter — these are questions of “aesthetic judgment.” But whether “literature is a declining presence in our modern society” (however “literature” is defined) is an empirical question. It’s a factual claim, not an evaluative one — someone could think that it would be a good thing if the social role of literature were diminished — and needs to be evaluated according to the criteria Mr. Woodward mentions.
— Alan Jacobs · Jan 2, 09:34 PM · #
As a Graduate student in Literature who teaches Intro Lit. courses and Freshman composition, comments like Mr. Frum’s just get under my skin. When was the last time Frum was in a Literature class? Yet, he is very sure of what goes on in the those classrooms and the pedagogical methodologies employed when constructing course materials. I swear if Allan Bloom never wrote that damn book conservative would have no complaints about the arts and sciences. And make no mistake, Frum’s assumptions stem from conservative shibboleths written many years ago, and repeated endlessly by lazy thinkers who have no real interest in pedagogy or learning. It was a way to score cheap points with like minded audiences. Its time to start hitting back against these stereotypes, and its time that people like Mr. Frum start taking field trips to the real world.
Sorry that this is rant.
— MattP · Jan 2, 10:22 PM · #
I am probably a poster child for the decline in reading literature, or at least anything with a narrative. After high school, people thought I would either be an English major or a Math major. After getting an Ivy League Engineering (you may kiss my ring) PhD (and never, in my memory, ever visiting the Arts Quad), I spent 21 years at various research labs. But I read Lagerkvist’s “The Dwarf” to clear my head after my dissertation. Now I have unlimited time to read and cannot for the life of me bring myself to read anything but nonfiction works and poetry (mostly older stuff, both English and in translation). I am a member of that target minority demographic for novels, short stories, plays, etc. who is not reading them, much less purchasing them. A couple observations…
1. No one with a normal professional life nowadays has the time or energy to devote to reading anything longer than a couple pages for pleasure without being meaningfully distracted by something or….oh look, a butterfly.
2. Nowadays we may have a fundamental mistrust of someone force-feeding us a fictional (or quasifictional/posing as factual) narrative about anything. If my experience is any guide, our generation is so media-savvy that, after the first page of a novel, we subconsciously start to look for the (normally transparent) agenda (philosophical and/or political) the author is pursuing at our expense. Sort of spoils the fun. I’ve found the time and intellectual investment in reading any given novel has provided, on average, such a poor return that it isn’t worth the three or more hours to give any novel a go. For it may not just waste my time but actually provide a negative experience…impoverishing the soul. To a lesser extent, that is true for short stories as well. The heavy-handedness of postwar English literature (or what passed for literature) is probably to blame…but I don’t want to waste my life trying to find out. Poetry on the other hand, especially poetry that has stood the test of time, has provided a much higher interest rate…at least for me.
— RC · Jan 3, 09:45 AM · #
“1. No one with a normal professional life nowadays has the time or energy to devote to reading anything longer than a couple pages for pleasure without being meaningfully distracted by something…”
The words “normal,” professional,” and “meaningfully” are being rather overworked here.
— Matt Frost · Jan 3, 02:48 PM · #
“1. No one with a normal professional life nowadays has the time or energy to devote to reading anything longer than a couple pages for pleasure without being meaningfully distracted by something…”
The words “normal,” professional,” and “meaningfully” are being rather overworked here.
— Matt Frost · Jan 3, 02:48 PM · #
AJ: OK, your “entitled” only applies to the narrowly historical question, as opposed to the aesthetic question. The word still sticks into my craw: everyone is “entitled” to a historical judgment (not unlike an aesthetic one in many ways), based on whatever facts and perceptions they have at hand. An elite of historians is no more palatable than an elite of aestheticians; every man his own historian. I think you can rephrase your point to say “he’s wrong, because” rather than “he isn’t entitled to opine until he’s read such-and-such.” 99.99% of humanity hasn’t read Jonathan Rose; none of them are entitled to speak about declining literacy? I haven’t read his book, but I’ve talked with him in person; does that mean I can speak about the subject in a whisper?
— Withywindle · Jan 3, 05:25 PM · #
I haven’t read his book, but I’ve talked with him in person; does that mean I can speak about the subject in a whisper?
I’m afraid not. The rule of silence must be maintained. However, you may scribble notes with your stub of pencil, if you have some spare toilet paper, and pass them to the other inmates.
— Alan Jacobs · Jan 3, 06:20 PM · #
It should be noted though, that the man (or woman) of letters is not all that he used to be in the West. It is difficult to imagine, for instance, someone inviting John Updike or Philip Roth to deliver a series of lectures on the coming victory of democracy, but I never heard of anyone wincing when Thomas Mann spoke on this subject. In other words, literary figures are no longer looked at as the high priests of culture. Most of our literary writers in this day and age are merely preserved by state institutions, as though in a museum.
— Jungle Cat · Jan 3, 09:00 PM · #
“Harold Pinter never wrote a play worthy to be compared with Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman.” I don’t dispute this, but have you really read all of Pinter’s plays?
— Ed · Jan 3, 09:12 PM · #
You make some interesting points. I’m going to check out that Soyinka play.
— Ed · Jan 3, 09:14 PM · #
Wouldn’t you have to explore the question of decline in different ways, if you were going to study it? Both Withywindle and Brave Sir Alan (hopefully not like Brave Sir Robin of Monty Python fame) have come up with at least two ways of approaching the question.
— Joules · Jan 3, 10:16 PM · #
I spoke of this at work last week. Amongst the four of us in the discussion – one hadn’t read fiction since college because he had no interest, the rest of us had read some but seemed to agree that most fiction we had read recently had been boring, pretentious, or not relevant to the world as we saw it.
OTOH, we have some big Wire fans. And some people discuss movies the way the High School novel teacher seemed to wish we followed lit…
— Ed · Jan 3, 11:54 PM · #
<i> I would give up the complete works of John Updike and Philip Roth for Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day, Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, and a handful of the gently brilliant comic novels of R. K. Narayan. And yes, I’m serious. </i>
THANK YOU. Updike and Roth have done some good stuff here and there, but they are seriously overrated due to the good fortune of being American. Not as overrated as Norman Mailer, though, who was an actively bad novelist. It’s kind of rich for an American to claim that affirmative action is leading to too much attention to novelists from Asia/Africa, since American literature since WWII has been seriously on the decline and is full of examples of overrated writers who benefited from being in the world’s richest/most powerful country. The novelists who really benefited from political correctness were not writers from Africa/Asia/South America, who got only part of the recognition they deserved, but black/female novelists in the first world (Alice Walker, I’m looking at you).
Glad someone mentioned “The Wire”. The greatest dramatic TV series ever — a truly impressive accomplishment that I think is really going to last. It has the richness and depth of a great social realist novel. If you look at just storytelling more broadly, what has been happening recently with TV series is very interesting. At 10-12 hours per season over multiple seasons, the series or miniseries format offers the scope to be much longer and deeper than a movie or even a novel. It’s only recently, thanks to cable, that people are starting to explore the possibilities.
— MQ · Jan 4, 08:27 AM · #
It’s true that I haven’t read all of Pinter’s plays, but then, neither has anyone else. I’ve read ten of them, I think. Nevertheless, in the interests of truth and accuracy I should amend my statement: “Harold Pinter never wrote a play worthy to be compared with Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, unless one of those plays that almost no one has read, and that crashed and burned utterly on the London stage, is actually an unrecognized work of astonishing genius.”
— Alan Jacobs · Jan 4, 03:52 PM · #
I don’t understand why Dr. Jacobs isn’t challenging Withywindle’s assumption that elitism is ipso facto bad. Of course there’s elitism in the aesthetic judgments that go into deciding whether a particular art is declining or not. So what? Only people who are reasonably good at something or who have studied it carefully have the knowledge and virtue to make a judgment about whether an act in that particular arena is good or bad.
No one asked me whether the Patriots should re-sign Matt Cassel or not because I know almost nothing about football and even less about running a team. Sure, I have a “right” to draw conclusions from whatever I know. The question is, does it make sense for anyone else to listen to me while I exercise that “right”? (Answer: no. Trust me on this.)
— Badger · Jan 4, 08:46 PM · #
Alan, you could also have said something like, “I’ve never read or seen anything by Pinter worthy to be compared with Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman.”
Maybe it’s quibbling, but it’s possible he’s written good stuff that didn’t quite make it big.
In any case, I agree with your point that international literature that Frum might classify as PC has more merit that much of the stuff in the Western Canon.
— Ed · Jan 5, 12:20 AM · #