| Friday, May 2, 2008 12:23PM | | | | American Lit Seen From Abroad | Posted By: Marlon James
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American Eyes
Before Yousef Al-Mohaimeed could make it to the panel Thursday night, first he had to make it through USA Customs. And when a Saudi Arabian, even a writer ends up in Immigration, you can pretty much figure out where this sentence is going. Held for three hours, Mohammed encountered a chilly welcome that soured his American visit pretty much instantly. On stage he said, with more grace than the powers that be probably deserved, that he might not come back here. Even if he does, he’s unlikely to receive any warmer treatment than he did before.
This illustrates a point quite rather crucial to this forum, one that Kenyan writer, Binyavanga Wainaina could expand upon rather well—the literary personality of America versus the reality. Mohaimeed’s and Wainiana’s experiences were particularly disturbing to both because they went against America as they first confronted it, through the pages of its literature (and images on screen). There is an America with which we’re familiar, more so than even our own countries as Wainaina points out, that is not America at all, but an ideal of it. Mohaimeed, catalyzed by Kerouac and Ginsberg was probably dismayed that the landscape itself wasn’t as freeform and daring as the art might have suggested, and the spirit of freedom in beat lit didn’t extend to the post 9/11 airport. There’s a temptation from us abroad to see American Literature as life itself.
But to hold literature merely to see how it compares to reality robs us of what’s so great and rich about American fiction in the first place. What lies at the soul of American letters that can galvanize writers in Kenya, Saudi Arabia and especially Britain, which for centuries pretty much taught everyone else how to write. Maybe it’s the trajectory of all literature to one day imprison its voice, but by the time McEwan came across the holy trinity of post war American Lit (Roth, Bellow, Updike) British lit had imploded on its own formula, and had gotten more provincial and ghettoized. By narrowing its focus Brit lit missed the view. European writers weren’t not much better in McEwan’s opinion: reaching further and further into the abstract and existential, yet unable to see the world right in front of them. In this world, reading Bellow was a revelation. “My world became larger,” McEwan said.
McEwan went on to point out that American writers, and not just the trinity but older authors such as Mark Twain whether deliberately or not mapped the global human condition. Bellow in particular could report from the back alley and the drawing room with equal aplomb (and I don’t get to use a word like aplomb every day) with a tenacity and a humanity almost impossible from a British writer reigned in by class distinction.
Hearing all of this last night, I wondered what McEwan thought of American Literature now, where there is not only such as thing as a New York novel but even a Brooklyn one. Americans are now writing the very provincial kind of fiction that drew Brits away from the British novel. This may be why nobody is reading anymore. This may also be why many American novelists remain stumped on 9/11, not in capturing any aspect of the tragedy, but using it saying something larger about us given that they have for years thrived on the narrowing of viewpoint. It’s likely that the best 9/11 novel has yet to be written, but it is equally likely that when it finally appears, an American might not have written it. | | |
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1 Comment | Add a Comment |
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| 5-2-08 8:40PM: Aaron Hamburger said...
Dear Marlon,
It's so interesting hearing an alternate point of view on the same event, which I attended and blogged about as well. My favorite part was hearing Wainaina saying he saw Little House on the Prairie as a kid and fantasized about being in it, much as I did. Yet somehow I think the fantasy-reality of that show was also false for a kid growing up in the Midwestern suburbs of the 1980s as it was for someone growing up in Kenya at the same time.
About your musings on the 9/11 novel, I wonder whether we need a 9/11 novel at all?
I actually think the best books written about 9/11 were written before 9/11, Michel Houellebecq's Platform, and Jennifer Egan's Look at Me, published on 9/11/01 by chance. Both of these books deal head-on in a clear-eyed way with the issues underlying the actual event, a welcome contrast to other books that take on the day as their subject but miss the point.
Best,
Aaron
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