Does family matter more than community, or is it the other way around? What if your family hasn’t a shred of authenticity about it? What if they are living well beyond their means, laughing at the pretensions of others, while preaching the evils of materialism? What if your homey community were a hotbed of adultery and all your friends’ parents are getting divorced? Worse, your parents are joining the crowd. Does it mean writing fiction like John Updike?

It seems to me that the only culture contemporary America can really call its own is that which is thoroughly market researched and manufactured by our hallowed corporations and their minions of “creative” entrepreneurs. It is a culture of inauthenticity, telling stories that say nothing and speak to no one, leaving us even more in the dark than before about the questions we go to the artifacts for. Who are we and what are we about in the context of the here and now?

Samuel R. Delaney’s book, About Writing, pretty much puts this argument to rest. He’s a writer of science fiction and a literary critic, and writing teacher who recognizes the difference and can expound on it gracefully.

Perhaps you are thinking of all that navel contemplating stuff written in the tradition of Joyce, under the banner of stream of consciousness, or the tepidly pretty writing produced by the average MFA grad. Such “literary fiction” can be hard to swallow, I agree.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to get lost in a story, and many literary works have stories one can get lost in. Try Richard Powers, for instance. But the difference in quality between Powers and writers of commercial genre, Diana Gabaldon, let’s say, could not be more striking.

But there is very little snobbery involved, unless it is reverse snobbery, because those making most of the noise about this are writers and readers of genre fiction, who feel snubbed by the serious critics and major literary awards.

Millions of people are writing today and most of them are trying to write in a limited number of commercial genre that they enjoy reading. But if you look at the stuff on the slush piles such as You Write On, Authonomy, or self-publishing sites such as scribd, you will soon realize how awful most of it is. What Delaney recognizes as both good and talented writing is very much the exception on these sites.

Finding Kat Heckenbach: More on the Literary Battlefront.

I can remember when I was in college, back in the early 1970s. I had a number of friends who were gay and never even suspected it until a couple of them approached me. It made me uncomfortable because I didn’t swing that way, but their behavior, otherwise had the same decorum the rest of us normally observed. Four years later, after a stint outside the country, during which time Stonewall occurred, I returned to find men flaunting themselves like the cross dressing prostitutes I saw on the streets of Naples. The Nazi paraphernalia of the super-macho boys, the flitting Mary mannerisms of their bitches, even couples flaunting dog collars and leashes. Somehow, I’m expected to fight for their rights to their eccentricity, when none of them will lift a finger to fight for collective bargaining rights.

Yet, when I look in the Real Estate sections of the NYT or the WP, they invariable have some article about an artfully restored and decorated house inhabited by a couple of same sex domestic partners. If these people are doing so badly why are their elegant, expensive homes on display for the world to admire or envy?

Is there some some kind of cognitive disconnect here? There are millions of skilled, talented, and honorable hard-working people in America, who have to scrounge to put food on the table, but the only concern of the so-called Left is the right of some wealthy fringe groups to disport themselves with dog collars and leashes.

It’s no wonder liberalism is moribund. It lost the courage to stand up for those who do society’s hardest work a long time ago, and it hasn’t been in its right mind since.

via The rise of zombie liberalism: Half-dead, half-alive – The Washington Post.

My original comment didn’t make it onto the Reuters website. It quoted my novel, Banana Republican Blues, which is all about the decline and fall of the once great American economy, owing to the abandonment of the working and consuming class, and the consequences that will have for the future of American capitalism.

“Boss called me into his office, a man who’d been my closest friend. Said, ‘we don’t need you anymore, and can’t afford to keep you, Joe.’ Replaced me with an immigrant. A kid fresh off the boat. Glad to work for less money, so the boss could take home more.”

“No excuse for that.”

“You see what I mean, then, don’t you? Way they’re bringing in foreigners and shipping jobs and plants overseas. Even our best technology. I’m just waiting for the Chinks to tell them, ‘we don’t need you anymore’.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t follow.”

“I mean, supposing after they learn from us how to make everything we make, they turn around and steal our markets. Raise themselves on that smile curve. What would happen then?” he says.”

What our arrogant and insatiable elites have forgotten is that companies are licensed and financed by their communities as community assets. When companies abandon those communities they are are no longer regarded as assets.

The world is in a financial crisis due to the depredations of an insatiable corporate and financial elite, that long ago abandoned its function of efficiently producing wealth generating products and allocating capital to the next generation of industries. The American consumer is drowning in private debt and lacking in remunerative work because of bad decisions made by those very same elites.

Having lost much of its American market, China is on life support with another debt-financed real estate boom, while India, Brazil and Russia still are not yet capable of self-sustainable growth. Without a strong and stable middle class supporting their economic model, the capitalist economies will eventually implode and their once proud elites will fall, just as my character, Eddie, does.

Chrystia Freeland | Analysis & Opinion | Reuters.com.

Every yellow dog Democrat and Democratic office holder sick of being tarred with the “liberal” epithet should start to use the terms Banana Republican and Banana Republican Blues at every opportunity. Republicans are already on the defensive, seemingly predicting that it will be used against them. There is already one Republican blog that calls itself Banana Republican, and another one of the same title that has a religious orientation. Just keep throwing it until it sticks.

In developing my protagonist, I was interested in elucidating his various personas by means other than the inner monologue that is normal in literary fiction. How he makes himself a brand in one persona, or deals with strangers and intimates in others. I felt it would require more psychic distance than conventional first person would permit, so I used the illeistic third, in which the narrator speaks of himself as if he were someone else. In this mode, he is selective about what information he reveals. More personal information is divulged in other personas. The reader gets an occasional glimpse at his private self through his journal entries, which he keeps in the first person. Finally, he narrates the story of his love interest, a woman he will meet in later chapters. As the narrator can’t be in both places at once, and third person is already in use for himself, it obviates use of third person for someone else. Thus, using the epistolic second person, he elaborates on her diary entries, presumably with information she has given him in person at some other time.

Using three different narrative perspectives within one POV is one of the aspects of the novel that, in my experience, make it unique in literary fiction. I would welcome knowing of other writers who have attempted the same thing.

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