Several people have had something to say about Jane Smiley’s article in Slate today, but as a novelist (not nearly as successful as Ms. Smiley but still successful enough to have been in Slate’s own roundup of how novelists were voting in Tusday’s election), I have a different perspective.
We novelists do not always deal in logic. We are dramatists and storytellers and think in scenes, entertaining ones hopefully. Here’s some vivid scene writing by Ms. Smiley on primitive life in the ‘Red States’ back in the olden days. It’s from the article itself:
Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. There used to be a kind of hand-to-hand fight on the frontier called a “knock-down-drag-out,” where any kind of gouging, biting, or maiming was considered fair. The ancestors of today’s red-state voters used to stand around cheering and betting on these fights. When the forces of red and blue encountered one another head-on for the first time in Kansas Territory in 1856, the red forces from Missouri, who had been coveting Indian land across the Missouri River since 1820, entered Kansas and stole the territorial election.
“Especially in the red states?” Perhaps Ms. Smiley missed Caleb Carr’s vision of old New York filled with psychopathic killers in The Alienist or better yet Martin Scorsese’s recent film Gangs of New York – that’s almost as bad as anything in the red states, I’d say. In fact, a lot worse. [But didn't all those New Yorkers vote for Kerry?-ed. They've had a lot of psychotherapy.] But wait. What about peaceful Europe in literature and film (not to mention history)? Nothing more pacific than a good read of Dostoevsky.
But you get my point. The mind of a good fantasist must make those stories vivid. And to do that you have to live in those stories, believe your vision and live it like an actor. Contradictory ideas are to some extent not allowed because they would vitiate the drama, leaving only a lifeless essay.
That means the novelist (myself included) must be something of an hysteric when writing. You are inventing your own private reality. That is what Ms. Smiley has done in her article. I would like to emphasize, however, that I admire her tremendously as an author. She has afforded me much pleasure with her books.
Excellent analysis, Roger. In my English class we’ve been talking about the relationship between politics and literature, also how writers may be basically factual but still create dramatic effect to heighten the impact of their writing.
This also highlights what I think is a bit of a distortion in the popular media, that is, the “red state / blue state” meme. I think the divide is largely urban/rural, and ought better to be expressed (if it must) as “red county / blue county”, especially since many states were very closely divided.
Narrow-mindedness and chauvinism are certainly not confined to certain areas of the country. I grew up in New England, and while I love my native Connecticut dearly, I’m not proud of the arrogance many of my fellow Yankees showed towards people from the South.
As the old aphorism goes: Trust the art, not the artist.
If someone had written, “”The history of the last forty years shows that nigger types, above all, do not what to be told what to doóthey prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable….nigger types love to cheat and intimidate, so we have to assume the worst and call them on it every time,” it would be unforegivable, rightly so. That sweet Jane would ascribe these shortcomings to political thought and not race doesn’t make them any less despicable.
Although I don’t pretend to understand the psychology, there is a kind of person who needs paranoia. This is the case with many if not most on the left. America, or more properly Amuhrrica, must be seen as the bogeyman. This need is far deeper than the accumulated evidence of a lifetime that if left alone, your fellow citizens will, with rare exceptions, leave you alone.
Yes, I’d say the term fantasist pretty well describes Miss Smiley and her ilk.
Guess who’ll be sitting at the kids’ table this Thanksgiving?
She has afforded me much pleasure with her books.
Proof positive that certain types of masochism are not amenable to treatment through analysis.
I enjoyed Ms. Smiley’s diatribe very much. It should be preserved as an excellent example of the profundity of liberal thought regarding tolerance and diversity. If there are any lit teachers reading I would suggest copying and saving this piece. It will be a helpful example if you are teaching Orwell’s ‘Animal House’, although Mark Halperin’s memo on the importance of differentiating between an error made by Bush and an error made by Kerry might be more illustrative.
I certainly hope that the DNC/MSM continues to pet and cuddle this baby meme until they grow it into a full blown trope. In fact, I have very high hopes that full acceptance by the MSM could almost be as effective as the retention of McAuliffe as head of the DNC.
What a wondrous example of the full range of the liberal ethos.
Roger,
In times such as these, every leftist needs at least one or two juicy rationalizations to get through the day. Ms. Smiley, who believes herself to be, naturally, better-informed than us knuckle-draggers in flyover country, probably couldn’t find Iraq on a map.
Developing your statement about novelists further, I believe you are probably more a member of the Tom Wolfe School, where worlds must be filled with accurate details to fully convince the reader of their reality. Failure to get even the little things right results in a novel that never rises to the level of transcendence–what Hemingway called “truer than true.”
Wolfe urges writers to go forth into the wilds, meet diverse peoples and ask questions no writer has the right to ask. Why create an alternate reality when what we have is so incredibly bizarre without embellishment: what Wolfe calls “this wonderful carnival of ours.” Ms. Smiley should climb out of her writer’s hut every now and again and do the same.
So when Ms. Smiley or [insert your favorite New York Review of Books pompous dimwit here:_____________] can’t even construct a vaguely realistic model of the United States at the macro level, how on earth can we believe her when she purports to explain the psychological motivations of Bush voters?
As I’ve said in this space before, Alexis de Tocqueville warned that parties suddenly finding themselves in the minority would have a hard time adjusting to it and would initially rebel. Since the Republican takeover of Congress is going on 10 years old, perhaps it’s time the NYRB refuseniks got over it already and started acting like rational adults.
Smiley. Ironic name, that.
Roger, having been both an actor and (so far unsuccessfully) a novelist, I’ve got to say that your insight here is very sharp, and an excellent example of why one should always suspicious of any actor’s political and economic opinions.
Present company excepted, of course.
Ms. Smiley said,
“The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry.”
WHAT? I’m shocked. All of the rhetoric coming from the left has been regarding the “minority’s” inability to mark or punch a ballot correctly, their inability to determine which precinct they should be in to vote, how it’s just too difficult for them to acquire an ID and how the Democratic Party wants to make it easier for them. Who is not only perpetuating, but encouraging ignorance here?
Ms. Smiley should stick to fiction.
She has.
Ms. Smiley has ingeniously reconciled her inherent sense of superiority with the extreme boorishness of those of us still out here in the sticks by showing that she can be more prejudiced, judgmental, and ignorant than we rubes would dream of.
I think Joyce Carol Oates justification for voting Kerry was on a more intellectually sound footing. She voted for Kerry because all her friends were.
Smiley’s people. Crude little essays like Smiley’s, which just reveal their author’s bigotry and ignorance, would be of no interest except for their author’s identity. Whenever I read stuff like this, I remember a contest that the Yale Daily News had in 1967 or 1968. There was a prize for the best teacher’s comment that a reader had gotten on a paper. I don’t remember the prize, but the winning comment was “You write better when you don’t try to think.”
The article is so risible, it has to be some unconcious form of self-parody.
Hey, I’m all for the novelistic construction of internally consistent alternative realities. But Smiley isn’t asserting that in her piece and what she’s doing is essentially indulging in heinous bigotry.
Her article is a series of unsupported and vile assertions:
What psych textbook does “classic Republican feelings of superiority” come from?
“Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states,” is a statement already disabled by Roger. But its naked contempt is so ugly it doesn’t deserve explanation.
“When the forces of red and blue encountered one another head-on for the first time in Kansas Territory in 1856, the red forces from Missouri, who had been coveting Indian land across the Missouri River since 1820, entered Kansas and stole the territorial election.” That’s a transposition of 21st Century political labels to 19th Century America that’s both ridiculous and vicious as it saddles today’s Missourians with the sins of their long-ago ( forefathers. Shouldn’t Missouri also get credit for Mark Twain, Harry Truman and all the other good people who’ve lived there in the intervening years? Come on, does she really think that the ideology that animated Quantrill’s raid is operative today? That’s not an insane assertion, it’s intentionally cruel, deceptive and ahistoric.
“Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into youóif you don’t believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question.”
Since I’m not a Biblical literalist, I’ll leave the defense of that to someone else. But let’s be clear, knowledge of the Bible is not the same as ignorance. Ignorance is in fact the absence of knowledge and while I think it’s fair to assert that the “red” and “blue” states (in a broad metaphoric sense) are operating from different knowledge bases, I don’t think it’s fair to claim that because they have religious faith red staters are therefore ignorant. Plus, of course, you don’t have to be fundamentalist to be a conservative. There’s a common delusion among both conservatives and liberals that if any individual knew what they knew, they’d necessarily agree with them. Well, guess what, I can know everything Ms. Smiley knows and still think she’s got her head firmly planted in her lower colon. A common knowledge does not always produce agreement.
“The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to doóthey prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable.” Not wanting to be told what to do (which is pretty much a roundabout definition of “liberty”) is a defense against tyranny and not a preference for ignorance. If teachability means the acceptance of any sort of political orthodoxy, then what she’s advocating is totalitarianism. She’s making a fascist argument.
This is turning into a weird sort of Fisking when all I wanted to do at the outset was point out that Roger was being far too kind and understanding in his assessment of Smiley’s despicable writing. If she had built a novel around such a world view it would be dismissed as paranoid, delusional and ultimately racist. It would be the left wing equivalent of The Turner Diaries she’d be written off as a crackpot.
Until, that is, someone like Timothy McVeigh took it seriously enough to act upon it.
This reminds me of that idiotic Margaret Drabble essay about how she was engulfed by massive waves of hate for Americans.
Pot, meet kettle.
Stunning. I have so many responses I’m speechless. I think is suffices to say that Ms. Smiley knows not of what she speaks. I’m not referring only to her rancid bigotry towards people who are not post-modern liberals (the ‘red-staters’), but her galloping ignorance regarding the constituencies of her own Democratic party.
Blacks are not post-modern liberals.
Unionists in the Rust Belt and Upper mid-west are not post-modern liberals.
Hispanics in the Southwest and California are not post-modern liberals.
The list goes on. Is she not aware that Pennsylvania is blue only because of Philadelphia (most of the state was red)? That Illinois is blue only because of Chicago (most of the state was red)? That Oregon is blue only because of Portland (most of the state was red)? That Washington is blue only because of Seattle (most of the state was red)?
This list goes on. Is she not aware that there is plenty of violence in the cities, which is where the true constituency of the Democratic party lies? That the same neighborhoods which are the most violent are also the most ignorant? That these same neighborhoods have elected Democrats for generations and that nothing has changed?
Her ignorance is profound, her unseriousness sublime. I’m tempted to say she lives in an intellectual cocoon, but more accurately she lives in a museum.
She perfectly represents the complete bankruptcy of post-modern liberal thought.
Reactionaries indeed.
I look forward to Republican (non-post-modern liberal) gains in 2006.
Fresh Air gets it right when he (or is it she? Sorry) refers to the Tom Wolfe school of writing – and it could be applied even to writers like Tolkien who create a whole new world by imagination. You have to work out the details; what happens, and the characters’ behavior, has to be *believable*. Tolkien makes dragons and wizards believable; Wolfe’s characters are so painfully accurate that you feel like you’re trapped under their skin.
I’ve never read Jane Smiley’s fiction and thanks to her article, I probably never will. She sounds like a not-very-disciplined twelve-year-old fanfiction writer – the heroes (the people she likes) are all pure and brave and noble and the villains are ugly, knuckle-dragging orcs with blood on their fangs. All you have to know about them is that they’re evil; that way you don’t have to think about them any more. And that’s the end of the story.
She sounds smug and ignorant, and satisfied to remain so. That’s plenty enough reason to stay away from her.
Once upon a time in a discussion about why liberals can make the inherently contradictory arguments they make (e.g. Bush as Moron and Evil Manipulative Genius), I argued that it’s a trait common to those in the, shall we say, liberal arts fields.
When writing a literary critique of the lesser known writings of Donne, the factual basis of what one writes is less important than how well one makes the argument.
Take the mainstream press : the factual basis for several recent stories is somewhat less than solid, yet reams of paper have been comsumed with making their arguments (yellowcake, awol, it’s really about gay marriage, etc etc etc).
Combine this with ‘situational ethics’ … and you have a fair portrait of today’s left.
this is a really insightful analysis, thank you roger.
as an aside, I am beginning to really wonder why it is necessary for us to be empathic and understanding of terrorists, but not understanding of our fellow citizens. Imagine the response if anyone wrote anything similar about the ignorance and violence in societies that spew out terrorists.
p.s. so what’s your theory on why all academics seem to buy this kind of bs???
p.p.s. i really do think you nailed it. creativity generally seems to go together with a certain ability to ignore the facts on the ground, to create a conceptual framework that discards everything one “knows”
There are many towns in Kansas which have never known a murder in living memory. In some cases they have never had a murder, period. I know this because I read about it in the NYT years ago (really).
She doesn’t have any idea what she is talking about.
She is indeed creating a phantasy; unfortunately it is the tired banal phantasy that mankind always creates, to wit, “the strange people living over there with their strange ways are MONSTERS!”. Talented novelists should be able to do better.
The growth of the attitude that only the coastal elites are good people and everyone else in America is a monster will necessarily drive the Democratic party further over the cliff in coming elections.
How interesting. I’m a knucle-dragging moron! I grew up in Boston. I graduated from MIT, and my boss is a Harvard MBA. I didn’t know there were any morons from Blue-state land’s finest elite institutions. Admittedly, our company does low-life knuckle-dragging work, like drilling oil wells way out in the ocean so Ms. Smiley can buy gasoline to drive her Volvo to the Save the Whales protests, but we’re uneducated hillbillies because we voted for President Bush? I’m assuming Ms. Smiley would be unable even to earn a “D” in sophomore advanced calculus at MIT, much less graduate near the top of her law school class. I’m sure glad to be a moron. It pays well. Oh, did I mention that the President’s tax cuts for the rich will let me keep some more of all that money Ms. Smiley thinks I don’t deserve?
Smiley’s hysteria and invective are spreading among the polite liberal intelligentsia like a virulent disease. Compare EJ Dionne’s and Krugman’s call to arms to Frank Luntz’s analysis (all up on realclearpolitics.com). The Left believes that W won because of hate and fear and prescribe an armegeddon-like battle to prevail. Luntz attributes W’s win to the opposite of fear. Dionne and Krugman even believe that W won because of horrible and untruthful attacks on Kerry. These guys evidently believe that Fahrenheit 911 was some polite parody.
Roger is spot on: The Liberal intelligentsia and MSM are living in their own “private reality.” I don’t see them meeting W half way in his desire to reach out and accomplish some big things. Giving up their intransigent filibusters on Judges and reactionary opposition to the GWOT would be a good start. We’ll see, but Smiley, Dionne, and Krugman are not good signs.
In the 60 when I was young and innocent, I thought Norman Mailer’s “In the Armies of the Night” was the clarion call of an artist preaching politics. I was a true believer.
When I becamse old, feeble,maybe, wiser,and, over 60, Mailer became a kinda of a thuggish blowhard.
The artist, as political scientist, is tough to digest. Steisand, Robbins, Sarandon, Oliver Stone, Mike Moore, P. Diddy, Marty Sheen, are what one may describe as “artists.” Jane Smiley writes about cows; perhaps even rhapsodically. Let them remain as honored artists. But as historians or as people who deserves a public platform to opine about politics, they are not.
“will necessarily drive the Democratic party further over the cliff in coming elections.”
WB, I believe that it will simply make the Democratic marginal for the forseeable future – out to about 2020. One thing that is being ignored by practically everyone is that the current Republican Party would provide a much more familiar and comfortable setting to John Kennedy than would the current Democratic Party. Try and think of an issue and the corresponding Republican position, that the real JFK would reject out of hand. Let me know if you do, because I can’t. The Republican Party is no more conservative than are the neo-cons.
Jane, et al., here’s a dose of reality:
Interesting… And some people in New York believe that no one from any places that are terror targets, too http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/nyregion/04york.html?ei=5090&en=4320fe069a36fa08&ex=1257224400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1099676921-ceJjrc8OLymEF47vDpUaFg
Well, I live in San Diego, the 6th largest city in the US, a beach resort and surfing capital (see Bali), with the busiest border crossing in the world that for many reasons is symbolic of global trade (see World Trade Center), several Naval and Marine bases in the city limits (see USS Cole), a busy rail line (see Madrid), a lot of young suburban families with kids in school (see Moscow), several dams and reservoirs in the city limits, a vulnerable bridge across the bay, a large cruise ship terminal, a container port, a nuclear power plant in the county, two convention centers… No, no one in San Diego ever thinks of ourselves as a target. Never.
We have but one country music station, but several large universities; we are a wireless, IT and biotech mecca. Chances are, if a New Yorker is taking medication, driving on an overpass, or using a wireless phone, it was developed here at least in part, at UCSD, Qualcomm, the Salk Institute, Pfizer or another biotech.
While this is not Manhattan, I live in a townhouse near the geographic center of the city and my dog plays in the park, not a yard. This isn’t flyover farm country. For the record, it’s not a bastion of fundamentalism, either.
San Diego, contrary to the big cities to the north, voted for Bush, by a larger margin than the nation as a whole. Why? I figure that a majority of voters thought Bush the better choice, and that Kerry typifies the culture many of us fled in disgust when we came to this vibrant little corner of the nation.
By the way, San Diego is also a gay mecca. We have the largest mixed-race marriage rate in the nation. The city is comfortably multicultural, to the extent that many other cities (Blue City Chicago, for one) seem oddly segregated to me, in every sense.
So what culture do I mean? I mean the paternalistic, dishonest culture of the Eastern liberal political elite and the “victims” they create to cement their power base. The culture that takes the “black vote” and the “hispanic vote” for granted. The culture that tells people their only hope is a good union factory job and a benevolent government.
That doesn’t fly in this city, at least not with the majority.
Roger:
Ms. Smilley’s ignorance of the evil red state people is so over the top that it sounds as if it is coming from the writers of “The Onion” rather then someone who is trying to give a serious examination of this area of the country. She sounds like that anti-Clinton nut that broadcast from the hills of Arkansas with his paranoid delusions of what big bad Bill was planning to him and the country.I was no fan of Clinton but I could recognize paranoid delusion when I heard it.
I too have enjoyed Ms. Smilleys novels even when I have disagreed with the political philosophy’s that were at the root of her stories. Why? Because they were well written with pace and drama and well thought out characters. Unlike Ms. Smalley I can sometimes take a fantasy novel and recognize it for what it is. A tall tale.
Her ramblings would be funny except for two things. Because she lived in this area they will be taken by the litteratti of Europe as gospel and not as the ignorant ravings that they are.
And if someone really thought this drivel was true what would be the logical thing to do. Of course a responsible human being would have to make sure these products of the caves must have their rights to vote taken away so they can’t ruin life for the fully formed Human Beings that Ms. Smalley represents. Just as we don’t let the animals at the zoo vote we can’t let these deformed examples of homo-sapiens ruin it for the rest of the civilized world. Her ravings are similar to the rants of the fascists and the communists who knew what was best for the worlds people and were going to take control of these sub-humans till they could be properly trained.
The ancestors of today’s red-state voters used to stand around cheering and betting on these fights.
Really? How do we know that Ms. Smiley’s ancestors were clean?
Doesn’t judging people by their ancestry sometimes lead to hysteria?
(Just a thought….)
Being from a blue state but containing the same ignorance and bloodlust identified so clearly by Ms. Smiley, I’d like to suggest a death match between her and Ann Coulter. Go Ann!!
“Her ramblings would be funny except for two things. Because she lived in this area they will be taken by the litteratti of Europe as gospel and not as the ignorant ravings that they are.”
All too astute, at least from my personal experience.
A relative of mine is a member of the ECJ, a part-time historian, a founding partner of a large international business law firm in Europe, etc. and ought to know better, but sadly his beliefs about America are sounding like a Michael Moore movie of late. Considering that his daugher was educated here, and he’s made countless trips to the States, I’m dumbfounded.
But that’s the trendythink in Europe, I guess.
Rick B- Just a nit but I think you meant “Animal Farm” not “Animal House”.
I must admit that Ms. Smiley and her ilk never cease to amaze me. This persistance in labeling those of the conservative bent as morons and “stupid” proves that there is a segment of the LLL that just hasn’t figure it out yet. I guess she doesn’t realize that it’s those “morons” who makes sure food is available to be put on her table, her auto is kept running and all the other things that need to get done on a daily basis to allow her to function in her insular world.
Keep it up there Ms. Smiley..you and your friends will just continue to marginalize yourselves even further. She really ought to take a motorcycle tour of the US and be forced to inter-act with us “unwashed masses”, maybe she’d learn something then. But then again, maybe not.
The title says it all. “Why Americans Hate Democrats”. First, I guess they don’t include themselves as Americans. Second, Americans don’t hate Democrats, just the opposite, Democrats hate Americans. Reading Smiley, and Pollitts essays, there is no doubt that this is true. They’re bile, hatred, and invectiveness towards ME is beyond reason. I guess I’m just another ignorant, violent red neck who just happens to be a PHD living in the bluest of the Blue, Bay area, California.
A couple of things occur to me:
1) ‘literate’ and ‘wise’ are not necesarily the same thing;
2) perspective is very rare, indeed;
3) the ‘intellectual elite’ may consist of an even smaller number of folks that we – or they – imagine;
4) not everyone reads widely in history, economics and philosophy;
5) not everyone who reads widely in history, economics, and philosophy understands what they read;
6) critical thinking skills should be taught to all students – and for longer periods of time;
7) maturity ain’t what it used to be;
too many of us inherit our political prejudices from leftist professors and proceeed to regurgitate those prejudices with an almost pavlovian regularity for the rest of our lives;
9) the enlightened souls currently villifying anyone who voted against them are neither as bright – nor as liberal – as they believe;
10)– No, I’ll stop there.
Rick Ballard writes: “If there are any lit teachers reading I would suggest copying and saving this piece. It will be a helpful example if you are teaching Orwell’s ‘Animal House’, although Mark Halperin’s memo on the importance of differentiating between an error made by Bush and an error made by Kerry might be more illustrative.”
George Orwell’s Animal House? The mind boggles! So who would John Belushi play – Napoleon?
An author’s excuse for an author’s folly. Your analysis might be correct were it not for the fact that Ms. Smiley captured what all of the Democratic decision makers believe. (It would not be fair to tag all Kerry voters with believing as Smiley believes.) The decision makers are leftest true believers, and they just do not understand their opposition – those nitwits in the heartland of America. If you disagree with them, you are just stupid, or greedy, or worse yet, both. It’s funny that the red state voters are so stupid, yet it is the Democrats who cannot figure out what “moral values” means. They are so smart, even though they know the exit polls were completely and catastrophically wrong, they are going to spend the next year trying to understand what “moral values” means. In the end, they will conclude that jobs and the minimum wage are moral values, and the morons from the heartland will never get it.
I don’t know why some people believe they have to analyze her work? Because they like other stuff she’s written? She’s a writer, therefore she’s to be taken seriously? discussing someone’s work whether pro or con gives her credibiilty.
As far as I’m concerned, this is contemptible and not worthy of more than a contemptible flyover comment:
Take that, bitch.
I’m the product of a liberal arts education and spent years in liberal arts fields. Somewhere around midlife I reversed gears and entered a world of black and white (well, black and red) and bottom lines. The can-do people concerned with finding practical, efficient solutions to real life problems I became associated with were like a breath of fresh air. I have little use for creative types who can’t differentiate between the world of their imaginations and the one we actually live in. And frankly, I enjoyed Smiley’s diatribe more than either of the two novels of hers I’ve read.
It has never ceased to amaze me how Democratic partisans can keep two contradictory thoughts in their minds at once:
1. That they are the party of the lower classes.
2. That they are smarter than average.
As I wrote in a post on this article on my teeny tiny blog (now that my major league blog has been sunk by the Swiftees), Republicans in every Presidential election since 1952 have gotten a higher percentage of the college graduate vote than they did of the high school graduate vote, and a higher percentage of the high school graduate vote than they did of the high school dropout vote. It is true that Democrats get a higher percentage of those with advanced degrees, but it’s not a big difference (6% this election according to Gallup), and it’s skewed by trial lawyers and teachers who make up a disproportionate number of that demographic.
Hereís an amusing tidbit from a recent interview:
source
The depth of her ignorance is shown by her belief the Carter was defeated because “he asked Americans to take responsibility for their profligate ways”.
This is an example of what happens when your political worldview is absorbed from NPR by osmosis. Her writerís mind has simply distilled the essence of the Progressive narrative. That is: “Evil Capitalist Overlords control Dumb Proles by propaganda.” This is nothing more than Marxism for Dummies with a lot of Christian-bashing and anti-Americanism thrown in on top.
Jane Smiley is a non-political person regurgitating the self-serving narrative of her social caste. She’s simply articulating the unspoken assumptions of her class: “It’s time to be honest about our antagonists”
I’m just glad that one of them finally came out and said it openly.
Smiley does have the mind of a novelist, but she should limit her imaginative powers to her novels. Right now, despite her wonderful creative powers (although I admit to being one who has tried, and failed, to plow through her novels), she is blurring the line between her fantasies and reality.
Novelists do have that wonderful power to imagine and to create whole worlds, but when they have blurred that line and start applying those powers to the real world, they need to be held accountable. There is a great danger in spinning fantasies as though they are truth, and the left is more and more falling into that trap. I, for one, find it frightening.
I say this because, more and more, I’ve realized that many of my loved friends and relatives have fallen into that very trap–wild conspiracies and demonization of the right and even the middle. The only reason I now know this (in a very personal sense) is that, when I announced to many of them that I support Bush, I naively supposed that their previous respect for my intelligence and person would carry over into a respect for my point of view (not agreement, mind you–just respect). For some, it did, but for many others, I became the enemy–and name-calling and rage was the result. To be called a bigoted right-wing- imperialist-whatever simply because I said I agree with Bush on foreign affairs was a real eye-opener into this mindset, a mindset I never shared, I mindset I used to think was only on the fringe, but now I realize is practically mainstream.
Years ago something like Smiley’s diatribe would only have appeared in The Forward or maybe Mother Jones. Now we see these things everywhere. So,I cut her no slack, and make no excuses, any more than I made them for Ezra Pound during WWII (not that I was alive then–but retrospectively, anyway). At least he may have been certifiably insane–what’s her excuse?
Slightly OT, does anyone know of a list of the people who said they would leave the U.S. if Bush was re-elected?
I promised to send $20 to help some fellow, a ‘local musician’, move to Vancouver (whether Bush won or not, I suggested) and now I can’t remember where I read about it.
Is this silly bitch for real?
This is disgusting. She sounds like one of the eugenics people talking about forced sterilization back in the 30′s. They even had a nifty program in Vermont for dealing with the French Catholics with Indian blood. For their own good of course. Hitler put an end to that fantasy, but it seems the dream lives on in Yankee land.
Nothing like a little humility.
I guess all those crazy Christians out there should strap a bomb to themselves and blow up a school bus, they would get more respect.
And I guess we backasswords hicks from flyover country should look at the history of the blue states which includes genocide, religious extremism and witch hunts to learn how better to behave ourselves.
My state is in red country. One of my Senators is Evan Bayh, a Demcorat. If people like this keep it up how long can reasonable men and women like Bayh or Lieberman stay in the party? It is becoming the party of the snooty rich asshole.
This woman sounds like Marie Antoinette announcing the rabble should eat cake if they have no bread.
And we all know what happened to her.
I seem to remember a little dustup a few centuries ago that could afford Ms. Smiley another good example of red-state ignorance and violence–if she could only move Salem, Massachusetts a thousand miles to the southwest.
Such counter-examples are silly, I suppose (in addition to being inexhaustable). Best just to chuckle, shake your head and press the back button.
A (long, but relevant) True Story:
In July, my wife’s 88 year-old maternal grandmother passed away after a brief illness. We dutifully packed up the family and headed out to West Texas for the funeral. We were only two hours away from GWB’s stomping ground of Midland — smack dab in the middle of Smiley’s “red state central.” To be perfectly honest, neither my law professor wife nor her high-powered corporate attorney husband (me, for those of you keeping score at home) were terribly excited about the trip. She hadn’t been all that close to this grandmother, West Texas in July is, well, a bit on the warm side, and then there was the matter of “that side of the family.”
You see, her grandmother was the matriarch of the trailer trash half of my wife’s ancestry. The most successful never rose above sharecropping and roughnecking. 40 year-old men who look sixty, and women for whom no amount of Maybelline can mask lives of hard labor and constant disappointment. The kind of folks we educated snobs refer to as “salt of the earth” when we’re feeling particularly magnanimous. (No, neither I nor my prejudices fare well in this story, for those who think I’m a little full of myself).
Fast forward to the day of the funeral. After several days of the requisite eating and visiting, we make our way over to the funeral parlor in 110-degree heat. My wife and I both dreaded the actual ceremony, primarily because the presiding minister was going to read letters from her grandmother’s family and friends in which they remembered her. There were probably a hundred people in that chapel, and I suspect that there were fewer than a dozen university degrees among us. To be blunt, I was scared to death that the letters were going to be everything the cultured snob in me hates: boorish, trite, inelegant, and embarrassingly emotional.
I learned a big lesson that day. Those ignorant red-state hicks (like my wife, I had been lucky enough to “rise above” my heritage) spoke with uncommon eloquence, obvious intelligence, and deep wisdom. Not every letter was Keats or Donne, but it quickly became apparent that many of these “simple folk” were keen observers of human nature, keen judges of character, and were obviously far smarter and more aware than I had given them credit for. Okay, many of them were far smarter than I. I left the ceremony both uplifted and humbled.
I’m not saying everyone in the room was a sage or a saint. But I do know that many of those oft-demonized “red-state” folks are a lot better able to make their own intelligent decisions than some people would like us to think.
Maybe they’ve rejected the Left because the real world just doesn’t work that way, and because they’ve learned the hard way that wishing will NEVER make it so.
Les Nessman,
Please don’t. Learn to love him like Fever. Consider that you have the majority about you, but up here in Vancouver the conservative turn is a bit more nascent, waiting for a few more immigrants to realize they don’t have to be clients for the multicult liberal elites and can bring their often hard-earned knowledge of reality to bear in Canada. Canada deserves some of its stereotyping among red Americans, but a lot of it is actually anachronistic. Did you know, e.g., we’ve had a federal government budget surplus for seven or eight years in a row and we’re starting to like tax cuts? The red tide is turning hereabout too. And those of us fighting locally the anti-American idiots don’t need any more fodder for the other side.
The Mind of a Neanderthal (Non-fiction)
In my callow youth I was visiting friends who attended a rather famous university in the wilds of southern Indiana. We had ventured out into the boonies to hike, and stopped off at the end of the day at a local watering hole.
We were soon debating with a local gentleman the relative merits of the local university versus the one I attended about 100 miles to the north. My debating partner was what we would have then called a “hill ape.” There was talk of various wagers, perhaps, even the need to venture outside, etc.
On my way to the men’s room, the bartender caught my eye and signalled me to come over. When I got there, he leaned over the bar and told me something that I’ve never forgotten. “Son,” he said, “you’re not that bright. He’s winning the argument, and he’s still gonna kick your ass and take your money.” I decided that he might be right, and we made a quick exit.
Ms. Smiley and our liberal friends need to get out more, or they will continue to get their fannies kicked by Red State Neanderthals.
Chinaberry Tree:
I am from Oklahoma. My Dad was almost killed on an oil rig when I was a little girl.
We laughingly called ourselves oil field trash. [Oil with one syllable.]
I have known many such people and they are the people who built this country. I know people roll their eyeballs when they hear that but my ancestors were homesteaders in Oklahoma and it took a particular kind of person to go through that. Tough minded and independent and while not hating money, needing more than that in life. They craved a place in history. They wanted to leave a mark and that meant doing hard things. They used to call it pioneer spirit.
Seems to me that we should just let these superior intellects keep violating the first rule of holes.
Had anyone been reading this blog regularly and seriously during the campaign (as opposed to trolling and parroting the Dem talking points), they would have made sure a mid course correction was executed. A bit of the old Clinton/Blair triangulation might have made the difference here and in key states as well.
Probably would have been much more effective than tarmac football, goose hunting and visits to NASA to don bunny suits, and having “a plan”.
Oh, and an apology to those who served in Vietnam might have helped as well doncha think?
I don’t think I have read comments by anyone on this blog that fits the stereotype being peddled by the likes of the erudite Ms. Smiley.
And what about Zell Miller, Ed Koch, and Arnold and Rudy? And Tommy Franks, and General Schwartzkpof? And Colin Powell and Condi Rice?
Right wing wingnuts all?
I suspect the average IQ, education and world experience would shame poor Ms. Smiley and her ilk.
I also think the most appropriate rejoinder to this article is to echo the words of that great newscaster Dan Aykroyd, “Jane, you ignorant slut”.
I knew Roger would be on this one.
The Mafia did unspeakably violent things in NYC and Al Capone did the same in Chicago far more recently than the Civil War. But to make a cultural connection about how dangerous people are in Manhattan or Chicago strikes me as a a stretch.
Oh wait, it is dangerous in Manhattan and Chicago.
Forget states. Would Ms. Smiley feel safer walking alone across a blue county or a red one?
“Vote for us, you stupid, miserable hayseeds!”
It’s a catchy phrase, ya gotta admit. I wonder how well it will work for them?
(Incidentally, can someone explain how the President should “reach across the aisle” to someone like this?)
Terrye — my parents grew up in the Panhandle of Texas, not far from Oklahoma. My father roughnecked some as a young man and broke horses for spending money (well, actually, they mostly broke him).
I am deeply proud of the hardworking, no-nonsense country folks in my background, and my wife is proud of hers. We both catch ourselves from time to time slipping into the unconscious arrogance of the overeducated (hence my earlier post), but I could not be prouder of the sunburned necks and calloused hands that put me in a position to have neither.
Whoops — “callused.”
Regarding her comment about red states: I recently drove the backroads of Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. One of the things that was astounding was that there was virtually no law enforcement to be seen anywhere. There were many, many farms and ranches in grand valley after grand valley and these people largely take care of themselves, work hard, and get along just fine, and don’t complain, unlike a lot of those in the blue urban areas.
Regarding the article by Jane Smiley:
This is my frustration with those who hold opposing political beliefs from myself. I want to be persuaded. I want to see the other side of the picture, I want to understand, “I want to see things the way you do, because you might be right and I might be wrong.” But.. to my despair, nearly everything I read (Ms. Smiley’s article as an example) and every argument I encounter feels so based in fantasy, and points are made based on things I know from my own experience not to be true or accurate…. Sigh. What is an open-minded conservative to do but remain convinced that the only option is to be “conservative”???
a Californian in the entertainment business
P.S. Perhaps it was a “The Onion” style piece after all?
Chinaberry:
I had family in Beaver city when I was a kid. I heard that Oklahoma was making overtures to the panhandle of Texas on account of the folks in Dallas and Houston were ignoring it. I am sure the Okies would be more than happy to steal it away.
Beautiful hard country and one of the few places in the world where you can still find a cowboy.
My God, what sunsets. One thing I was struck by when I moved to Indiana was that the horizon was replaced by a tree line.
And the sky at night out there is just magnificent. Deep and black and studded with so many stars they seem to fill up the universe. Which of course they do.
Hotter than a son of a bitch in the summer and the winters can be treacherous, but there is no place else like it.
makes me kinda homesick when I think of it.
Sorry, Roger old boy, but I think that this time you are full of the proverbial crapola.
After reading your post, I searched your archives seeking this “private reality” and some evidence of hysterics. Couldn’t find any.
I think your rationalization, which I guess I construe to be a defense, is ill-founded.
I find no evidence in your blog’s archives of the creation of a private hysteric reality which seeks to denigrate and insult in a vile manner almost 52% of your fellow citizens.
My description of the “lady”, as contained in the postscript of the email I sent you, stands.
Speaking about flyover country, on my way back from Holland last week, I flew through Paris
CDG for the flight home. While waiting, I saw a middle aged white man lying on the floor asleep near a departure gate. He awoke, got up and we started to talk; he was from Oklahoma flying back to South Africa where he was a religious preacher and where he’d remain for another six months. His Oklahoma twange was refreshing and comforting amidst the many languages at CDG Paris.
He told me about the Aids problem in South Africa, about the abject emptiness he feels at the weekly funerals in his small village, and, how he goes into the schools and talks to the young children about safe sex, partners and condoms and how, as a last resort, he talks about the Bible and how it should influence these young children and their lives.
He told me about his two grown white children back in Oklahoma he just visited in Oklahoma, and, then, he told me of his plans to bring his six young adopted black children [Liberian and Haitian] which he and his wife of twenty nine years cured them of club feet, dysentery and other maladies.
He told me about how the children speak good English, not South African, how his young son wants to come back to Oklahoma and build a barn with his father on his father’s land in rural Oklahoma.
Now Jane Smiley may write about rural America and about cows and other animals, but does she feel the rich goodness and flowering generosity of spirit of rural America in her blood and veins. She may receive the plaudits of the New York Times and other liberal literary institutions, but she bites the hand that feeds her imagination in her silly criticism.
I don’t think she really knows the goodness in the center of this country.
Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres:
I wanted to choose my words carefully. Finally, I said, “The thing is, I can remember when I saw it all your way! The proud progress from Grandpa Davis to Grandpa Cook to Daddy. When ‘we’ bought the first tractor in the county, when ‘we’ built the big house, when ‘we’ had the crops sprayed from the air, when ‘we’ got a car, when ‘we’ drained Mel’s corner, when ‘we’ got a hundred and seventy-two bushels an acre. I can remember all of that like prayers or like being married. You know. It’s good to remember and repeat. You feel good to be a part of that. But then I saw what my part really was. Rose showed me.” He opened his mouth to speak, but I stopped him with my hand. “She showed me, but I knew what she showed me was true before she even finished showing me. You see this grand history, but I see blows. I see taking what you want because you want it, then making something up that justifies what you did. I see getting others to pay the price, then covering up and forgetting what the price was. Do I think Daddy came up with beating and fucking us on his own?” Ty winced. “No. I think he had lessons, and those lessons were part of the package, along with the land and the lust to run things exactly the way he wanted to no matter what, poisoning the water and destroying the topsoil and buying bigger and bigger machinery, and then feeling certain that all of it was ‘right,’ as you say.”
He was looking at me, but his face was closed over. Finally, he said, “I guess we see things differently.”
“More differently than you imagine.”
“I didn’t remember you like this.”
“I wasn’t like this. I was a ninny.”
Rashomon.
OT
The Texas panhandle is a wonderful piece of God’s Country.
I think that Roger is being charitable.
Works of science vary in scope, but on a certain level every such work tends toward the universal.
Works of art, on a certain level, tend instead toward universesóif one can understand a universe, a gamut, the ìtotal,î as a scope just like the universal, the singular, the special, etc.
A work of art develops its own universe of ìdiscourse,î its own modality as a budding off of others, those of its genre or tradition or vein or whatever, its own overall tone or tonality or keeping, in which the parts take on special & vibrant meaning, kinds & qualities of feeling. Now, of course, any work of architecture, engineering, medicine, science, math, etc., sets up its own universe of discourse to some extent. But a work of aesthetic art takes this very much farther.
This doesnít mean that the work will necessarily seem to be in its own hermetic & separate world. Some works seem that way, while others seem like open windows on parts of our world, & some even seem orphically to infuse the everyday world with life & existence. One does appreciate accuracies of feeling in the work. And the ìpartsî & ìmaterialsî of the work may include actual things simply as mentioned & left to a reader to imagine or remember, so the work does reach out to incorporate, in that sense, actual parts of the world, & thereby subjects itself to constraints observable at work in the work. E.g., ìthe gently rolling hills of Vermontî would sound pretty stupid except maybe in a science-fiction novel.
If such simple factual inaccuracies about singular cases can weaken a work of art, so can other kinds, though artists, herding together with those of similar education, sometimes lose sight of this.
Anyway, a work of art is supposed to be selective, not only to clarify & reveal processes of the real amid the clutter, but also to avoid an unneeded clutter of constraints. The literary writer who starts penning straightforward historical & social criticism is on very different turf than the novelist. Such a writer, treating THE world as just another artistic world, as if the writer had produced it, is like an unwitting tourist in a dangerous foreign place.
In Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things, Gilbert Sorrentino said: ìAll these people are follow-the-dots pictures — all harsh angles that the mind alone can apprehend because we have already seen their natural counterparts. Iím saying that if you know Leo, youíll see him plain. If not, youíll see what I let you see. The beauty of fiction is that it goes two ways, at least. Out, into the world of the readerís experience and in, into the stringencies of the writerís tyranny. The more harshly the latter is exercised, the purer the prose, so that as Ford builds his overwhelming lie, Christopher Tietjens, we move, with each word, into a realm of total truth. More real than the most meticulous conversation of John OíHara. Prose will
kill you if you give it an inch, i.e., if you try and substitute it for the world.î
This is another example of why the Democrats lost, I think: their public figures and advocates are just unpleasant and despicable! Michael Moore, the idiotic pro-Kerry celebrities, Al Sharpton, Kerry cursing a secret service agent (whom we taxpayers pay to protect him) on the ski slopes, John Edwards’ lawyer-like, hyperbolic closing statementish riffs, Terry Macauliffe, Ted Rall, Ted Kennedy … I never thought the day would come when I would find so many people who are so much MORE nauseating than Bill Clinton! I am coming to believe the Clintons have been brilliant in their avoidance of connections to this Democratic campaign.
This series should really be titled “Why Democrats Hate Americans”.
Contrary to the common wisdom of the MainStreamMedia©, the Democrat party, P.Diddy, Michael Moore & John Kerry, the youth vote did not turn out in this election, even after much stroking, free underwear, and Paris Hilton threatening them to “Vote or Die” (presumably by some STD?). With the advent of Universal Internet Voting upon us, we here at docweasel.com have come up with a format that will guarantee more youth participation in the 2008 election by using an interface that is familiar and popular with the kids today.
Youth Vote
I was interested to see this on Roger’s site – though no surprise, given his sharp eye on the net and media.
As I commented in my own blog, please take another read of Ms. Smiley’s article. Her pain and bitterness are so evident, it is hard to read it and not see the damaged child inside. By no means does this sit her in the clear for such ridiculous charges against conservatives, but her editor should also use more sense. Her raw emotion should not be on display. It affords her no dignity, and skews her judgment. For more of my comments, please see my entry on my blog….but take another look. While her language is certainly offensive, you have to feel sorry for her, too. Apparently she is a very successful novelist – yet she has not moved past her bad experiences in religion to be able to see the world clearly.
Smiley’s asinine comments remind me of why I stopped reading the biographies of writers I admire. I was not depressed by their often messy personal lives,but by their frequently naive political beliefs. One of the more disheartening books I’ve ever read is Paul Johnson’s “Intellectuals,” in which the political foolishness of writers from Rousseau to Mailer is mercilessly dissected. If I was a more mature reader, I suppose I could separate erring human beings from their work, but I guess I’m not sophisticated enough. Doestovesky’s anti-Semitism casts a shadow over his work as far as I’m concerned, just as Neruda’s enthusiatic shilling for Stalin lowers him as a man and a poet in my estimation.
In general, the political beliefs of writers are no more to be trusted than the political beliefs of Hollywood actors, although writers will (for the most part) be more articulate in expressing themselves.
Roger L. Simon is, as this blog proves, an exception to the rule. So is Jamie Irons, who is clearly a mensch as well as being a very fine poet.
Chinaberry Tree — They weren’t observers of human nature. They lived it and embraced it, instead of standing off eyeballing it and making comments, as would be the done thing in NY, SF or LA.
Semi-irked here, Roger. Based on that editorial, I would be delighted to dismiss any writer as at best a facile technician with no significant insight into human nature. But you stand up for her books, so I will have to check out at least one.
richard mcenroe—
Try Moo and don’t miss the most recent customer reviews at Amazon.
roger—
Have you ever met E. L. Doctorow? I’d come here last night to trash Gangs of New York, praise The Alienist and mention Doctorow’s Waterworks and then decided that it was all off-topic. I think Doctorow’s Ragtime is, so far as I can judge, the best historical novel of my lifetime. I’ve always wanted to ask him if he did look through Houdini’s private, unpublished papers and find the “one genuine mystical experience of his [Houdini's] life.”
Now this is just nuts.