{"id":1246,"date":"2014-01-22T22:23:32","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T22:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/?p=1246"},"modified":"2016-09-26T12:20:05","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T12:20:05","slug":"unde-s-marginalii-in-literatura-noua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/2014\/01\/22\/unde-s-marginalii-in-literatura-noua\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Are the Downtrodden in the New Literature?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Costi Rogozanu<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

I attempt to answer the question \u201cWhy is there not enough literature about marginal groups?\u201d with my own cheap rhetorical ploy: \u201cWhy is there not enough literature?\u201d We have literature by the gallon, but, with only a few exceptions, I find that the tons of published fiction keep floating in two distinct bubbles: the aesthetic chimera and the commercial one. Writers in the first group have old-fashion dreams, they reject any trace of manifesto, any sense of urgency dictated by the present and, in blatant disregard of their own aesthetic ambitions, they reject the lessons of realism served up by great writers in the past two centuries. Writers in the second group dream of inventing a Romanian commercial literary language. It\u2019s not a bad idea, but considering you\u2019re dealing with a huge market exercising pressure very effectively on the reader at a global level, it\u2019s even more work than writing an aesthetic masterpiece.<\/p>\n

My pitch is not for a type of literature written according to a rigid social program. I\u2019m not thinking of quotas on literature about the Roma, LGBTQ, migrants etc. My problem is that we seem to be missing the tremendous stakes of realism in literature. We have few writers with an obsession for the real, for the truth \u2013 in the most old-fashioned and boring sense of the word. Having a knack for the real doesn\u2019t necessarily mean having a knack for squalor (Radu Aldulescu sometimes falls into this trap, but his last book, Cronicile genocidului (The Genocide Chronicles)<\/b>, is what I\u2019ve been expecting of him). It doesn\u2019t mean having a knack for a certain issue which interests us politically. Schiop\u2019s Solda<\/b>\u021bii<\/b> (The Soldiers)<\/b> is a good book because it has that vintage obsession with recording reality (the gay theme is a only a side note, part of a larger obsession and a correct understanding of literature \u2013 that\u2019s why he insists on calling it a love story, not a story with a certain direction). Dan Sociu\u2019s delirium from Combina<\/b>\u021bia <\/b>(The Trick) <\/b>is also an explosion of frustration in an ocean out of touch with reality. The exasperation caused by this void of reality triggers experiments such as Combina<\/b>\u021bia<\/b>, wherein the guy pours out his rhetorical delirium as a wake-up call. When people start shooting up fantasy films and the likes thereof, they do it out of the excess of reality they think they\u2019re consuming. The answer to abuse is escape. It\u2019s obviously NOT! But just as obviously, it works: after a crappy day at work, I\u2019d watch the whole Lord of the Rings<\/b> series.<\/p>\n

Only out of a realist scheme of receiving and writing literature do the marginal and marginalized eventually show up. This is how we get to the paradox some great thinkers on the left never understood, namely that you can have novels extremely relevant for the \u201cleft-wing eye\u201d written by conservatives. Right now, I\u2019m reading Franzen, even if some of his interpretations of current events boggle the mind. But the man is obsessed with capturing everyday struggles. Incidentally, he writes one novel a decade and tries to capture the essence of each period. So far he\u2019s succeeded in doing that with two novels. Eugenides is also a good example. In Middlesex<\/b>, one of the stories of the main character is the recovery of sexual identity. However, he\/she isn\u2019t floating exclusively in this fish tank (although at one point, he\/she actually finds him-\/herself in a fish tank), but in a world where social cleavages appear quicker than lobbyists in the European Parliament.<\/p>\n

How can the literary glasses of the new generation of writers be changed? By cementing the social dimension (vague, I know, but increasingly understood by many kick-ass artists) in literary criticism. It\u2019s enough to open your eyes, turn on your desire for artistic communication, for the production and reproduction of new realities and thousands of sidetracked issues will surface. Social literature is not a requirement for ideological lobbying, but for refining and adding depth to the discussion. A good novel capturing the issues of migration will have to be more than a tearjerker or an NGO report. A good novel tackling rural poverty will have to go beyond stupid urban ironies, but also beyond the teary swarms of philanthropy. In order to do that, artists should get a taste for ideological fighting. Because we might wake up to find libraries stacked with the fashionable downtrodden groups, but with no real gain in artistic expression. And there\u2019s also the question of inventing or gaining a new audience. I think there\u2019s room for that, too, but it might be a good idea not to conveniently bore that audience either with aesthetic chimeras meant for the juries who don\u2019t understand today\u2019s \u201ctricks\u201d anymore, or with attempts at commercial jackpots which barely rise above the usual crap delivered by the multinational publishing houses.<\/p>\n

\"Lauren\u021biu<\/a>

Lauren\u021biu Ridichie, No Title, 2012.<\/p><\/div><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Costi Rogozanu I attempt to answer the question \u201cWhy is there not enough literature about marginal groups?\u201d with my own cheap rhetorical ploy: \u201cWhy is there not enough literature?\u201d We have literature by the gallon, but, with only a few exceptions, I find that the tons of published fiction keep floating in two distinct bubbles: the aesthetic chimera and the commercial one. Writers in the first group have old-fashion dreams, they reject any trace of manifesto, any sense of urgency dictated by the present and, in blatant disregard of their own aesthetic ambitions, they reject the lessons of realism…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3435,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions\/3435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}