Postmodern Brooklyn

There is a long rant in The American Scholar written in opposition to what the writer sees as an insidious new literary genre: "Brooklyn Books of Wonder." For the writer, the books of Jonathan Safron Foer, Alice Sebold, Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon, and even Paul Auster do nothing more than take horrifying tragedy and paste happy, life-affirming endings on them. This on top of the fact that the writing is narcissistic and drenched in self-congratulatory pop culture kitsch.

The article concludes:

So what’s so terribly wrong with all this? BBoWs are benign and smart and claim important antecedents (Krauss’s pantheon, Auster’s nods to Borges and Calvino, Foer’s echoes of Günter Grass before the latter’s recent . . . um . . . awkwardness), and some are stunning prose stylists (Eggers and Chabon and Krauss) who clearly have literary talent to spare. That’s precisely why their books are more insidious than simpler genre novels wherein people manage to triumph over trauma.

In fact, trauma’s never overcome. That’s what defines it. Your father is dead, or your mother, and so are most of the Jews of Europe, and the World Trade Center’s gone, and racism prevails, and sex murders occur. What is, is. The real is the true, and anything that suggests otherwise, no matter how artfully constructed, is a violation of human experience.

I'm of two minds about this (maybe three). On the hand, there's the sense that all of these so-called Brooklyn writers are just sort of annoying with their success. Perhaps because they are considered literary and live in the very center of contemporary letters rather than being pushed to the side by genre labels like the writers of chick-lit or fantasy novels would be. So the article does nothing more than tag them with a genre so they can more easily be dismissed.

Then of course, there is the sense that art is not life, and therefore does not need to meet any standard that prevents it from violating human experience. In art you can transcend human experience: the dead can walk, animals can speak, books take on lives of their own, and we can think about thinking about what we think about.

But on that non-existent third hand, there is a sense that we too often shy away from the consequences of tragedy. That yes, the dead are dead, animals are dumb, books are just paper and ink, and our thoughts will not outlive the necessity of our own mortality. There is nothing more than that. And so perhaps the last minute narrative shifts toward tragicomedy and instant redemption is a weakness and a dodge.

Does Brooklyn become code for that land of escape where we can suffer without ever having to feel bad? Or is it a rebellion against tragic necessity, a turn toward random chance, connectivity, and the life-affirming game of kitsch and wonder?

What is it exactly that we want from art? If it is too much about the reality of the world it runs risk of being didactic or pornographic. Yet, if all we know of the possibilities of life is what Brooklyn hipsters know of life, then we run the risk of never looking beyond the smallness of petty fears and self-pity (the tragedy of solipsism).

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