At first, I was greatly entertained. Joseph Epstein, a considerable talent and first rate intellect in his own right, had taken the time to make new enemies by the score among the reigning academic elite, with a single critical review of the recent Cambridge History of the American Novel. But then, having read it and wanting to savor the piece, I found myself overcome by a deeper depression.

The Epstein’s review appeared in a recent weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. I have come to rely upon this weekly edition for the kind of general coverage of the world at large that once might have been gotten from the Sunday New York Times.

As Mr. Epstein graphically imagines, “A stranger, freshly arrived from another planet, if offered as his introduction to the United States only this book, would come away with a picture of a country founded on violence and expropriation, stoked through its history by every kind of prejudice and class domination, and populated chiefly by one or another kind of victim, with time out only for the mental sloth and apathy brought on by life lived in the suburbs and the characterless glut of American late capitalism.” No surprises there. Pretty much what has been offered in most American classrooms beginning in high school for the past fifty years. Lacking any better historical perspective, (history being the weakest subject for most) how many students understand that all of those evils ascribed to America were, and are, common beyond our shores and the conscious desire to overcome them was the avowed purpose of those who established this nation?

My biggest bone of contention with Mr. Epstein’s article is an apparent belief that the deeper failings of American literature are endemic rather that pandemic. But the transformation he identifies, of American literature put forward in this purported ‘history,’ is not unique to the America. It is a phenomena that is world-wide. For example, Natsume Soseki, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and Junichiro Tanizaki together have not sold as many books as the current bestselling Manga title. Sex and some rather primitive political motivations appear to be the primary zeitgeist of the new comic universe. Marxist determinism and censorship are still as pervasive in one third of the world (though much of the geography has shifted to the University), as Sharia doctrine is to another third. And the political inhibitions common to the American college campus are easily as pervasive in Britain and France.

But allowing for the narrowed scope of a specific book review, even one so well chosen for the inviting size of the target, it is clear to me that I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Epstein’s general thesis. American literature has been ghettoized into fractions (not only mystery and science fiction, but Asian American novels, feminist novels, novels of disability, etc), creating bite-sized fodder for the classroom which is irrelevant to any universal understanding of value, meaning, or a simple enjoyment of life itself through this art form. Acceptable politics have replaced religion as the gatekeeper to the heaven of the academic reading list. Anti-Americanism is an absolute. The popular novel is dismissed with a wave of the hand as a necessary evil to keep the bills paid.

My aforementioned depression arose from the simpler question: What is to be done? (with no apology to Mr. Lenin).

I was reminded of my joy at first reading “Panic among the Philistines” an essay by ‘Bryan F. Griffin’ in the September 1981 Harper’s Magazine–that publication at the time still being a leading indicator among the self-appointed elites. Griffin’s skewering of the modern American novel and sympathy for the deeper traditions of storytelling and cultural independence was enervating.  I was then still riding the caffeine high of John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction, a work I had discovered by accident, written by an ‘intellectual’ I had previously dismissed as an arrogant academic. (Sure he was an academic and wonderfully arrogant, but he was more often right than wrong).

Much later I was to have a lesser but similar reaction to a more problematic piece (by my standards) B. R. Myer’s “A Reader’s Revenge” in the July/August 2001 Atlantic Monthly. Myer’s essay had the plus of skewering many sacred cows for a nice kabob, but opened as many questions in turn over its selection authors to applaud or attack. Most importantly, his standard seemed to lack a core of belief necessary to any cause.

Depression is often the cause of renewed labor with me. Some people get down to cutting wood or scrubbing floors. I have been most thankful through the years to those few who go to the kitchen and cook up a storm to relieve the troubles inside themselves. But still, I am left now to my own devices for comfort, and they are few. Two, in fact. I read and I write.

I hereby draw your attention to Mr. Epstein’s estimable review of a very poor and bad book and to the causes of that poverty of spirit and the immoral (not amoral) epistemology which underlies it. Such an academic cultural corruption which so persistently dulls the senses, much as a pornographic movie will spoil a date with someone when you are falling in love, leaves little fight left for any of the finer philosophies.

 

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