I disagreed with a lot of this (predictably, since I wrote the opposite opinion on this books for TMR https://robbieherbst.substack.com/cp/165559068). For me, the genius of this book (and it's politics) is that it isn't warning about a speculative future, but describing the dystopian present that exists around the world. the fact is that the story is a part of history that has repeated itself in any of the countless countries where right wing death squads have disappeared members of the political left. much of what you criticize—the very-present tense, the refusal to write from the stable vantage point of the protagonist, Eilish's increasing reactiveness—seems to me to be the point of the novel. Rather than tropish, the surrounding characters will appear as literal human beings but also that abstract 'void' of history. They can both be true.
the fact is that this isn't a didactic novel, as you claim. Eilish is largely non-political, but she also isn't disparaged for her bourgeois tendencies. She tells her husband not to go to the protest, and then he is disappeared. It's not always clear what the right thing to do is. If it were just a shallow piece of liberal-left art, it would show the noble good guys winning and Eilish learning to embrace the revolution. I think that the idea of political revolution is complicated and made more difficult to bear. It's not perfect, but the approach to me was far more interesting.
Just a quick comment to say that I read your piece and thoroughly enjoyed it. As you say about mine, I don't agree with some of it, but it's beautifully, thoughtfully, and complexly written. The lens you use is wonderful: Benjamin's essay about Brechtian theatre, and how it asks the viewer/reader to take a position toward the action. This would suggest that there is more than one position to take, which I agree is valuable. This is really where I see that our sensibilities diverge: my sense about Prophet Song is that there is only one way a reader could possibly perceive the action, and that is precisely my (or one of my) criticism(s) of it. And the question of whether to stay or go (and the inherent position the audience is asked to take) is not really the real question of the novel, imo. But again, I loved reading the essay. Excellently done.
Thanks, Alan! I really appreciate that, and I think there's a lot of merit to your perspective as well. I think we share a point of view about political lit just diverged a bit on this specific novel.
I'll have to check out your essay. I'm not arguing anything about the characters' political leanings: I'm arguing something I feel about the authors'. That being said, I understand where you're coming from. The "dystopian present" parts of the novel were some of the best parts - I describe this as many of the "action sequences," which is what those sequences felt like to me.
I don't think the book was shallow, necessarily, but I also don't think it had many "ideas" at all. But the very thing you write here, that "the story is a part of history that has repeated itself in any countless countries," is definitely my critique: the images from the novel are so static, so repeated, and as I said, so seemingly gleaned from other sources that we have all seen as well, that I felt the book wasn't inventive in general (along with not being inventive stylistically, not that invention is the key to anything, but it helps). And I do know what you mean: you're right, making Eilish a reaction is the point, but I had a hard time seeing her as a person in the first place.
I read your essay, also. It’s striking to see two vastly different takes on the same book, but I’m hoping the suspense lasts! (In other words, I found both reviews quite valuable.)
I thought this was a fantastic review and after reading some of Alan’s other essays and short stories, I’m convinced he’s one of our best contemporary writers. Alan is articulating his own aesthetic vision and standing behind it, and this is what any writer should do, especially when something about a book seems “off” to you, you have to think about why and try to explain it, which then allows you to more clearly understand the kind of writing you’re trying to do.
I haven’t read this book but I do remember when someone recommended it to me a year or two ago, they described the plot and I said, yeah, that could be good, but I have a rule where if it sounds like something could have been algorithmically generated, I don’t read it. I feel like my hunch was correct going off the excerpts here, which are mostly mushy sentimentalism. They actually sound like AI with their overall vagueness, which attempts to create some sort of poetic feeling. No thanks. I want something real and true.
Definitely read it. It's so hard to work everything one wants to into any given piece. As I said, I actually found the novel compelling in a certain way. I just happened to feel that it had too many weak spots.
What a lot of words (including the wrong sort of tic/tick, seriously this is a major problem for way too many writers and I have come to assume it is ascribable to autocorrect) to say “why didn’t the author write this book the way I would have written it? Here is a better book he should have used as his example.”
This critical mode that merely complains that something is not what the critic expected it to be is rarely useful to anyone but the critic.
Glad you like Kertrsz, and that your writing is “trying to write the mind” but they just come off as the sort of virtue-signaling you decry in Lynch.
I didn't come to the novel with any expectations, and I certainly wouldn't want to read any book that followed my own aesthetic interests too closely. That's why I love reading - to get a glimpse outside of how I see, think, and experience things. I thought Prophet Song was a weak novel, and I tried to outline why here. I respect that you don't find that argument convincing, but I don't think I'm asking for it to be written the way I want it written. Plenty of books are written in this style and done, in my opinion, better.
Big true. By countering with an example of the holocaust, Rossi suggests trauma porn creates empathy. Ultimately both books - one a fetishization of dystopia, and the other a fetishization of the holocaust, ignore the actually existing conditions of people today. Ironically, they both aim for a moral high ground that shifts discourse away from contemporary issues, suffering, etc. Rossi does the same liberalism he claims to be against…..
I suggest you actually read Kertesz before calling the book a “fetishization” of the Holocaust.
If that is what you believe any narrative of the Holocaust is, you are sounding an awful lot like people no one should want to sound like, not even peacocking anti-liberals like you.
I'm glad someone finally wrote this review because I thought I was alone when I read Prophet Song and really disliked it. I agree with a lot of your points, in particular the point you make about Eilish being an everywoman not working for the novel, because it seems to be written with the assumption that of course the reader will empathize and relate to the bare sketched-out bones of the character because they will be similar to her (upper middle class, highly educated, from the West), and will not need anything else. One aspect that I haven't seen enough people mention when discussing this book is that for a political novel, it doesn't seem to know a lot about politics. I do not think that it needs to be a political treatise, but Lynch just settles for mapping composites of events he's seen on the news and in history documentaries onto the lives of his characters in ways that are groaningly obvious and sometimes don't make logical sense. I understand that some of this is my own background (my undergrad degree was in political science, I volunteered for several migrant rights organizations in Europe and my own family is from the former Yugoslavia) so I have more personal experience and interest in the type of things Lynch glosses over than most, but as I was reading other reviews online, I noticed an interesting divide. Almost all of the praise came from people living in the West, while many of the negative reviews came from people who had more recent experience or knowledge of authoritarian societies (hit Google Translate on a couple of the Greek reviews of the book and they are far more brutal than Alan has been). I do not think that lived experience is the be-all end-all, of course, but it does make me ask who was the intended audience of this book? Authors can have intended audiences, of course, but it's strange to write in a way that alienates the part of your audience that has more grounds to relate to the events in your book and whose history the author has in part cannibalized. It seems to me as if Lynch is writing only for an audience for whom the events of this book are literally unimaginable, who cannot picture something like this happening in their country, who read this book for the same feel-good guilt they feel when they read the news, and who comment "hugging my own children tight" on reports of other people's tragedies.
I'm glad the essay resonated. Thanks for the comment. Actually, you've captured my own reading experience well - I worried, while reading the book, that it was too often "mapped from composites" of the actual thing, and I think the "feel-good guilt" you mention here is what I felt as the novel's somewhat overwrought sentimentality.
The divide in online reviews that you mention is interesting too.
I agree with your answer to the question, “who is this book for?” I think it is for people who have thought such a fate couldn’t befall them, for people who think the sum of their sound decisions insulates them from historical forces. As a result, I didn’t think this was a novel. But I did think it was an attempt to get readers to see, for example, migrants on boats in the Mediterranean Sea, as real people who are no more cut out to deal than someone sitting pretty in the Global North.
I totally agree with this review from the perspective of a writer concerned with what is happening to literature when, on the one hand, we’ve had so many of these books to no obvious political effects. And on the other hand, in the attempt to really break through, somehow, to get people to listen and see, it seems like “Prophet Song” abandoned the work of a novel for the work of a pamphlet. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, really, in general. But it sure is lousy for literature, to just elaborate on stark, irrefutable, self-evident moral stuff.
I’ll probably be dismissed for bringing this up, but if anyone happened to see that tv show “Mo,” I loved the way it portrayed the experience of being in ICE detention both for the prisoners and for one of the guards. There are a lot of examples on that show that are a heck of a lot more literary than “Prophet Song” as far as having imperfect, specific individuals making choices under imperfect, specific conditions. And alas. It be TV.
Agreed. This is a major problem. The left has taken the 1960s shibboleth of “everything is political” or “the personal is the political” to mean that literary fiction should be overtly political and should try to actively persuade you to think a certain way morally and politically. This is just a trash idea and is harmful to Art in all its manifestations. And it’s simply not true. The writer’s goal has always been to tell the truth, to seek out meaning, to understand the human condition, to create nuanced, complex characters and scenarios, to get inside of Man’s harrowing inner life.
I agree, it's a weak novel, which has received out-sized praise.
Mostly, I was irritated with the lack of depth and character development, and annoyed that the plotting relied on Eilish repeatedly making poor decisions. The reader is supposed to go along with this because we're told she's trying to hold her family together (a saintly endeavor). There was no emotional punch until the last section, being the cumulation of her decision-making. Oddly, the individual, the mother, was responsible for events, rather than any political context. I don't think that's what the author was trying to achieve, but that's how it landed.
Thank you for this thought-provoking essay. I would like to read all of Imre’s, Paul’s and your work that I can get my hands on.
I’m wondering if the immediacy and psychological depth of Fatelessness stems at least in part from the fact that its author actually lived through internment in concentration camps…at any rate, the title alone is evocative enough to pique my interest.
I would imagine you're right about Fatelessnes being inevitably, at least partly, autobiographical. It's an incredible read, though not always easy. The prose, at least in my translation, is winding, slipping, tricky at times.
And definitely give Prophet Song a go. It reads really fast.
If you want, message me in chat, and I'm happy to send you one of my novels.
Gore Vidal, Dearest Gore, never far from my mind, says that good art helps us to see the doubleness of things, the yes and the no. If a writer tells you a story that is all yes or all no, they’re not helping you get to know things, about yourself, about others, about the world. They’re telling you one version only, and it’s probably wrong, certainly not completely right.
Great piece. You should read Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown. It deals with a dystopian United States, fascism and a Civil War. The book really points to the gray areas (some of the revolutionaries are funded by a capitalist) and focuses a lot on ecology. Parts of it are bit over the top but it’s grounded for the most part.
I disagree with this review. The story is told from Eilish's perspective, so the reader knows what she knows and no more. There is no omniscient narrator to tell the reader the bigger picture. This family's plight aligns with personal essays from Germans who lived through Hitler's rise from 1933 onward, people like social Democrats who found themselves suddenly losing all they had. This is an ordinary family caught in the machine as the autocrats take over. Being in Eilish's POV feels rightly claustrophobic. The depiction of a democracy sliding into totalitarianism works for me and is frightening.
My only gripe is the absence of paragraph breaks and quotation marks. Siegfried Lenz wrote this way, and it really slows my reading down. McCarthy didn't do quotes, but at least he broke out paragraphs. I can work with that.
Disappointing. This post decries the lack of nuance in leftist art. But we have descended into an era of national and international evil; one of fascism's many evils is that it DOES strip us of our right to nuance. In dark times, nuance is a distraction and an unhelpful privilege. We need to recognize evil where we see it and fight it where we can. Abstract intellectualization can be saved for a time where our citizens aren't being murdered in the streets by their own government.
Lots of people are "writers writing about stuff." You are making an intentional choice to enter this particular discourse and critique it from an oblique angle. I have every right to hold you responsible for mudding the waters when you could choose to use your talents for actual good.
You're right, but I don't think my angle was oblique. Though I respect and agree with the novel's stance and morals, I find its aesthetics unconvincing.
He makes very specific criticisms of the book, but you don't even try to respond. Instead you seem to imply that we all have a duty to pretend to like leftist literature because Trump is bad. That attitude has led to a sterile artistic culture, and I don't think it's been politically fruitful either.
I didn't "even try to respond" because I'm NOT responding to the book. I'm responding to the post and its implied gestalt effect. I couldn't care less if you like leftist literature or not. Trump IS bad, and those who believe in him are bad too. My entire point is that "a sterile artistic culture" is the least important element at play when human lives are on the line. The house is on fire. Using this moment to critique the interior design is worse than useless. And yes, this attitude IS politically fruitful. It is our only hope to resist empire and make the world a better place.
I don't agree with you that every part of the culture must abandon its normal function in favor of criticizing Trump all the time. It's bad for critics to embrace politics over aesthetics, and it also backfires politically. People get tired of reactive antics. Maybe you should reduce your screentime instead of bullying critics for doing their job.
I never said that "every part of the culture must abandon its normal function in favor of criticizing Trump all the time." You are exaggerating my point for the sake of a bad faith straw-man argument. I don't think "People get tired of reactive antics" - just you, apparently. If you want to critique the aesthetics of the bootprint when it's on YOUR neck, that's your choice. Meanwhile, I am going to keep looking for goodness in the world. I'm clearly not going to find in this post or with you.
I have a few thoughts relative to the opening comments of this review.
As for what books are censored in school, go to your school library and look at the books by/about recent past presidents. How many are by democrats? How many are by republicans Why? Honest answers, please.
Not long ago, a student attended a school board meeting and, during his turn to speak, attempted to read from a book he had withdrawn from the school library. It was a graphic depiction of sex. The student was silenced, his constitutional rights ignored. The school board didn't want this student making the public aware of what was available at the school library. Ponder that.
I have an old saying that I made up: The more sure you are that you are right, the more likely you are to be wrong.
This is my first time working with TMR, and they have been amazing. Amazing editors, really kind people, really quick responses, etc. I think if you put a few books in their hands, they might try to find someone to do a review. Not saying it would happen, but I'm sure there's a possibility. Or you could pitch a review (not sure if you work for semiotexte or what). Just a thought.
I did pitch it and they were clear that they wouldn’t even waste their time reading it. They specifically said they aren’t interested in Idris Robinsons new semiotexte release. A fucking review publication! I guess it doesn’t adhere to Barkans superficial New Yorker level liberal analysis like in his midwit book on genocide. .
Could just be that book isn't in their wheelhouse some way - I don't know enough about it. I've got a list of pitches to various places that were rejected and then some that got through but weren't ever published. That being said, I'm not an editor here, so I don't know. That book looks fascinating though. Thanks for the rec.
That must be what it is. It’s too much of a risk for them. If you’re gonna retreat into the aesthetic anything other than milquetoast liberal (not yours) reviews threatens that illusion.
I disagreed with a lot of this (predictably, since I wrote the opposite opinion on this books for TMR https://robbieherbst.substack.com/cp/165559068). For me, the genius of this book (and it's politics) is that it isn't warning about a speculative future, but describing the dystopian present that exists around the world. the fact is that the story is a part of history that has repeated itself in any of the countless countries where right wing death squads have disappeared members of the political left. much of what you criticize—the very-present tense, the refusal to write from the stable vantage point of the protagonist, Eilish's increasing reactiveness—seems to me to be the point of the novel. Rather than tropish, the surrounding characters will appear as literal human beings but also that abstract 'void' of history. They can both be true.
the fact is that this isn't a didactic novel, as you claim. Eilish is largely non-political, but she also isn't disparaged for her bourgeois tendencies. She tells her husband not to go to the protest, and then he is disappeared. It's not always clear what the right thing to do is. If it were just a shallow piece of liberal-left art, it would show the noble good guys winning and Eilish learning to embrace the revolution. I think that the idea of political revolution is complicated and made more difficult to bear. It's not perfect, but the approach to me was far more interesting.
you are right about the 'some' thing, though.
Just a quick comment to say that I read your piece and thoroughly enjoyed it. As you say about mine, I don't agree with some of it, but it's beautifully, thoughtfully, and complexly written. The lens you use is wonderful: Benjamin's essay about Brechtian theatre, and how it asks the viewer/reader to take a position toward the action. This would suggest that there is more than one position to take, which I agree is valuable. This is really where I see that our sensibilities diverge: my sense about Prophet Song is that there is only one way a reader could possibly perceive the action, and that is precisely my (or one of my) criticism(s) of it. And the question of whether to stay or go (and the inherent position the audience is asked to take) is not really the real question of the novel, imo. But again, I loved reading the essay. Excellently done.
Thanks, Alan! I really appreciate that, and I think there's a lot of merit to your perspective as well. I think we share a point of view about political lit just diverged a bit on this specific novel.
I'll have to check out your essay. I'm not arguing anything about the characters' political leanings: I'm arguing something I feel about the authors'. That being said, I understand where you're coming from. The "dystopian present" parts of the novel were some of the best parts - I describe this as many of the "action sequences," which is what those sequences felt like to me.
I don't think the book was shallow, necessarily, but I also don't think it had many "ideas" at all. But the very thing you write here, that "the story is a part of history that has repeated itself in any countless countries," is definitely my critique: the images from the novel are so static, so repeated, and as I said, so seemingly gleaned from other sources that we have all seen as well, that I felt the book wasn't inventive in general (along with not being inventive stylistically, not that invention is the key to anything, but it helps). And I do know what you mean: you're right, making Eilish a reaction is the point, but I had a hard time seeing her as a person in the first place.
I read your essay, also. It’s striking to see two vastly different takes on the same book, but I’m hoping the suspense lasts! (In other words, I found both reviews quite valuable.)
I thought this was a fantastic review and after reading some of Alan’s other essays and short stories, I’m convinced he’s one of our best contemporary writers. Alan is articulating his own aesthetic vision and standing behind it, and this is what any writer should do, especially when something about a book seems “off” to you, you have to think about why and try to explain it, which then allows you to more clearly understand the kind of writing you’re trying to do.
I haven’t read this book but I do remember when someone recommended it to me a year or two ago, they described the plot and I said, yeah, that could be good, but I have a rule where if it sounds like something could have been algorithmically generated, I don’t read it. I feel like my hunch was correct going off the excerpts here, which are mostly mushy sentimentalism. They actually sound like AI with their overall vagueness, which attempts to create some sort of poetic feeling. No thanks. I want something real and true.
Thanks, Derek - that's a huge compliment coming from you. Much appreciated.
This review, though negative, actually made me want to read the book, due to its thoroughness. That doesn't happen very often.
Definitely read it. It's so hard to work everything one wants to into any given piece. As I said, I actually found the novel compelling in a certain way. I just happened to feel that it had too many weak spots.
What a lot of words (including the wrong sort of tic/tick, seriously this is a major problem for way too many writers and I have come to assume it is ascribable to autocorrect) to say “why didn’t the author write this book the way I would have written it? Here is a better book he should have used as his example.”
This critical mode that merely complains that something is not what the critic expected it to be is rarely useful to anyone but the critic.
Glad you like Kertrsz, and that your writing is “trying to write the mind” but they just come off as the sort of virtue-signaling you decry in Lynch.
I didn't come to the novel with any expectations, and I certainly wouldn't want to read any book that followed my own aesthetic interests too closely. That's why I love reading - to get a glimpse outside of how I see, think, and experience things. I thought Prophet Song was a weak novel, and I tried to outline why here. I respect that you don't find that argument convincing, but I don't think I'm asking for it to be written the way I want it written. Plenty of books are written in this style and done, in my opinion, better.
Big true. By countering with an example of the holocaust, Rossi suggests trauma porn creates empathy. Ultimately both books - one a fetishization of dystopia, and the other a fetishization of the holocaust, ignore the actually existing conditions of people today. Ironically, they both aim for a moral high ground that shifts discourse away from contemporary issues, suffering, etc. Rossi does the same liberalism he claims to be against…..
I suggest you actually read Kertesz before calling the book a “fetishization” of the Holocaust.
If that is what you believe any narrative of the Holocaust is, you are sounding an awful lot like people no one should want to sound like, not even peacocking anti-liberals like you.
I'm glad someone finally wrote this review because I thought I was alone when I read Prophet Song and really disliked it. I agree with a lot of your points, in particular the point you make about Eilish being an everywoman not working for the novel, because it seems to be written with the assumption that of course the reader will empathize and relate to the bare sketched-out bones of the character because they will be similar to her (upper middle class, highly educated, from the West), and will not need anything else. One aspect that I haven't seen enough people mention when discussing this book is that for a political novel, it doesn't seem to know a lot about politics. I do not think that it needs to be a political treatise, but Lynch just settles for mapping composites of events he's seen on the news and in history documentaries onto the lives of his characters in ways that are groaningly obvious and sometimes don't make logical sense. I understand that some of this is my own background (my undergrad degree was in political science, I volunteered for several migrant rights organizations in Europe and my own family is from the former Yugoslavia) so I have more personal experience and interest in the type of things Lynch glosses over than most, but as I was reading other reviews online, I noticed an interesting divide. Almost all of the praise came from people living in the West, while many of the negative reviews came from people who had more recent experience or knowledge of authoritarian societies (hit Google Translate on a couple of the Greek reviews of the book and they are far more brutal than Alan has been). I do not think that lived experience is the be-all end-all, of course, but it does make me ask who was the intended audience of this book? Authors can have intended audiences, of course, but it's strange to write in a way that alienates the part of your audience that has more grounds to relate to the events in your book and whose history the author has in part cannibalized. It seems to me as if Lynch is writing only for an audience for whom the events of this book are literally unimaginable, who cannot picture something like this happening in their country, who read this book for the same feel-good guilt they feel when they read the news, and who comment "hugging my own children tight" on reports of other people's tragedies.
I'm glad the essay resonated. Thanks for the comment. Actually, you've captured my own reading experience well - I worried, while reading the book, that it was too often "mapped from composites" of the actual thing, and I think the "feel-good guilt" you mention here is what I felt as the novel's somewhat overwrought sentimentality.
The divide in online reviews that you mention is interesting too.
I agree with your answer to the question, “who is this book for?” I think it is for people who have thought such a fate couldn’t befall them, for people who think the sum of their sound decisions insulates them from historical forces. As a result, I didn’t think this was a novel. But I did think it was an attempt to get readers to see, for example, migrants on boats in the Mediterranean Sea, as real people who are no more cut out to deal than someone sitting pretty in the Global North.
I totally agree with this review from the perspective of a writer concerned with what is happening to literature when, on the one hand, we’ve had so many of these books to no obvious political effects. And on the other hand, in the attempt to really break through, somehow, to get people to listen and see, it seems like “Prophet Song” abandoned the work of a novel for the work of a pamphlet. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, really, in general. But it sure is lousy for literature, to just elaborate on stark, irrefutable, self-evident moral stuff.
I’ll probably be dismissed for bringing this up, but if anyone happened to see that tv show “Mo,” I loved the way it portrayed the experience of being in ICE detention both for the prisoners and for one of the guards. There are a lot of examples on that show that are a heck of a lot more literary than “Prophet Song” as far as having imperfect, specific individuals making choices under imperfect, specific conditions. And alas. It be TV.
I really wanted you to define the "literary left"!
I really wanted me to do that too, tbh (but that's probably a project for a whole other essay).
Agreed. This is a major problem. The left has taken the 1960s shibboleth of “everything is political” or “the personal is the political” to mean that literary fiction should be overtly political and should try to actively persuade you to think a certain way morally and politically. This is just a trash idea and is harmful to Art in all its manifestations. And it’s simply not true. The writer’s goal has always been to tell the truth, to seek out meaning, to understand the human condition, to create nuanced, complex characters and scenarios, to get inside of Man’s harrowing inner life.
I agree, it's a weak novel, which has received out-sized praise.
Mostly, I was irritated with the lack of depth and character development, and annoyed that the plotting relied on Eilish repeatedly making poor decisions. The reader is supposed to go along with this because we're told she's trying to hold her family together (a saintly endeavor). There was no emotional punch until the last section, being the cumulation of her decision-making. Oddly, the individual, the mother, was responsible for events, rather than any political context. I don't think that's what the author was trying to achieve, but that's how it landed.
Thank you for this thought-provoking essay. I would like to read all of Imre’s, Paul’s and your work that I can get my hands on.
I’m wondering if the immediacy and psychological depth of Fatelessness stems at least in part from the fact that its author actually lived through internment in concentration camps…at any rate, the title alone is evocative enough to pique my interest.
I would imagine you're right about Fatelessnes being inevitably, at least partly, autobiographical. It's an incredible read, though not always easy. The prose, at least in my translation, is winding, slipping, tricky at times.
And definitely give Prophet Song a go. It reads really fast.
If you want, message me in chat, and I'm happy to send you one of my novels.
I would love that!
Gore Vidal, Dearest Gore, never far from my mind, says that good art helps us to see the doubleness of things, the yes and the no. If a writer tells you a story that is all yes or all no, they’re not helping you get to know things, about yourself, about others, about the world. They’re telling you one version only, and it’s probably wrong, certainly not completely right.
the misuse of the word 'some' is my personal most hated least favourite literary tic
Great piece. You should read Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown. It deals with a dystopian United States, fascism and a Civil War. The book really points to the gray areas (some of the revolutionaries are funded by a capitalist) and focuses a lot on ecology. Parts of it are bit over the top but it’s grounded for the most part.
Great rec, thank you. I'll check it out for sure.
I disagree with this review. The story is told from Eilish's perspective, so the reader knows what she knows and no more. There is no omniscient narrator to tell the reader the bigger picture. This family's plight aligns with personal essays from Germans who lived through Hitler's rise from 1933 onward, people like social Democrats who found themselves suddenly losing all they had. This is an ordinary family caught in the machine as the autocrats take over. Being in Eilish's POV feels rightly claustrophobic. The depiction of a democracy sliding into totalitarianism works for me and is frightening.
My only gripe is the absence of paragraph breaks and quotation marks. Siegfried Lenz wrote this way, and it really slows my reading down. McCarthy didn't do quotes, but at least he broke out paragraphs. I can work with that.
Disappointing. This post decries the lack of nuance in leftist art. But we have descended into an era of national and international evil; one of fascism's many evils is that it DOES strip us of our right to nuance. In dark times, nuance is a distraction and an unhelpful privilege. We need to recognize evil where we see it and fight it where we can. Abstract intellectualization can be saved for a time where our citizens aren't being murdered in the streets by their own government.
I mean, I hear that, and I agree, to a point. Still, I'm a writer writing about stuff, and a lot of that writing takes abstract intellectualization.
Lots of people are "writers writing about stuff." You are making an intentional choice to enter this particular discourse and critique it from an oblique angle. I have every right to hold you responsible for mudding the waters when you could choose to use your talents for actual good.
You're right, but I don't think my angle was oblique. Though I respect and agree with the novel's stance and morals, I find its aesthetics unconvincing.
He makes very specific criticisms of the book, but you don't even try to respond. Instead you seem to imply that we all have a duty to pretend to like leftist literature because Trump is bad. That attitude has led to a sterile artistic culture, and I don't think it's been politically fruitful either.
I didn't "even try to respond" because I'm NOT responding to the book. I'm responding to the post and its implied gestalt effect. I couldn't care less if you like leftist literature or not. Trump IS bad, and those who believe in him are bad too. My entire point is that "a sterile artistic culture" is the least important element at play when human lives are on the line. The house is on fire. Using this moment to critique the interior design is worse than useless. And yes, this attitude IS politically fruitful. It is our only hope to resist empire and make the world a better place.
I don't agree with you that every part of the culture must abandon its normal function in favor of criticizing Trump all the time. It's bad for critics to embrace politics over aesthetics, and it also backfires politically. People get tired of reactive antics. Maybe you should reduce your screentime instead of bullying critics for doing their job.
I never said that "every part of the culture must abandon its normal function in favor of criticizing Trump all the time." You are exaggerating my point for the sake of a bad faith straw-man argument. I don't think "People get tired of reactive antics" - just you, apparently. If you want to critique the aesthetics of the bootprint when it's on YOUR neck, that's your choice. Meanwhile, I am going to keep looking for goodness in the world. I'm clearly not going to find in this post or with you.
An interesting and well-argued review. Thank you.
I have a few thoughts relative to the opening comments of this review.
As for what books are censored in school, go to your school library and look at the books by/about recent past presidents. How many are by democrats? How many are by republicans Why? Honest answers, please.
Not long ago, a student attended a school board meeting and, during his turn to speak, attempted to read from a book he had withdrawn from the school library. It was a graphic depiction of sex. The student was silenced, his constitutional rights ignored. The school board didn't want this student making the public aware of what was available at the school library. Ponder that.
I have an old saying that I made up: The more sure you are that you are right, the more likely you are to be wrong.
Well you all don’t seem interested in reviewing major semiotexte releases that are actually from the left…
This is my first time working with TMR, and they have been amazing. Amazing editors, really kind people, really quick responses, etc. I think if you put a few books in their hands, they might try to find someone to do a review. Not saying it would happen, but I'm sure there's a possibility. Or you could pitch a review (not sure if you work for semiotexte or what). Just a thought.
I did pitch it and they were clear that they wouldn’t even waste their time reading it. They specifically said they aren’t interested in Idris Robinsons new semiotexte release. A fucking review publication! I guess it doesn’t adhere to Barkans superficial New Yorker level liberal analysis like in his midwit book on genocide. .
Could just be that book isn't in their wheelhouse some way - I don't know enough about it. I've got a list of pitches to various places that were rejected and then some that got through but weren't ever published. That being said, I'm not an editor here, so I don't know. That book looks fascinating though. Thanks for the rec.
That must be what it is. It’s too much of a risk for them. If you’re gonna retreat into the aesthetic anything other than milquetoast liberal (not yours) reviews threatens that illusion.