RANT: On Philip Roth, American Writers, and Literary Muscularity

"Roth's reputation, especially when it comes to stuff like doing publicity, is daunting. He is severly smart. Suffers fools badly. Parries, rather than answers, questions.


True, true, and true. Roth has the mien and bearing of a man in charge by dint of brainpower alone. He is tall and thin, hawkeyed, comfortable in silence. He takes words in -- visibly takes their measure -- with no more than a cock of an eye or a narrowed brow. Say something particularly insipid and he may purse his lips.


And how else would anybody but a fool meet the world? This is no celebrity. This is a poker-faced novelist, a man who tasted fame, gagged, and spit it out, the same man who two-plus decades back told an interviewer, "I am very much like somebody who spends all day writing.""

Scott Raab
"Philip Roth Goes Home Again"
Esquire, October 2010

Man, why are there no articles like this in women's magazines? Is it any wonder I prefer "Esquire" and "Vanity Fair" to "Vogue" and "O -- The Oprah Magazine?"

The writers who do great long-form general journalism -- with just a little Gonzo thrown into the mix -- the Scott Raabs, and Chris Joneses, and Bethany MacLeans, and Maureen Orths... Do they propose their stories to Vogue and Elle and O and get polite "doesn't meet our needs at the current time" rejection letters?
I just don't understand it. Surely I'm not the only woman who counts one of these two magazines as her favorite for the quality of the writing.

Take "Esquire." Ostensibly, it's a men's fashion magazine, and yet it won a National Magazine Award for an article that Chris Jones wrote ("The Things That Carried Him," May 2009, I think, the story of a dead soldier's journey home from Iraq. I blogged about it back then -- too lazy to go find the link right now -- because it was the best piece of journalism I'd read in years -- fact-fact-fact-fact-fact, dispassionate and yet moving, not mawkish, heartfelt without being sentimental. Jones presented the story without frippery, and I remember having to close the magazine and turn my face to the airplane window because I was crying so hard when I finished, while at the same time thinking, "God-DAMN I wish I had written that!" And then thinking, "This article should win some kind of award." Which it subsequently did, ahem.)

During the financial meltdown of 2008 and 2009 "Vanity Fair" had its writers dissecting the villains of the financial crisis, with at least one long-form article in every issue peeling back the curtain behind which the so-called Wizards of Wall Street were hiding. It was a beautiful thing.

* * * * * * * * * *

There's been a lot of stank in the literary press lately because Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner have been out there whining about all the fuss being made over Jonathan Franzen's latest, "Freedom," (which I'm dying to read btw, and can hardly wait until the trade paperback is out, hello everyone, my birthday is coming up, not that I'm hinting or anything, but I'm just saying).

Seems JW and JP are annoyed with all the hype Franzen has gotten over his latest big, sweeping American-Family novel, which is being compared mostly-favorably to "The Corrections," a novel which was, simply put, a masterpiece. They want to know why it's always the male writers who get all the glory, wah wah wah, why isn't anyone paying attention to US and taking US as seriously? They created a false gender inequality literary strawman, and I'm sad to say, the media has bought into it.

I'm sure there are undiscerning readers of the suburban-mom ilk (I can see them, too, for some reason in my mind, they all have Kate Gosselin's short hairdo, carry Vera Bradley bags, and wardrobe themselves from Chico's, but then again, I'm one-a them snotty East Coast elitist types so what do I know about the real 'Merrka?) who have jumped on that you-go-girl fake-femiinist bandwagon and picked the latest Picoult or Weiner for their "book clubs" (they've gotten through the whole "Twilight" series, you see, and "Eat, Pray, Love" is sooo 2008), thereby driving sales and ensuring another Mercedes coupe for both writers.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, and I'll add to it: They don't get no respect from Michiko Kakutani because they write crap. And the Jonathan Franzens and Richard Russos and Michael Chabons of the writing world aren't churning out crap. Even when they write something I don't love, I at least get the sense that they're trying to produce a quality work of fiction that addresses some universal theme.

Unlike Weiner and Picoult, who put their finger in the air and say, hmmmm, how can I sell as many books as possible? Is there a school shooting I can exploit, or, you know, no one's written about a college friend reunion weekend that goes bad because one of the reunionees suddenly remembers that she was raped by one of the others' boyfriends. Or worst of all, the "city girl" who spends 200 pages trying to win her a Man. Blah blah blah.

Hey, I got nothing against writing crappy books to make money, people have to make a living. If I thought I could make a million doing it, I would. (Maybe I still will, but I won't use my real name :))

But please, don't put a McDonald's Happy Meal in front of me and get mad when I say I ordered sirloin. And sometimes I'll even eat the Happy Meal -- but it's with the full awareness that I'm eating crap that isn't going to nourish me. You got my money, now shut the fuck up and go sit on your bags of cash in your mansion on a golf course outside of Atlanta or wherever it is you live.

My point being -- what was my point? Oh, yeah. there are still people who want to read quality writing, and we don't care who writes it. I just did a drive-by of my bookshelves and next to Richard Russo and Michael Chabon and John Steinbeck and Richard Price I see Patricia Highsmith and Iris Murdoch and Joan Didion and Barbara Kingsolver and Jane Fucking Smiley, so there. Quality writing is quality writing, and JW and JP seem to think that "sold lots of books" equals "must mean it's good."

No.

It just means that Americans' taste in reading material is a lot like their taste in everything else -- they don't want complex layers of flavor in their characters and plots, they want simple and easy-to-swallow prepackaged, sugar-packed junk. Then they wonder why their minds are as flabby as their oversized American butts and they can't grasp a concept deeper than "I want my country back!"

In a word, I like writing that's got some muscle. That shows me something about humanity, whether it's lovely or hideous (ever read Pete Dexter?), and that fills me up with something I didn't know I wanted.

"The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen." -- Jonathan Franzen, the first two sentences of "The Corrections."

Like that.

I want writing that throws me down on the bed, rips open my shirt with buttons flying around the room, stands over me with its hands on its belt buckle, smiles a little, and says, "And now, I am going to fuck you. And you're going to like it."

I submit.