Literary Kicks

(Please welcome a second Litkicks appearance by Claudia Moscovici, who recently told us about her experience writing the novel Velvet Totalitarianism. Today she introduces the main idea behind her book Romanticism and Postromanticism, an art-related idea that resembles some of the theories I've recently heard about genres and literary fiction. Enjoy ... -- Levi)

Artistic freedom and aesthetic value are interrelated. Art that is not considered valuable by the artistic establishment -- art critics, museum curators and art historians -- doesn’t even get the chance to be evaluated by the public. Such art doesn’t make it to museums of contemporary art like the Guggenheim. It also doesn’t get discussed in the art sections of influential newspapers and art magazines. Analogously, literature that is not considered valuable by the publishing establishment -- literary agents, editors, publishers and critics -- doesn’t get a readership because it never makes it into print. (Granted, of course, the Internet has recently opened up possibilities to express more diverse points of view that didn’t exist before.)

So artistic freedom isn’t just about creating whatever one wants in the privacy of one’s home or studio without the fear of being arrested or shot for it. Although this basic freedom is very necessary, artistic freedom also entails a correlate liberty: namely, the public’s freedom to be exposed to a wide variety of artistic and literary styles. That way we can make our own choices and express our personal tastes. When there’s only one politician or political party to vote for on a ballot it generally means there’s no real freedom of choice in politics. When there’s only one artistic current or style displayed in museums of contemporary art it means there’s no real freedom of choice in art.

Jonathan Franzen's much-awaited novel Freedom hits bookstores tomorrow morning.

I'm about to start reading this book, and will be reviewing it for another publication. I've also been enjoying (for whatever humor value it can provide) a nascent Franzen backlash including a gender-minded protest by Jennifer Weiner and a Twitter parody that pokes fun at the author's perceived arrogance.

Well, it's hard not to be arrogant when you get fawned over by the likes of Lev Grossman of Time or Sam Tanenhaus in the New York Times Book Review, who says:

Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, “Freedom,” like his previous one, “The Corrections,” is a masterpiece of American fiction.

I wrote an article this week for the Second Pass as part of a series honoring the great philosopher William James on the centennial of his death. This centennial has also been observed at The Atlantic (which was kind enough to note my piece) and The Daily Beast (by Robert Richardson, whose new collection of selected essays ought to help spread the Jamesian gospel.)

My article is about the historic meeting of William James and Sigmund Freud in at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1909. Other pieces at the Second Pass this week include a choice quote from The Varieties of Religious Experience, a piece by J. C. Hallman and another by Levi Stahl (one of only two other people named Levi I've ever heard of in real life -- if we could get Levi Johnston over here we'd have the whole set).

I've been reading and appreciating William James for a long time, and have always considered his theory of truth to be his crowning achievement. By the time James arrived on the scene in the late 19th Century, philosophers from Rene Descartes to David Hume to Immanuel Kant had been long grappling with the nature of knowledge and the meaning of truth, and had been grouped into regional/ideological clusters known as Continental Rationalism, British Empiricism and German Idealism according to their positions on this question. William James provided the most modern and, arguably, the most credible and satisfying entry in this race: American Pragmatism.

Sometimes I feel lazy. Sometimes I don't have a whole blog post in me. Sometimes I just want to show you some literary links.

1. Documents newly discovered in Penzance, England (hidden perhaps by pirates?) indicate for the first time that Victor Hugo based his Hunchback of Notre Dame on a real hunchbacked sculptor hired to work on the great church's restoration. The documents describe a Monsieur Trajan, or Mon Le Bossu, as a "worthy, fatherly and amiable man" who did not like to socialize with the other restoration workers.

2. The tree that inspired Anne Frank (and many others since) during her captivity in Amsterdam has fallen down, but will live on through sapling plantings.

3. Oxford University Press wants you to adopt a word. They've got lots of unwanted words, and they'll all be put down if you don't.

Has any other Hollywood movie taken this long to get made? I wonder if the upcoming Walter Salles film of Jack Kerouac's On The Road will set the world's record for years in development when it finally hits the screens sometime next year.

Yes, my friends, after 15 years of planning, On The Road: The Movie is actually happening. It now has an IMDB listing. It's shooting in Montreal. Some actress from some movie called Twilight is apparently the star attraction (strange, since it's a story about the friendship between two men).

No "Philosophy Weekend" post today -- I'm not quite on a vacation, but my brain seems to need one. Back again in full force next weekend!

The image in this week's Litkicks Mystery Spot #7 is from a 1951 aerial map of New York City. It shows the southeast corner of Central Park, a location immortalized in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. This is where Holden Caulfield stared at ducks in a pond and wondered where they would go in the winter when the pond froze. And it's where he watched his younger sister Phoebe ride on a carousel at the touching end of the book.

The last few were kind of difficult, so I'm taking it easy on all of you with this week's Litkicks mystery spot. In fact, it's a goddam walk in the park. Just tell me what this is a picture of, and name the novel that this image represents.

Every single one of you has read this book. And I bet every single one of you loves the scenes (though you may not want to admit it) that take place among the structures towards the upper right of the image above, and around the body of water in the bottom part of the image.

1. This image of P. G. Wodehouse's bookshelf is just one of the incidental delights to be found in the BBC's literary video archive, In Their Own Words. Other authors showing their remarkable presence in these historical broadcasts include Virginia Woolf, Kingsley Amis, Muriel Spark, William Golding, Robert Graves and E. M. Forster and J. R. R. Tolkien (via drmabuse).

(Just one minor note about the text accompanying the P. G. Wodehouse interview, in which the shy humorist plays incessantly with his pipe and tries to give honest answers to tough questions: Wodehouse did live in Eastport, on Long Island's East End, but Eastport ain't the Hamptons, not really even close. But what would the BBC know about Long Island?)

2. Jonathan Franzen's upcoming novel Freedom is getting major, major news coverage, including the cover of Time magazine (he's the first novelist on the cover of Time since Stephen King ten years ago). I haven't read the novel yet, but I liked his previous family saga The Corrections and am looking forward to reviewing Freedom for another web publication as soon as my review copy shows up. In the meantime, here's a piece from The Millions about all the other writers who have been on the cover of Time since the magazine was founded in 1923.

I was talking recently to a friend, a guy I thought was pretty smart, about all the attention the Tea Party movement's been getting lately. I'm far from a Tea Party conservative -- far from a conservative at all -- but I wanted to hear my friend's opinion on a particular point and was disappointed that he reacted to the very mention of the Tea Party with such revulsion and disdain that it became impossible to talk further with him about it.

He had only one thing to say: the Tea Party movement is reprehensible, racist and completely ignorant. He would not dignify it with words; the only proper response was to spit or cuss. Our conversation ended there, and, for me at least, it wasn't very fun.

Strangely, most conservatives I've tried to talk with about politics react the same way to liberal ideas. Not long ago, I found myself chatting on a train with a woman who told me she worked as a hospital bookkeeper. Hoping to liven up the usual boring train-ride chatter, I asked what she thought of Barack Obama's health care plan. She reacted with disgust and horror, and when I told her that I was happy the bill had passed I instantly saw on her face that our conversation was over. She could barely comprehend that I could be sitting next to her. A few minutes later, I'm pretty sure I overheard her whispering to a friend on her cell phone about the upsetting encounter she'd just had on the train.