ben marcus' article in harper's about jonathan franzen

i read it tonight

i believe i'm the first person to read and then blog about this

(therefore all literary blogs should link to this post)

ben marcus says his article is not a manifesto

ben marcus says that jonathan franzen is a failure at empathy because he, jonathan franzen, cannot accept that other people may have different beliefs than himself, jonathan franzen, that other people may enjoy different things than himself, jonathan franzen, may find different things entertaining and fun

ben marcus says he voted against someone else who cannot tolerate beliefs and viewpoints not the same as his own

i liked the article

ben marcus has a running joke in the article about paintball that made me laugh

ben marcus mentions joy williams in the article

he mentions gary lutz twice

jonathan franzen, i learned from the article, has spoken out against 'difficult' literature, has attacked it, obliquely and directly, in essays, reviews, and interviews

ben marcus, in the article, does not attack 'undifficult,' 'easy-to-read' literature, but defends 'difficult' literature, literature that is unconventional or original in language, literature that does new things

ben marcus acknowledges that 'difficult' literature is not any better or worse than literature that is concerned with story and concreteness and that the reader not have to do any 'thinking' to understand the meaning of the words that are used

ben marcus says that jonathan franzen, a national book award winning bestseller who writes constantly for the new yorker and the new york times and the new york times magazine, is attacking and 'speaking out' against writers who never win awards, never get fiction in the new yorker, never write articles for the new york times, but are tiny and have small readerships and no power or influence

so

ben marcus in his article defends harmless people who are under attack from powerful people who are not under attack but believe that there are such things as 'better' and 'best' in art, or rather believe that there are such things as 'better' and 'best' that exist outside of one's own point-of-view in art

i like ben marcus

i wish ben marcus could've gotten the position at iowa

frank conroy said that things in a short story are like things in a backpack and that you should only put in things that the reader will need in order to climb a mountain with or else the reader will be angry that you gave him or her extra things

i say that things in a short story are like toys and you can give them to someone in a backpack and they can play with those toys whenever they want and they don't have to climb any mountain and if they climb the mountain and get angry then you should give them more toys and tell them that they don't need to climb any mountains

joy williams has a short story in the new best american short stories

michael chabon talks about literature being entertaining

ben marcus would say that 'entertaining' is subjective, different for everyone

i like ben marcus

ben marcus is not a failure at empathy

i couldn't get past page ten or so of his book

but, ben marcus has reminded me in his essay, that does not mean that his book is 'worse' than any other book

it is just 'different'

these are lessons learned in third grade, i think

but sometimes i forget that there is no 'better' in art, only 'different'

like i did for a little while in this post

i think some people never learn this

or else they forget over time

and i think that many more people know it, that there is no 'better' in art

but those are the people who never get attention

who you never hear about

because they stay quiet

ben marcus didn't, though

he wrote an article to remind jonathan franzen

and other people