Nicholas Lemann and Judith Shulevitz
Dear Nick,
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StumbleUponDream on, baby. Give up one of the few really good reasons to make fun of you? That's one of those crucial marital rights, like not shaving my legs when I'm supposed to or wrinkling my nose at your choice of tie.
You're missing my point, as you know full well. I am not upset that the guards' guards were down; I was saying it's nice that they were. I'm glad the guards weren't more hardened and gimlet-eyed, given the horrible life they lead. We should pay them more on principle, just because this reminds us that they're human and their jobs stink. Although I might venture at this juncture the counterintuitive argument that if prisons paid better they would attract more, um, discerning guards.
My pet peeve of the evening is the review I just read of the "Hot New Novel"--that's the cover line--by John Leonard in the new New York Review of Books. The Hot New Novel is Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, which I'm discussing in a Slate "Book Club" in a few weeks. (If Fay Weldon can write a novel plugging Bulgari, and Bob Wright can plug his own books while also plugging Fay Weldon's right to do product placement, I can plug an upcoming "Book Club.") Don't worry, my Slate masters, I won't give away my review. I will, though, express irritation at Leonard's resorting to what is fast becoming the baldest cliche in the literary kingdom--the notion that the social novel was dying or dead and Franzen is somehow resurrecting it. (The New York Times Magazine implied as much in its otherwise very interesting profile this Sunday.) Not to diminish Franzen's accomplishment, but how would Leonard et alia characterize Philip Roth's trilogy, American Pastoral, I Married A Communist, and The Human Stain, all openly political, all published in the past four years? Or John Updike's Rabbit series, in which Rabbit observes minutely his home town of Brewer, Pa., and the many changes it goes through, every ten years? The latest installment in the Rabbit series came out this spring. If these aren't social novels, I don't know what is; and they are prominent, influential, and surely great.
Grumpily yours,
Judith
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Reader Comments From The Fray
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: Don't like restaurants? Then let's discuss home cooking, and get some ideas for tonight's dinner, in this thread here. One of the cooks, Will Allen, has this to say elsewhere (context not really important, but he had been accused of pre-judging people): "I nearly always allow someone to clearly display their banal, wooden-headed, nature before denouncing it." There was an interesting thread on prison officers, the word 'perversely', and insults, starting here. Everyone was in cheerful mood in the Fray: Ex-Fed was able to start joke threads here and here (warning: this one was considered tasteless by another poster.) Ex-Fed also proposed marriage to one of the Breakfast Tablers, here: we're being a little circumspect because this involved being rude about the other BT-er. And there was a fan letter from Zeitguy to Judith Shulevitz here.]
If there's anything "unique" about American society, it's the amazing extent of our ability to think that we're somehow different from every other civilization in history. Maybe it's because our particular culture has only been around for a few hundred years, in a land where we are cut off almost completely from the ancient civilizations that have been around significantly longer. I don't know. But bored, whiny rich people? That's nothing new
--Mangar
(To reply, click here.)
It's not the self-pity that bothers me so much, though it's bad enough, but the truculence and righteous indignation and desire to grind the faces of the poor it seems to lead to.
To put it another way--what, exactly, are the rich and powerful so pissed off about? What is it that they want that they're not getting? 100% of the wealth instead of a mere 90%?
--Kassandra
(To reply, click here.)
(9/5)