American Literature Is a Disgrace
Americans are an overly enthusiastic and hyper-expressive people. We love to laugh and smile! We love to dance and sing! And when we do so! — we do so with extraordinary zest!!!
This isn’t just a stereotype. Americans actually smile more — and with bigger smiles — than other countries. The likely reason is that we are a county of immigrants. In order to get along with each other when we didn’t all speak a common language, we learned to communicate by smiling and being expressive. This disproportionate expressiveness is so engrained in our culture that we can’t even keep it out of the workplace. Ask a British coworker how they’re doing, they’ll likely say, “Fine.” Ask an American, they’ll likely say, “Great!” with a big smile.
This unusual expressiveness has become a trademark not just in how we act, but also in the cultural artifacts we produce. The history of American music is essentially the history of wild personalities trying to outdo each other in terms of brashness, rebelliousness, and raw enthusiasm. It’s all a competition for who has the biggest personality and the most attitude. Did you see the new music video by Tyler the Creator? Sure he’s a talented musical artist, but who cares! His attitude is so undeniably infectious you have to keep watching whether you like his style or not.
Same with our movies! Our cinema was almost about to become stagnant and predictable in the 1980s, and then Quentin Tarantino came along and Americanized the hell out of the whole scene once again. Same with art! Or have you not seen the latest beeple?
Of course, other cultures produce wild personalities, too. But no country’s cultural output relies so notably on the attitude factor. Attitude, arguably, is our primary cultural export.
With one exception: our literature is notably lacking in personality. In place of attitude, our authors wield understatement. I don’t have a clean theory for why this is the case, and I can’t prove definitively how widespread it is, but — true to my American urges — I can rant and bullshit on this topic endlessly. But even before I do so, I’m pretty sure you know what I’m talking about…
Go to any bookstore and pick up the latest hardback work of fiction. I will bet you anything you want that the “style” of the text will be predominantly thoughtful and subdued. Understated. Read the full first page. You won’t laugh. You won’t feel shock. You won’t be offended. You definitely won’t find an exclamation point. And you will probably only walk home with the book if you’re promised at least some amount of life from the picture on the front cover.
Maybe you’re thinking…well, isn’t this just how it is? It’s a book. Of course it’s boring!
This thought only makes sense if you’ve been fed a regular diet of typical American literature. As a counter-example to whatever hypothetical American book you picked up off the bookshelf, consider these opening lines from Guignol’s Band by French author Louis-Ferdinand Celine:
Readers, friends, less than friends, enemies, Critics! Here I am at it again with Book I of Guignol! Don’t judge me too soon! Wait awhile for what’s to follow! Book II! Book III! it all clears up! develops, straightens out! As is, ¾ of it’s missing! Is that a way to do things? It had to be printed fast because with things as they are you don’t know who’s living or dead! Denoel? you? me?…I was off for 1,200 pages! Just imagine!
This opening section, which is all in italics and is presumably the preface, goes on for a while. A few pages later the book opens with the official page one — but the author’s mania doesn’t let up. It begins:
Boom! Zoom!…It’s the big mashup!…The whole street caving in at the water front!…it’s Orleans crumbling and thunder in the Grand Café!…A table sails by and splits the air!…Marble bird!…spins around, shatters a window to splinters!
Can you imagine a modern American author opening a book with this much unironic enthusiasm? There’s absolutely no chance! At least not among respectable, agented, book-dealed authors.
For a comparison, here are the opening lines of few edgy modern American novels, which happen to be near at hand:
People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city.
- Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
The Drome first came to me in the mirror when I was six. Earlier that day my friend Mario, while hanging from the monkey bars in the sand park, said, “Why’s your face look like that?”
- There There by Tommy Orange
Chain Night happens once a week on Thursdays. Once a week the defining moment for sixty women takes place. For some of the sixty, that defining moment happens over and over. For them it is routine. For me it happened only once.
- The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
Not much personality. Not much enthusiasm. Nothing remotely resembling madness or unhinged life. Instead, we have all the hallmarks of typical understated prose — with a touch of melodrama.
I don’t mean to unfairly single out these three authors. These are all great books which I’d recommend. But their prose is all shockingly similar in tone — and this could be said of practically every new book I can find these days.
Thankfully, there are some counterexamples. Antkind, the 700-page comic novel by Charlie Kaufman, published in 2020, contains more personality and attitude than I’ve seen in American literature in years. Chapter one beings:
My beard is a wonder. It is the beard of Whitman, of Rasputin, of Darwin, yet it is uniquely mine. It’s a salt-and-pepper, steel-wool, cotton-candy confection, much too long, wispy, and unruly to be fashionable. And it is this, its very unfashionability, that makes the strongest statement. It says, I don’t care a whit (a Whit-man!) about fashion. I don’t care about attractiveness.
This goofy hyperbole about his beard goes on and on until we finally learn this stuffy old man is riddled with insecurities and his beard diatribe was an egomaniacal form of self-deprecation. Not bad!
Other American authors who weren’t afraid of showboating extreme attitude or — the horror! — exclamation points include:
Ishmael Reed:
Just then Royal Flush Gooseman, Furtrapper and sometimes bald-headed Cowthief, and Mighty Dike entered the room:
O.K. all you brush poppers, ranahans, limb skin skinners, and saddle warmers, this is Royal Flush Gooseman all the way from St. Louis!!!!!!!!
Tom Wolfe:
Hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, HERNia; hernia, HERNia; hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, eight is the point, the point is eight, hernia, hernia, HERNia; hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, all right, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hard eight, hernia, hernia, hernia, HERNia, hernia, hernia, hernia, HERNia, hernia, hernia, hernia, HERNia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia
Ottessa Moshfegh:
She turned to me with a high whining, “Mmm!” frowning in sympathy, and leaned on the horn by accident. It honked like a wounded coyote. She gasped. The person in the car ahead of us gave her the finger. “Oh, God. Sorry!” she yelled, and honked again in apology. She looked at me. “There’s food at home. There’s coffee, everything.”
“All I want is coffee from McDonald’s. That’s all I ask. I came all this way.”
John Kennedy Toole:
When he walked into the kitchen, his mother greeted him by falling to her knees and saying, “Lord, tell me how come you sent me this terrible cross to bear? What I done, Lord? Tell me. Send me a sign. I been good.”
“Stop that blaspheming this moment,” Ignatius screamed. Mrs. Reilly was questioning the ceiling with her eyes, seeking an answer among the grease and cracks. “What a greeting I receive after a discouraging day battling for my very existence on the streets of this savage town.”
“What’s them bo-bos on your hand?”
Ignatius looked at the scratches he had received in trying to persuade the cat to remain in the bun compartment.
“I had a rather apocalyptic battle with a starving prostitute,” Ignatius belched.
And there are others: William Burroughs, JP Donleavy, Richard Brautigan, Lucia Berlin, Hunter S. Thompson, Bukowski… But for every American author who dares to write with an announce of true personality, there are throngs of those who stick to the understated lane. And again — this is unique among American creatives! How many American rappers fear expressing attitude? How many rock stars? How many visual artists? How many podcasters? If you really want to see some attitude, check out Cardi B! Check out Iggy Pop! People are often confused about why Joe Rogan has the number one podcast in America. And I’m telling you it’s obvious: he’s an edgy comedian and cage-fighting commentator who’s easily excitable and has lots of opinions. With his rough edges, he epitomizes America’s top cultural export: attitude!
What do I mean by attitude? In literary circles, people often talk in terms of “voice.” As in, “We like writing that brings a unique voice.” But attitude is a much better term since it tracks for how we describe real people and also for how we describe other artists. It would be lame to say your friend “has a strong voice.” It would actually mean something to say your friend “has hella attitude.” Attitude, meaning your friend is:
Angsty, sassy, bitchy, devilish, cruel, manic, rambling, ranting, sycophantic, groveling, heady, drunken, methy, conniving, cynical, bombastic, terrified, ecstatic, rude, blunt, stuck-up, crazed, shocked, etc. etc. etc.
Write with a “voice” that entails a few of the above, and then you’ve got a character worth reading about! You can make your literary voice even more interesting by adopting the mannerisms of a specific subculture. For example, your narrator can have the attitude of a manic surfer bro, or a sassy Starbucks barista, or a sycophantic Alabama Trump supporter, or a methy Portland anarchist. Take any one of those characters and write with their voice — with their actual voice, and now you’ve got yourself a goddamn American novel!
I mentioned earlier that I don’t have a clean theory explaining American literature’s lack of attitude, but I do have some vague ideas about who to blame. First, it seems obvious to place a significant amount of blame on the gatekeepers of the publishing industry. Spend five minutes glancing at the profiles of America’s literary agents. Tell me you’ve never seen a more boring group of humans in your entire life. I’m sure very sweet people (I’m friends with a few), and no doubt they know their stuff in terms of literature, but by all indications they live and breathe understated prose. I would be genuinely shocked if more than 1% percent of them have ever listened to a full episode of Joe Rogan. They’ll watch Cardi B’s “WAP” and politely say they like it, or adamantly disapprove, depending on what happens to be the culturally appropriate response of the moment. And they’re the people deciding what new books we get to read!
I suspect the market is also partly to blame for the dearth of attitude in America’s literature. I imagine America’s book-reading class wears the same clothes as its literary agents. The youth in America who are hungry for crazy personalities can more readily get their fix from musicians, filmmakers, and meme-makers — not authors. So the market only has room for a handful of literary figures as unhinged as, say, Chuck Palahniuk.
Finally, it’s hard to write with a radical voice. If you’re an up-and-coming writer today, it’s so much easier to mimic the cool, understand style of Rachel Kushner than it is to follow in the manic footsteps of Celine. And what’s the point of trying for Celine when you’re rewarded by the publishing industry for taking the easier path?
How do we fix this? We can’t, if you ask me! It’s a lost cause. We’ve had too many generations of boring writers, readers, and publishers. Even our most radical small presses are shying away from things like writing “hernia” dozens of times at the start of an essay. American literature is a disgrace. And we’ve got to live with that. It is what it is. Anyway, who cares. How are you today? Me? I’m great! Big smile!