In Spain, there is a whole genre of the literature of the crisis, and writers are producing great works of literature that readers are actively discussing. There is very a vibrant and rich cultural life happening around the literature of the crisis.
And here in the US there’s nothing of the kind. All we get is either sensationalist garbage or novels about bratty rich people endlessly nitpicking their way through extremely trivial problems. Even Toni Morrison ‘ s recent novel is about rich people. Always and forever, rich people.
Of course, our recession was nothing like Spain ‘ s crisis but let’s look at the big picture. We are all undergoing an enormous societal transformation. The nation-state is crumbling for Americans just as much (and actually more) as for everybody else. But where is our literature about real lives of real people? Hello, literature, where are you?
But no, there’s nothing but boring old escapism here. I’m very happy I didn’t choose to specialize in American literature because I would have perished of tedium.
Clarissa's Blog 
Perhaps the rising popularity of blogging has something to do with it. More and more, blogs are considered the epitome of “real lives of real people,” which gives them more opportunities to indulge in escapist literature. Wouldn’t that be a sort of embodiment of the transformation itself?
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Well the crisis is basically the return of poverty as a real thing affecting lots of people in Spain. Spanish culture has always had a place for poverty as a real thing which can be discussed from a variety of standpoints while American culture…. doesn’t.
That doesn’t mean that there’s no poverty in the US of course, but it’s an indelicate subject avoided in polite society and not many authors deal with it very well.
AFAICT in American litertature and popular culture poverty is a place to escape from (Horatio Alger), an intermezzo between the important stuff (blanking on written examples but it’s in the movie Pacific Rim though it’s directed by a Mexican) the destination of a tragic downfall (Streetcar named Desire) or occasionally the self-righteous wallow (Grapes of Wrath).
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If you read some of Steinbeck’s letters about the real conditions the Okies were facing, you’d be surprised how brutally they were treated in real life.
I think the infatuation with the rich is a recurring American disease, and we’re now in the fever state. Plus the fact that many of my generation don’t have enough retirement savings to see them in the lifestyle they’re accustomed to.
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“you’d be surprised how brutally they were treated in real life”
No I wouldn’t. That still doesn’t mean the book isn’t kind of a wallow that people feel good about themselves for reading (not Steinbeck’s intention I’m sure).
“the lifestyle they’re accustomed to”
Actually the lifestyle they wish they could become accustomed to.
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A friend has pointed out a novel called “The Subprimes”, but neither of us has read it.
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Please read Nnedi Okorafor’s novels, especially Who Fears Death and The Book of Phoenix. All of her work is good, but these are the best.
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You suggest I go to futuristic fantasy about female superheroes for non-escapist literature? 🙂 🙂
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You suggest I go to futuristic fantasy about female superheroes for non-escapist literature?
Exactly! The endings are sometimes happy, sometimes not. And it is not possible to guess in advance. But the latest one, The Book of Phoenix, is about the dissolution of a horrifically imperial society. Some writers (notably Shakespeare) make such a story bearable with comic relief. Nnedi does it by make the story surreal instead.
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Literature of the crisis does not exist in America because the crisis barely affected the class of people from whom “literature” comes from (upper middle class to upper class, largely white).
People who are middle class generally exist in strenuous denial of class and people who are poor lack the access to publishing houses and the education to produce novels. The people who squawked the loudest and were heard were either super wealthy people who felt vilified, people bitterly resentful that college didn’t work and middle class people who were like “fuck you, I don’t want to think about the unemployed/jobless”.
If you look at the masturbatory drivel that comes out of MFA programs you know this is true.
The people most equipped to write novels about crumbling nation states are the most mobile and therefore are the most wealthy (because they can afford to travel and have passports.)
Creating great literature requires imagination and empathy, qualities which richer people tend to lack And people write about what they know and who they can empathize with.
You will see a touching novel about Ruth Madoff losing her passport and her mind in Greenwich, CT, or a poor finance graduate who felt vilified by bums in Grand Central Station before you see anything about a middle class or poor person in crisis literature.
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Where Is Our Literature of the Crisis?
To answer Clarissa’s question in another way:
Literature of the crisis doesn’t exist and escapist fiction does for the same reasons you think Americans do well with realism and terribly with modernism and post modernism.
Everybody wants their one version of reality and wants it be controlling. The ambiguity and fluidity of crumbling nation states doesn’t sit well with most people and not even most artists. People have been engaged over pitched fights over which version of reality should control and in such an environment, ambiguous fluid works of art that make people work to engage with them will find almost no audience. It is too threatening. Realist works are accepted by one group and rejected by others like a foreign body. Now, to be fair, I have observed this state of affairs for almost fifteen years, but it is especially acute since the crisis began.
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This is very profound. I love this comment passionately.
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