Both the postmodernist Jennifer Egan and the neo-realist Markley are way to the left of the political spectrum. I’m guessing Egan voted for Elizabeth Warren but settled for Biden once he chose Kamala Harris as the running mate. And Markley sounds like one of those “Bernie Sanders is too conservative” types. I have no idea how they really voted and I don’t care. What I’m saying is this is where I’d peg them on the political spectrum if I had to guess.
Markley is clearly anti-neoliberal. Egan is pro (meaning, she likes it). This confirms the hypothesis that anti-neoliberal literature is never postmodern.
Both writers seem to believe (and rather aggressively, too) that the open-border citizen-of-the-world free-love fluid-identities ideology is superior to the stable-identity church-and-family nation-state one. At the same time, their fluid, drug-guzzling, free-loving characters are all miserable, cruel, and horrid. Only those who get married, stay clean, have children, and are attached to the place where they live resemble human beings.
Both writers’ are at their wokest when they get on the subjects of climate and race. Their anti-racist efforts are so tortured that I feel vicariously embarrassed when I read these scenes in both novels. Anti-racism is 100% a product of white people who feel extremely uncomfortable around those they consider to be non-white.
Great novels, though. Art resists ideological indoctrination. The authors can believe whatever crap they want but their books speak for themselves and what they say is very anti-woke.
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