June 26, 2007
Sucker MC’s Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 02:10 PM EST In today’s feature article, Fredric Smoler introduces his review of Michael Chabon’s new novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, with some general remarks on alternative history. Along the way he says: “Almost no writer of the first rank has ever worked this vein. Kingsley Amis is one partial exception, back in 1976, with The Alteration, but the only other example is Philip Roth, in 2004, with The Plot Against America.” Shortly after reading this, I flipped through the latest catalogue from the Library of America, which describes its mission as “preserv[ing] our nation’s cultural heritage by publishing authoritative editions of America’s best and most significant writing . . . from Thomas Jefferson and Henry James to Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, and Robert Frost . . .” Among the recent additions to this exclusive company, as listed in the catalogue, are collections of Edmund Wilson, John Steinbeck, Thornton Wilder, Saul Bellow—all staples of freshman English—along with Jack Kerouac, who doesn’t have to be good because he’s influential, and the Smoler-certified Philip Roth. And when you turn the page from Roth, you see Philip K. Dick. Remember that weird kid with the glasses in high school who was so geeky that even you could make fun of him? Odds are he was always carrying a Philip K. Dick novel. Now that kid is grown up and has a beautiful wife and his own software firm, and the Library of America has just reprinted four of Dick’s 1960s novels. Among them is The Man in the High Castle (1962), which, according to the catalogue copy, “describes an alternate world in which Japan and Germany have won World War II and America is divided into separate occupation zones.” Now, I’ve never read any Philip K. Dick, and I don’t want to, so I won’t try to make a case for whether he is or is not a “writer of the first rank.” It is clear, though, that a lot of people think he was very good—including Fred Smoler, who in this round-up called The Man in the High Castle “first a cult classic, now simply a classic, a novel about America after Germany and Japan won World War II.” Which brings us to the conclusion of Smoler’s review today: “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, however, confirms that Chabon is a major American writer. That he has recently been slyly working in low genres may keep a few snobbish readers from realizing how good he is for a little while longer, but probably not for much longer.” Is Chabon demonstrably “major”? Are there any absolute standards besides taste by which contemporary writers can be judged? I think not. Consider the case of Ian McEwan, for example. A few years back a friend picked up one of his novels in a bookstore, read the first chapter, and was so enthralled that he bought the book and gave it to me. I read the same first chapter and hated it so much that I stopped right there. Now McEwan has another novel out, and reviewers are going into hysterics. They quote sentences like, “She found it an ordeal to be in the street, walking toward a friend from a distance” or “He trod on the backs of his shoes to wrench them from his feet, and snatched his socks off with quick jabs of his thumbs,” citing them as examples of the author’s “genius for the poignantly observed psychological detail” and “supreme attentiveness that goes into crafting a sentence.” To me, these sentences are no more impressive than saying, “I bought a hot dog and ate it.” Does this make me a snob? No, I just don’t like Ian McEwan. And people who don’t like Michael Chabon just don’t like Michael Chabon. In the long run, the only way to say for sure that a writer is major (which is not the same as being good) is if his or her works are still available decades later. This uses what is effectively a popular vote, the only objective method, to decide, but restricts the franchise to literature lovers, the only people who buy books that are more than a few years old. Will Chabon make the cut 40 years from now? At this point it’s a matter of guesswork. And—a different question—is Dick not only major but “of the first rank”? Here, as with Chabon and McEwan and every other writer, past and present, it’s simply a matter of opinion.
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