margaret erhart
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i was once their darling

6/29/2020

4 Comments

 
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My brother wrote to ask if decolonizing our bookshelves was the first step toward burning some books. Apparently, I had a lot to say in response:

David, I just made my way through a book I thought to be mediocre, a book that's winning high praise from the reviewers. There's nothing wrong with the book, but it didn't seem particularly high-praise-worthy to me, and I suspect this book would not have become a big hit had the protagonist and her family not been immigrants from Morocco. However, then it wouldn't be the book it is.

The book deals with prejudice against this Moroccan family, and the events following the death of the father in the family. There are other themes as well, but that's the main one, and the book is built around it. So thematically, yes, it's an important window to a world most of us know very little about. For one thing, the book is set in the Mojave desert, near Joshua Tree. How many Americans even know where the Mojave is? And few of us know the life of Moroccan small-business owners in the US. My trouble with the book has nothing to do with the content. If I learn something from a book, if it opens up a cultural door to me, or gives me a new geography, I’m happy. My trouble with the novel is the unremarkable way in which it's written. There’s very little plot to it and the writing style is pedestrian, and yet the critics are raving. So let’s take a look at the raving critics.

The critics’ job, it seems, is to find a “darling” and push their darling forward because that darling embodies a political group or statement they feel they need to (and perhaps actually do) favor. Right now, what’s in favor is whatever’s not part of the cultural majority—the anti-colonizers, if you will. What a change from the literary canon we had to read in every English class we ever took. Yes, we had a spoonful of Jane Austen and Charlotte and Emily Bronte, oh and some women poets (all of them dead), but goodness me, did you ever notice 99% of the time we just read books by white men?

As a girl kid with writing aspirations, this seemed about as unsupportive as it could get. But I guess I couldn't help myself; I just kept writing. And then do you know what? I became the critics’ darling myself because I embodied the newest political group they were going to favor: gays. They had gay male writers and now they needed a lesbian. It was a moment in my life when I was chosen because I was in a certain place at the right time. Unusual Company was a first attempt at something I'd get progressively better at, but it was not praise-worthy. And it was especially not worthy of 1100 words in The New York Times Book Review. But, David, that's the way it goes. As my writing has gotten better and better, my recognition and audience have shrunk. I’m not a niche writer, and that’s a problem. I didn’t stay long in what I call the Gay Lit ghetto, and that was a disappointment to critics who were hoping to find my second book praise-worthy. (It was not. Praise-worthy didn’t start up until book #3, if you ask the author, or maybe book #4.) And then I either wrote from inside the skin of poor Georgia blacks, which is a no no, or I wrote historical fiction based in a well-known national park. The Grand Canyon, it turns out, isn’t any more of a hot topic than an ordinarily dysfunctional family in New Jersey.

I want the author of the book I just read to know that being the critics’ darling is not a permanent position. It is, in Zen parlance, a finger pointing to the moon. These fingers are important, but don’t mistake them for the moon itself. A writer’s work is the critic’s pawn, but the moon goes well beyond these particulars. It runs the tides. It lights the night. It marks a welcome shift in our seeing and being. Decolonizing our bookshelves is not about being on the right side of history; it's about genuinely wanting to hear the stories of others who do us the great favor of reinforcing the notion of the common human experience.
4 Comments
stephany brown
6/29/2020 11:13:02 am

well said, my darling.

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stephany brown
6/29/2020 02:53:05 pm

I'm intrigued by David's question. I guess some would say Flannery
O'Connor's gotta go.

Reply
Jack Doggett
6/30/2020 06:02:55 am

Thank you Margie for this wisdom that comes from our shared far side of life. Like the far side of the moon, it cannot be seen without taking the journey, earning the passport of aging. As Zymborska says - that passport costs everything we have.

Keep sharing your inner Dorothy Parker!

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Kirsten Mueller link
6/30/2020 07:19:26 am

I am still ruminating on my Jeckyll and Hyde relationship to killing insects and small creatures, which is particularly relevant during these days of racial reckoning and my sabbatical in the Tetons. After a rain the other day, I noticed very small snails everywhere on the ground and I wondered how many I must have crushed by walking without looking carefully. I remember traveling through Rajasthan, India and learning about Jainism, and the practice of wearing a mask to prevent the possibility of inhaling an insect. Being the child who would play with snakes and move spiders out of the house with care,I felt a certain kinship with those who felt enlightenment came quicker by avoiding killing of any kind. And now we wear masks to hopefully prevent the deaths of innocent others of our own species. These are interesting times. Thank you for reminding me to pay attention to the relentless nature of killing, and the idea of decolonizing my bookshelves. So much to do.

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