On literary snobbery...

When did you become such a literary snob?

At first, I was completely taken back by that question. It almost became one of those adorable "You talkin' to me" Taxi Driver re-enactments that I enjoy so much. I was positive that years of reading and re-reading Douglas Adams, Philip K. Dick, and an assortment of cultish sci-fi and low-brow mystery fiction would guarantee a permanent exclusion from the New Yorker crowd.

Generally, I whole-heartedly accept most labels of academic arrogance, but this one seemed completely off. Especially since my reading lists have been consistently unassuming - always Victor Hugo over Albert Camus, Isaac Babel over Anton Chekhov, Shel Silverstein over T.S. Eliot, and so on. If you were to make an analogy to musical theater (and really, why wouldn't you) you could say that my literary tastes lie somewhere in the My Fair Lady category - not as shallow as Oklahoma, but a hell of a lot funnier than Cabaret.

Finally, after some humble (conspicuously humble) probing, I determined that the question was provoked by a few positive comments that I recently made about Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians." I read the book last week for the first time, and was profoundly moved by it. In fact, I think that it is beautifully written, and immensely important. This is my favorite passage:

"What has made it impossible for us to live in time like fish in water, like birds in air, like children? It is the fault of Empire! Empire has created the time of history. Empire has located its existence not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe. Empire dooms itself to live in history and plot against history. One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhound everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation. "

I think that this book has been categorized in the "elitist Ivy League humanities curriculum" group instead of the " thoughtful train reading from the Time list" group because it makes you hurt without allowing you to cry. And that makes it a difficult book. Selby's writing is like that too.

For example, "The Kite Runner" is a lovely book that I read just prior to Coetzee. It's very emotional, and I cried every 20 pages. It addresses important issues, and relates them through a very nice story about heartbreak and perseverance. It's a good book, but it's not an important book. And sometimes it's necessary to take a break from the undemanding comfort of a sad story and venture into the difficult territory of overwhelming injustice and tragedy. Even if it does earn you the label of a literary snob.