Wow!
That’s a lot to take in from our Overlords the suffering White Man. Now I’m not Black like President Obama, but I don’t have much sympathy for a white man looking for some loving! American Culture has certainly contained the simpering ‘desires’ of Easy Street, and here is ‘Critic Notebook’ scribe Ulin attempting to placate us with Rodney Kingisms, ‘Can’t we all just get along?”
Well no, we can’t.
Although Jonathan Franzen’s novel “Freedom” came out only on Tuesday, it has been the subject of impassioned debate for the better part of a month now, both in the review pages of most major media outlets — he is the first living writer to appear on the cover of Time magazine in a decade — and in the more ethereal corridors of the digital world.
That’s 10 big years ago though, what took these ‘White Guys’ so long to get a clue? One really must wonder as many fine women writers are wondering why these men didn’t put up say, Stephanie Meyer or even J.K. Rowling on the Time Magazine Cover?
Is it because our President is Black? Did white guys forget that they are in charge? Did they forget that they are the ones who wet our whistles and show us other (Non-Whitie) people where and how to be?
So all of a sudden white guys remembered that Books and Reading are an important art, and whelp, there’s this Franzen guy who’s one we’ve been building up! Sure he shot down Oprah! But so what, she’s black too! More power to him, right!
It’s not like there is any room for any other black faces on Time Magazine Covers, if there had been, James Baldwin would have been on it more than once, if at all!
Weiner is incensed about what she perceives as the ingrained sexism of mainstream media, especially the New York Times, which showers coverage on male writers such as Franzen while leaving women out. That’s a valid concern; this week, Slate reported that, of 545 works of fiction reviewed in the Times between June 29, 2008, and Aug. 27, 2010, only 207, or 38%, were written by women. Even more, of the 101 books to receive two reviews during that stretch (one in the daily paper and the other in Sunday), just 29 were by female writers.
I’d be concerned as well if I were a woman writer.
In many ways I think that the anger comes from the fact that it’s been such a long time since a writer was championed, either man or woman. It’s a shock to the system after all this time.
Sure I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, the white man thing, still there is truth to every little wink and expression. I mean look at the Bigotry of our nation, DADT, Gay Marriage and the Mosque in New York, all items that shouldn’t even be discussed. An environment of Greed and Ignorance isn’t one which is conducive to freedom. Wasn’t that the title of someones book recently!
White America should be ashamed of itself! Truth be told!
No, the freedom that we are seeing is very selective, what your freedom is surely isn’t mine say the white male of much of our nation. Thankfully there are women and others of different religions and creeds to show us that we are in error. We ARE bigger than a bunch of white men!
Hopefully it is not too late for the backward thinking that is prevalent in America’s baser habitats.
An Aug. 26 Newsweek piece made that point explicitly, calling Franzen “the writer we love to hate.” For writer Jennie Yabroff, the issue isn’t Franzen’s writing, which she acknowledges is, at best, “fantastic,” but his position in the culture, his “peevishness,” which, she believes, “undermines the humanistic intentions of his work.”
Why should she separate anything between Franzen and his work, sure she can enjoy reading Freedom, Franzen’s new tome, but she is allowed to despise him at the same time. She has a good point!
At heart, the tempest over “Freedom” reveals a fundamental immaturity in our collective thinking, a child’s eye view of the way art and culture works. This is not a new thing, but it’s distressing to see it so widespread.
Rather than a discussion of what gets covered and how, we have a campaign of personal invective, turned against a single author. Rather than a consideration of the book, we have a conversation about the writer’s image, as if that matters in our reading of the work.
“The way culture and art work”… “Not a new thing, distressing to see it so widespread”
Here Ulin is showing his naivety. What he’s concerned about is his old tired dialogue of aged white cronies and small minded elitists that make up much of the intelligentsia of his crumbling empire of thought. He fears, you see, anything outside of his little thinking box. The old saying is so very necessary “If you can’t stand the heat then get out of the kitchen!” Here Ulin and his ilk are without the old kitchen. Good that they are weak.
“We have a campaign of a personal invective, turned against a single author”.
So what?
Franzen doesn’t care, of course, he’s enjoying the hate just so long as it doesn’t grow, besides it’s not religious hate. In some ways he’s like fat old Michael Moore a Blowhard who got out of line for awhile. In the end Franzen will miss his ‘hey-day’ with the hateful masses, but will likely ‘fit in’ to Mr. Ulin’s simple and tidy white American way of thinking. After all every future is the same to a white guy.
It’s predetermined, right?
lol.
Los Angeles Time
