The Age of Incompetence: Chapter XXIV

\"Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade.\'\"
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, (1969)

PLZEN Last March I wrote about a man I consider one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century, a man named Max Perkins. Perkins was one of the great literary editors of his age and as such was representative of his era as few other men were.

I ended that column with the promise, \"What this portends for a healthy democracy is gist for another column another day.\" Promises have a way of dogging a man and writing yesterday about Edith Hamilton and her classic book The Greek Way I began suffering the pangs of an unfulfilled promise that poisoned the well for any future columns until I redeemed the promise.

Yesterday I claimed a medieval mentally has since the end of World War II infected American culture in particular and the world in general. I argued that medieval culture was marked by ignorance, superstition, and a lack of any structure of law that the common man could call upon to protect his human rights. I called upon Edith Hamilton\'s classic definition of what civilization really is: Civilization, a much abused word, stands for a matter of quite apart from telephones and electric lights. It is a matter of imponderables, of delight in things of the mind, of love of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feelings...\"

Edith Hamilton captured for posterity perfectly what civilization is really about and nowhere do we discover that better than from our earliest years when we discover children\'s fairy tales and fables to our formative years when we read books about heroes and legends and then to the end of our days when we read stories about the great moral issues of our times to help us find wisdom.

Max Perkins          Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I insist it is literature that best inspires us to grasp the imponderables and delights of the mind. We are told over and over the computer will replace the printed book, but it never quite happens and I don\'t believe it ever will happen.

By the 1960s editors like Max Perkins were extinct in the big corporate publishers; they no longer valued imponderables as the bottom line meant everything. It was Perkins who in the 1920s literally stuck his neck out to risk his job to insure Scott Fitzgerald became published, then did the same for Ernest Hemingway, and then Thomas Wolfe. If you do not know who these writers are then turn your TV back on and ignore this column.

The value of every writer to his country and his culture rests upon two critical skills: how he uses the language to nurture respect for it and whether he can forewarn of coming moral and social dangers. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian dissident writer expressed it best by declaring, \"Literature that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature, does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade.\"

I wrote in March we have lost both of those qualities in our literature today. I pointed out the leading book seller today is a woman who writes about romances between

vampires and women. Her books sell in the millions and of course are converted to films. But she is only the latest in a long line of American freak shows in print. But freak shows have consequences just as junk food has consequences: obesity, then diabetes, and then death.

Writing about Max Perkins last March made me think of another American writer, one I have know since we were both in our 20\'s. He doesn\'t write about vampires or freak shows but the great moral struggles of our time. According to some critics since he broke into print 35 years ago he has been one of our best writers. But he is invisible because his books have been studiously ignored by the corporate elites in New York who lust after the next vampire book.

You might think this man, who I will call Mr. X. does not exist and I am inventing him to make a point. Fair enough. But even if Mr. X. did not exist in fact, he would still exist without my knowing him or his name. For I am as certain as I am certain of anything that there are other Mr. X\'s alive who I do not know, I\'ve just by chance known this particular Mr. X. for the last 40 years.

He has written a splendid new novel that enlarges on a theme he has been writing about for at least the last 25 years in some of his other novels: the moral crack up of America, which leads to other kinds of crack ups, such as the economic and political crack up we now suffer in our daily existence.

His value as a writer rests upon those two essentials: the skill to use the language in a way that nurtures respect for English and the intuition to know when a moral and social danger is coming before it actually arrives. Ironically it is both these critical skills that have worked against him earning his rightful place among the leading literary names of our time.

The dedication it requires for a writer to learn how to use a language artfully at the same time requires a writer to have a moral sensibility. In other words his respect for truth grows in proportion to his pride in his use of the language. One can\'t exist without the other. A hack never loses sleep over sloppy

prose and is content to write half-truths or common lies.

Secondly, as Hemingway once remarked, \"The novel is the eternal battlefield of good versus evil,\" so the best writers among a culture feel compelled to give warning of coming moral dangers. This makes them as welcome among those in corporate publishing offices as a whistle blower is welcome in the Pentagon.

Thus my old friend has been unwelcome where it counts and unfortunately for American book lovers, unknown to them.

In June Mr. X e-mailed me that he was going to self-publish his new novel. He added, \"But even if I sold a million copies with an underground best seller, and had all the money I needed to live my last years in comfort, it would mean nothing when I think of the condition of my country. For when a man\'s country goes bad, everything else including personal glory is but a rebuke.\"

For many days after receiving that e-mail I felt trapped under a dark cloud. I agonized, once again, how had my generation failed to leave our country better off than when we inherited it for the next generation?

In America we do not shoot our writers who expose corruption and the morally grotesque sides of our culture as they do once again in Russia. But exiling a writer so he is invisible and living in semi-poverty is medieval. Like Mr. X., no matter how successful I was in my profession it would mean nothing to me if my country had gone bad and I could not help it reform and recover.

Mr. X\'s e-mail in June was a cutting reminder that we are both part of a defeated generation in a culture gone as toxic and dead as a vampire\'s bite. Something neither of us could imagine when we first met in our 20\'s.