Artistic Truth, and the Literary Magazine as Cultural Bulwark

In “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” Noam Chomsky in 1967 identified academics as people Washington usually ignored if they protested US aggression in Vietnam: “these nasty types [sarcasm intended] are often psychologists, mathematicians, chemists, or philosophers (just as, incidentally, those most vocal in protest in the Soviet Union are generally physicists, literary intellectuals, and others remote from the exercise of power)….”

Intellectuals, Washington claimed, lacked the expertise to responsibly interpret US policy, and it’s this claim Chomsky refuted, asking, “[does] a body of theory and of relevant information, not in the public domain, [exist] that can be applied to the analysis of foreign policy or that demonstrates the correctness of present actions in some way that psychologists, mathematicians, chemists, and philosophers are incapable of comprehending?” If Chomsky’s university intellectuals are in unique positions to expose lies and to pursue something like fairness and truth, it seems to me that all writers have in the wealth of contemporary literary magazines more opportunities than ever to pursue fairness and truth through what John Gardner called that “ancient but still valid kind of thought” (Art 37), the creative process.

Editors and writers cannot help recognizing the social moment, especially since politicians often define social events with clichés, platitudes, and other kinds of language editors and writers by practice find offensive. “History is a trap. President Bush, with his blowtorch gaze on Iran, utters the magic words, ‘World War III,’ and we had better get behind them’” – so begins David Lenson in his introduction to the Winter 2008 issue of The Massachusetts Review. Martín Espada, in his introduction to the Spring 2005 issue of Ploughshares, says the writers in that issue respond artistically to their time: “Their language is powerful precisely because it is not the language of power. Phrases such as ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ and their devious uses by our government to rationalize war, bleed language of its meaning. The poems and stories herein restore the blood to words.” Both of these examples touch upon the literary magazine’s meaning and purpose. At least for me, they provide places where I reaffirm what I tend to believe are honest, thoughtful attempts by writers to rediscover what’s important for human beings.

That I can access at least parts of these magazines (and almost every quote used here) online from mainland China, where I’m currently teaching English comp, emphasizes the reach and immediacy of contemporary US literary magazines. Writers’ sites are often blocked here (such as the online literary journal Our Stories, where I edit fiction, as well as the site duotrope.com, where writers can seek out publishers). In the States, literary mags never have their sites blocked. And why should they? Ted Kooser, in a recent interview with David Baker at The Kenyon Review, in passing mentions that Bush’s administration, at least, seemed indifferent to his art: “I suppose that if the laureate were summoned to the White House and asked to write a poem for the President, somebody might want to do that. Not this guy.” Maybe the administration wouldn’t know what to do with Kooser’s poetry since, in contemporary literary magazines, though an editor might contextualize an issue’s work into a time of war and empty political rhetoric, you won’t find propaganda trying to pass for poetry or fiction. That’s partly because the best editors reject this writing, not principally because of the political message it carries (with which the editor may agree) but because it’s offensive to readers.

Propaganda trying to pass for literary art also offends the sensible writer: propaganda stands antagonistically opposed to the creative process. The best writers I know, at least the ones whose work I consistently seek out, such as Stuart Dybek, Jill McCorkle, Karen E. Bender, and so many others, are equipped with qualities John Gardner says writers need in order to create fair and truthful work:

the writer must be not only capable of understanding people different from himself but fascinated by such people. He must have sufficient self-esteem that he is not threatened by difference, and sufficient warmth and sympathy, and a sufficient concern with fairness, that he wants to value people different from himself, and finally he must have, I think, sufficient faith in the goodness of life that he can not only tolerate but celebrate a world of difference, conflicts, oppositions. (On Becoming 32)

It’s worth thinking about the reasons why political leaders around the world traditionally distrust writers. In some places, writers might be imprisoned because, partly, discourses justifying the status quo are too fragile to be tested. In the US, politicians seem for the most part to ignore them, or at least don’t seem concerned with aggressively trying to mute them, in part because, cushioned in the internationally spreading television culture of the US, so many Americans perhaps don’t care (or don’t know how) to stand from the cultural web in which they recline.

That readers, writers, and editors expect something like a true rendering, in artistic form, of life as perceived by most us in the everyday world (in that way helping us exercise feelings and test out ideas we can apply to our lives)—while leaders of governments tend to ignore or, in some places and times, exile and imprison writers—says to me that the purpose of the contemporary literary magazine is incidentally to reaffirm the best elements of any human culture, regardless of whether what writers discover offends political prescriptions. Rosanna Warren, in her introduction to the Winter 2006-2007 issue of Ploughshares, touches upon the effect of the best poetry and fiction—“To keep us from sleepwalking. To keep us alive to one another.” The contemporary literary magazine is among the most important cultural resources in the United States, opposed to propaganda and the US television culture. Here, writers showcase what they’ve discovered, what seems wrong or right in societies, and most importantly, why it’s worthwhile to be in the first place.

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Justin Nicholes, from Ashtabula County, Ohio, currently lives in the Henan province of China.  His debut novel Ash Dogs appeared through Another Sky Press (June, 2008), and his work has appeared in American Poets Abroad, Mikrokosmos, and Karamu (which nominated his story for a Pushcart last year).  He edits fiction at Our Stories, got his MFA from Wichita State, and can be reached through Another Sky Press.

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Works Cited

Chomsky, Noam. “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” 1967. 8 Apr. 2008.

Espada, Martín. Introduction. Ploughshares (Spring 2005). 5 Nov. 2007.

Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction. New York: Knopf, 1984.

On Becoming a Novelist. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

Kooser, Ted. Interview. The Kenyon Review. 4 Apr. 2008.

Lenson, David. The Massachusetts Review (Winter 2008). Nov. 2007. 7 Apr. 2008.

Warren, Rosanna. Introduction. Ploughshares (Winter 2006-2007). 10 Apr. 2008.