Comforting Myths: Concerning the Political in Art (Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Lectures)

by Rabih Alameddine

I think most novels that hit you over the head with a two-by-four are not very good.

As George Orwell wrote, “No book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

How is a novel that exalts a way of life, any way of life, not political? A novel about a doctor who moves to a small town and is beaten up by drunks upon arrival is considered not, but an immigrant who moves to a small town and gets attacked is.

I don’t have to tell you that the level of political discourse in the United States has dropped off dramatically. If a political thought or position cannot be stated in one tweet, it can no longer exist. We shout at each other across various social media platforms and consider that the apex of policy.

If Colson Whitehead writes a novel about a Black man’s life, is it identity politics? If John Updike writes a novel about a white man’s life, is it not identity politics?

We invade your countries, destroy your economies, demolish your infrastructures, murder hundreds of thousands of your citizens, and a decade or so later we write beautifully restrained novels about how killing you made us cry.