Imagine America as a gigantic mahogany table around which sit the writers of America, deciding, as things fell apart, that it was time to step up, and therefore writing—and signing by the hundreds—an “open letter to the American people” declaring that “as a matter of conscience” they opposed “unequivocally, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States.” And having done that, imagine them leaning back in their padded swivel chairs at the gigantic mahogany table, sighing with satisfaction, Well, that’s our two cents’ worth, and reaching for the bowl of jelly beans set out as a reward.
A recent essay in The Point by Jonathan Baskin offers a sympathetic overview of Hemon’s dissent. Maybe, wrote Baskin, the problem is that most American writers live in a “tolerant, pluralist” bubble of “enlightened citizens” and don’t recognize that Trump didn’t subvert democracy, he made the most of it. And maybe the reason the great post-9/11 American novel has not been written is that the authors living in that bubble would have to confront their own complicity in “the increasingly prevalent illusion that it is possible to wall ourselves off from the America that disappoints, frightens or disgusts us.” The persistent idea of a “national conversation” is a component of that illusion. Urgent appeals for a national conversation on race show up in the media all the time, and whenever I see somebody call for one I wonder what planet they’re living on. Don’t they realize we’re having that conversation right now?
America’s letting it all hang out.
