so, this made me cry:

I heart this piece by Dana Spiotta on Politics and the Novel, from the current Bookforum.

"A novel’s obligation to the complexity of the human heart makes it a poor platform for straight-up polemics or political advocacy. However, I do think fiction has some inherently subversive qualities. Most contemporary novels are pretty marginal—not widely read, not widely discussed. I also admit there is something cranky and suspect and marginal about writing novels (reading them is completely virtuous, of course). But this marginality is also, in part, what makes them powerful. The low-tech, beneath-the-radar form that limits the novel’s mass appeal also makes it the perfect place for contemplating the repercussions of more contemporary technology. The sustained attention required of readers already stands as a critique of the way we generally consume information. Another primary obligation of fiction is its imaginative and original use of language. This priority contrasts dramatically with the wearisome language employed in everyday public discourse. I believe dis locations and derangements of language do undermine the cultural status quo—even if it is just for that writer and his handful of readers. The novel may be marginal, but within its small world, there is genuine refusal and some breathable air.

I also think the way fiction conjures interiority and consciousness is unique among the arts and deeply challenging. A novelist can inhabit some pretty unloved and vilified people and make them human and recognizable. Since the novel is built for irony as well as for empathy, it can avoid sentiment while pursuing these recognitions. Few places in the culture encourage this kind of hard-edged, uneasy empathy. Fiction can counter our culture’s ubiquitous tendency to reduce us to our differences.

There is another important component to the politics of writing novels. I very much believe that human behavior is shaped by forces—historical and cultural and economic. So I am interested in everyday human experience, but always in a specific context. People don’t exist in some windless, timeless space. For me, it is part of the writer’s task to contemplate the cultural moment surrounding and influencing the characters. Novels are an ideal place to explore the precise nexus of persons and history—the complex way we are of a moment and also making a moment."

this is for all my american friends who think rupert the bear is a figment of my imagination:



now, back to studying!