COMMENT
The Politics of the Absurd.
The theater of the absurd had a
rationale: it represented the presumable absurdity of life. But the rationale of
the politics of the absurd, as practiced by
The Nation,
is not immediately evi–
dent.
In
its April 29th, 1989 issue,
The Nation
responded to the charges that
the events in Eastern Europe undercut its holding on to an outdated leftism
and that it had ignored the meaning of the exhilarating democratic revolution
and the renunciation ofsocialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
The editorial
in
The Nation
stated that there is no left
in
America, only a
"loose progressive community . .. of left-liberal, democratic socialist, non–
aligned post-Marxist, etc., elements that are just as diverse in their circum–
stances and stages of social formation as are their counterparts in Eastern
Europe. " This is surely an evasive answer, for the elements listed by
The
Nation
are precisely those that make up the left.
In
addition,
E.
P. Thompson, the leftist British historian, and Noam
Chomsky, the leftist American social critic, were recruited to analyze the
meaning of the events in the East. Thompson claimed that the peace move–
ment brought about the democratic revolution in Russia and its former satel–
lites, and argued further that the cold warriors of the West retarded the de–
mocratization of the communist countries, and that these countries were
moving toward "Thatcher's capitalism. " How can one even begin to refute
these absurd propositions? Chomsky concentrated on exposing American
democracy, and insisted that what really was needed was a
perestroika
for
America. How is this view to be distinguished from the left position that
The
Nation
says doesn't exist?
So absurd is this response to the world-shaking revolts against commu–
nism - and socialism - that
The Nation
and its star contributors sound like
closet conservatives. For these views serve only as an argument for
conservatism. If
The Nation
is to be taken seriously as a left-wing publication,
it will have to confront the meaning of
perestroika
and
glasnost
in a more
serious manner.
*
*
*
Realism and Journalism.
The November 1989 issue of
Harper's
Magazine contains a rather flamboyant piece by Tom Wolfe, which
he calls "a literary manifesto for the new social novel." The gist of his argu–
ment, which is surrounded by a good deal of inflated literary talk, is that
American novelists have missed the boat - the boat being the novel that tells
the real story of New York's complex and sprawling life - which, to be sure,
his own novel,
The Bonfire of the Vanities,
succeeded in doing. Wolfe also
says such a large-canvas social novel can be written only by the use of real–
ism as a fictional method, although realism has been in disrepute
in
highbrow
