WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ARTS?
617
result was the absorption of many artists and intellectuals into the main- .
stream of American life. We did not sufficiently realize then, I think, any
more than now, that, to paraphrase Flaubert, it was possible to be regu–
lar in our family life and love of country, while being ferocious, demand–
ing, and nonconformist in our love of art. The September
II
attacks are
certain to reinforce this fifty-year-old endorsement and reemphasize the
need for consensus. Although we should beware lest we allow our patri–
otism to limit our civil liberties, most of us feel the need for national unity
in the face of serious external threats to our existence. We should recog–
nize, however, the cultural price that we have paid, are paying, and will
continue to pay for this embrace of our country and our culture. It is the
same price being exacted by America's well-intentioned commitment to
diversity, namely, the prospect of a pluralistic culture without high art, a
generous and democratic society in which everything is given equal
opportunity, except the greatest achievements of the Western world.
Hilton Kramer:
We're going to defer discussion of Mr. Brustein's talk
until after Cynthia Ozick's paper, which, as Edith mentioned, will be
read by Joanna Rose, since Cynthia is unable to join us.
Cynthia Ozick:
When Jonathan Franzen was catapulted to the status of
celebrity recently, it was not only because his novel,
The Corrections,
had
become a bestseller.
It
was because he had declined celebrity, he had
scorned it, he had thumbed his nose at it. It was because for him celebrity
was a scandal, an embarrassment.
It
shamed him. It demeaned him.
It
was the opposite of his desire. His desire was to be counted among artists,
not to be interviewed by a sentimentalist who hosted a television show.
His bailiwick, his turf, his lingo-his art-was serious literature. He
wanted it plainly understood that he was not your run-of-the-mill Oprah
pick. He was a highbrow. Oprah, he complained, was in the habit of
choosing "schmaltzy, one-dimensional" books that made him "cringe."
And then followed what may turn out to be the most arresting liter–
ary comment of the twenty-first century so far: "I feel," he said, "like
I'm solidly in the high-art literary tradition." For a writer in that tradi–
tion, he intimated, the letter "0" (for Oprah) branded on a book jacket
may signify hundreds of thousands of copies in print, but it is also the
mark of Cain. Or else it is the scarlet letter of literary disgrace.
Like I'm solidly in the high-art literary tradition.
Never mind that "the
high-art literary tradition" generally shuns the use of "like" as a con–
junction. It was the telltale phrase itself-high-art literary tradition-that
shot Franzen through the cannon of doleful celebrity, if not into the West-
