i really liked this essay on why literary fiction is sounding so much Like That these days, especially work by asian american authors:
This entire process selects for homework-doers, personal entrepreneurs, and individualistic bureaucrats. It's why, like I said, the oracular outsiders, the Pauls of the world, who can't conform to society's expectations to check boxes and become legible to the powers that be, aren't in these programs and aren't getting the opportunities that are downstream of them. It's why you end up with tons of fiction about "my white boyfriend" and "everyone online is mad at me" or "anxious strivers in NYC" or "my annoying polycule." These are the obstacles this class encounters. You can't spend time, like Cormac McCarthy did, living in an unheated cabin in the Smokies, or embedding with the Mujahideen like William T. Vollman, or working as a psychotherapist like Olga Tokarczuk. You must move from strength to strength, always turning in your homework on time, and certainly never suffering a psychotic break.
-- Trip, Estragon News, The Oracular Outsiders and the Homework Doers
i quite liked the conclusion to the piece:
Maybe it's because that fiction is being written for the people already bought in. Art that is made for the purpose of institutional legibility and approval is dead on arrival. Writing must stand on the outside, viewing the world at a tilt. Our world is being eaten by word machines that can imitate us perfectly. Unless American letters find the courage to welcome back in the oracular, it will disappear, replaced by machine that can conform to the demands of institutional legibility—really, the demands of capital—better than any human ever could.
