The New Rebels

It is impossible to read literary critique today without running into the ghost of David Foster Wallace, acknowledged as the most energizing, polarizing and influential voice of his generation. While I cannot read his work, as I managed to escape the zeitgeist from which he writes by being a bit older, avoiding television and not going to graduate school in English, I have begun to think he is onto something and points the way out of a slough in which many people, not just writers, have bogged down.

In his 1993 essay “E Unibus Pluram,” Wallace says: “The next real literary ‘rebels’ in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels … who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. … The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the ‘Oh how banal.’”

The corner which Wallace was trying to turn can be understood as the difference between sincerity and authenticity, as described by Lionel Trilling [Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. 1972]. Ensuring the truth of oneself to others was a salient characteristic of Western culture for 400 years, suggests Trilling. But in the 20th century, the ideal became one of authenticity. Though Trilling goes into great detail, roughly, in his terms, sincerity places emphasis on communication with others, whereas authenticity sees truth as something inward, personal and hidden, with a goal of self-expression rather than other-directed communication.

For most of my life, assessment of inner truth, or authenticity, has been the criterion by which literature, politics and people have been judged. But Orlando Patterson, a respected Jamaican-born sociologist, describes what happens to public discourse when individual insistence on inner truth trumps tolerance and civility. Divisive identity politics and prejudices are upheld, among other things. [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/opinion/26patterson.html]

Several critics have pointed out that Wallace may have wanted to “eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue,” but that he could not overcome his own ironic ambivalence. In his novels, he tries to be “at once unassailably sophisticated and doggedly down to earth.” [A.O. Scott] David Foster Wallace did not want to lose what had been gained by our relentless focus on authenticity. I think of him when I run into the young hipster culture. As some have told me, “hipster” can be defined, but the person defining it is never referring to himself. Wallace would be pleased to find, as he believed, that “cynicism and naïveté need not be mutually exclusive”.

Both sincerity and authenticity reflect wholeness to the inner self. But I don’t think this is just a semantic tempest in a teapot. In public life, we must begin to behave with civility and tolerance while negotiating the authentic beliefs each of us hold dear. We must trust each other’s cordial gestures to have been offered sincerely and find common ground upon which we can all stand as humans.

In art, I would love to see work which opens to the world validated. Works which value the senses and allow the spirit present in things to emerge. Works of observation celebrating and exploring life itself. I think we’ve seen enough of the dark interiors of various people’s minds! We know now that the observer affects what he sees and thus, we must triangulate through many works to get a clear picture of truth. But why not? It is the work of being human.

David Foster Wallace was demonstrably trying to step back from pure self expression toward an ethos which valued the other, the reader, in his work. At present, I do not see widespread movement to what has been called “the new sincerity.” But I do identify with his idea of the new rebels. I quite expect yawns and rolled eyes where my writing is concerned, and I am more interested in what the reader needs than in self-expression. My characters are offered sincerely, in a spirit of civility and tolerance, finding common cause with the 90% of humanity that we all share, rather than in the narrow, hidden aspects in which we differ.