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Filed under: On the Spot Tagged: Dale Peck, David Simon, Jonathan Taylor, New York Public Library, Susan Straight, The Wire, Walter Benn Michaels
Jonathan Taylor writes:
On Tuesday I caught a panel discussion called "The Death of Boom Culture?" at the New York Public Library, that I think is worth watching or listening to online once it becomes available. It was a conversation that, precisely in the way the guests were talking past each other, was a fascinating gloss on its topic, or its occasion: this essay by Walter Benn Michaels in the January/February Bookforum. Benn suggests that over the last three decades of rising inequality, literary fiction and other arts have predominantly flattered the prevailing world-view of the economically ascendant, embroidering on safe historical topics (Toni Morrison stood in for this phenomenon) while obscuring the structures of contemporary injustice.
The animated exchanges with David Simon (of "The Wire"), Dale Peck and, especially, Susan Straight, demonstrated how everything Benn Michaels said could be totally right, as far as it went, yet be achingly incomplete. Between his dead-on assessment of the phantom "boom," and the viewpoint of artists who affirm its devastating realities, there was an interesting obstacle to communication. When Simon or Straight referred to the specific experience they draw on in making art that does do for American society what Michaels wants it to do, he was quick to roll his eyes (he said at one point, "I'm rolling my eyes") at what he saw as appeals to personal identity. Simon's gestures to genre narrative, and an audience questioner's reference to hip-hop culture, pointed to a less narrow view of actually consumed culture that could fit in with Benn Michaels's polemic—if only he considered it.
That there was no ready set of common terms for talking unflinchingly about an unjust system that all the participants are a part of, is something of a fulfillment of Benn's critique. But I left more interested in cracking a book of Straight's to read about "the actual structure of American society."
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Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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