Selfish Wanking and the Future of Literary Fiction
The new Harper's does its darndest to provoke that ever-shrinking lit crowd to limp-armed blows (if we can get them flinging roundhouses with those bicepless arms, we can be the new London of lit gossip and rumor-mongering- have you seen Marty's teeth?) with its cover article, a novella-length character assassination of Jonathan Franzen under the guise of a defense of experimental fiction. I refuse to do your work for you, so if you're looking for sparknotes here, you'll need a trough of liquor before I flick too many more keys. Let me go all Reader's Digest on you instead- Marcus wants Franzen-the-pundit's (not the novelist's-he illustrates his magnanimity by praising The Corrections on several occasions) head- he believes that the recent tsunami (hey, by lit crit standards) of attacks on "difficult" fiction have alienated even those most likely to pick up a, say, Ben Marcus novel (in the interests of transparency, I failed to make it past page 32 of Marcus's one novel, as at that point he still hadn't mentioned Flannery O'Connor [aside: did you know that Killdozer once released a single with the touching lyrics, "Lupus killed the life of Flannery O'Connor, she wrote many books before death came upon her"? I didn't think so] Notable American Women). Franzen, according to the man who would be experimental king and who is certainly not jealous because he says that quite plainly at the end of the piece, had to wrestle with his lit demons and ultimately found that in his deepest heart of literary hearts, he was a giver. He would deliver entertainment as a gift to his readers. He would not punish them with needless difficulty. He would further the cause of literature by offering more people what they want. He would smash the elitist paradigm (that puts Ulysses, that unreadable river of diarrhea, at the top of its lofty heap), and bring back the casual reader.

Marcus is having none of it, but here's the cheap irony- his attack on entertaining fiction and defense of unreadable masturbation is one of the most entertaining essays of the year. Long live the defense of selfish wanking!