Until then, check this out. A cogent, angry comment from Joy Castro on the character and consciousness of the literary powers that be.
And this. I haven't yet followed through on plans to feature excerpts here from the great new anthology Liberation Lit. I do still plan to do so, although it may be not in as systematic a way as I'd like. For now, consider this, to whet your appetite. It's from the long essay "Fiction Gutted: The Establishment and the Novel" by Liberation Lit co-editor Tony Christini. This is from page 575.
Misrepresentation 14--pre-eminence of the "subtle": "Subtlety of analysis is what's important," says [James] Wood. Not striking analysis, subtlety, which is another word for nuance--the establishment's all-time favorite word for the truncated range of its preferred fiction. Nuance is even more cherished than "limn." Subtlety--that by which never have so many nuanced so much to limn toward so little. Wood portrays the novel as sort of subtle styled character sketches of great sensitivity--a basic misrepresentation of the nature and scope of fiction, imaginative literature in full.
