Engagement and the Post-9/11 Novel
Introducing the Theory of Engaged Literature as a Tool in
Contemporary Literary Studies
Lotte Timmermans (5674255) MA Thesis
Literary Studies: English Language and Culture Supervisor: dr. Ben Moore
Introduction
In literary studies, it is a widely held notion that contemporary literature has shifted away from postmodern literature since the 1990s and especially since 9/11. What is special about this shift, is that it shows an appreciation for characteristics such as authenticity, sincerity, and commitment with social and political events. By referring to this shift with notions such as late-postmodernism (a further developed form of postmodernism) and post-postmodernism (a new literary area that breaks with postmodernism), scholars attempt to understand what these newly popular characteristics of contemporary literature mean for postmodernism. However, as many advocates of this new turn argue, the use of authenticity, sincerity, and commitment are not new to literature, as modernism was partly characterized by the use of those aspects too. Simultaneously, the so-called ‘break’ with postmodernism does not entail a complete disregard of all the literary aspects and ideals postmodernism stood for. Rather, scholars argue, these two literary periods seem to join forces in contemporary literature.
Furthermore, what seems to lie at the core of contemporary literature, is its turn to and engagement with the reality outside of the novel. Whereas the postmodern novel was more concerned with taking an autonomous stance by rejecting a high level of commitment to social and political issues that represented the contemporary reality outside of literature, the contemporary novel shows a higher level of commitment and an openness to indeed relate to the world outside of literature. However, the term engaged literature, or engagement in literary works, has not been accepted widely in literary studies. Often, engaged literature reminds the literary scholar of propaganda literature that is opposite to the freedom of autonomous literature. However, when Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in 1948 what, according to him, engaged literature should be, he proposed no such distinction between autonomous and engaged literature, but rather a combination of the two. On closer examination, Sartre’s approach of littérature engagée shows similarities to the so-called turn of the contemporary novel.
This thesis examines to what extent Sartre’s understanding of engaged literature is relevant to literary research into the turn to authenticity, sincerity, and commitment in the contemporary novel. By offering an understanding of what this move away from postmodernism entails according to literary scholars, followed by an analysis of Sartre’s engaged literature, we will formulate a means by which we will test Sartre’s theory on novels that fit the criteria for the contemporary novel. Eventually, this thesis will
demonstrate how these literary texts help us recover a Sartrean understanding of engaged literature, that aids us in obtaining a better understanding of what this so-called literary turn entails.
The move away from postmodernism
According to many scholars, literature has moved away from postmodernism and has entered a new literary period which some call ‘late-postmodernism’ and others ‘post-postmodernism’ (see e.g. Gonzalez 2014; Green 2005; Marcus 2013; McLaughlin 2004; Vaessens and Van Dijk 2011; Wall 2008). Postmodernism knows many different manifestations both in literature and outside it, and to give an overall definition would not do justice to all that the different forms of postmodernism have tried to establish. However, as we want to understand what contemporary literature moved away from, it is productive to have at least a general understanding of what postmodernism stood for. Therefore, this thesis understands postmodernism as a critical reaction to the creative ideals that dominated modernism, such as the idea of universal knowledge and the author as genius, and is characterized by a highly critical and relativizing mode of writing, the aim of which was to challenge the values of modernism and find a new way of knowledge-making in the world.
As postmodernism distrusted the modernist claim of eternal, universal, and subjective qualities of literature, postmodern literature introduced new literary attributes such as irony, indifference/separation of society, academic jargon, and relativism as tools to challenge modernist values and experiment with new forms of literature. These new literary attributes most recognizably shaped postmodern literature, and many scholars believe that the introduction and use of these characteristics to literature were necessary for postmodernism to challenge the existing aspects of modernism. However, since the 1990s it appeared that these postmodern characteristics had become increasingly redundant, as the literary period they oppose – modernism – has disappeared from the literary arena (see e.g. Fleming 2000; Bertens and Fokkema 1997; McLaughlin 2004). This is also argued in the introduction to Reconsidering the Postmodern (2011), a collection of essays that attempt to understand the shift to late-postmodernism in contemporary literature.
According to the editors Yra van Dijk and Thomas Vaessens, the characteristics of postmodernism, which initially supported the highly critical attitude of postmodernism towards all knowledge, eventually evolved into means of their own, by which they lost
the critical function they primarily had to serve (14). However, there are different understandings of when this move away from postmodernism actually took place, of which two generally accepted approaches exist. Some argue that this change has been present since the 1990s (according to some scholars, the decade in which postmodernism began to shift into a new cultural dimension), as the attitude towards the main postmodern attributes such as heavy irony and relativism was changing (e.g. Foster Wallace 1993; Bertens and Fokkema 1997). Others believe that the move away from postmodernism is most definitively marked by the attacks on September 11, 2001, because postmodern characteristics were falling short in grasping what those attacks entailed (e.g. Baudrillard 2002, Zizek 2002, McEwan 2001).
This thesis does not aim to argue which of these approaches should be considered the right understanding of the move away from postmodernism. What both approaches show is that a change occurred, and that this change was possible because postmodernism fell short in grasping the realities of its time since the 1990s. In
International Postmodernism (1997) Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema already argued that
postmodernism had changed, but that did not automatically entail that postmodern literature was disappearing. According to Hans Bertens “the postmodern impulse is alive and well, although its current manifestations are admittedly not those of thirty, or even those of twenty or fifteen years ago” (3). Bertens continues by arguing that: “even if the postmodernism of the 1960s is no longer with us, the postmodernism of the 1990s surely is” (3). In other words, Bertens believed that postmodernism was simply maturing within its own framework.
His co-editor Douwe Fokkema supports Bertens’ claim by explaining that the context in which postmodernism was present in the 1990s had changed completely. Postmodernism’s main characteristics, such as irony and relativism, which served to critique the insufficiently critical minds of readers and the people at large, had turned into an ‘anything goes’ attitude. This ‘anything goes’ characteristic of postmodernism initially functioned as a method in order to shed the restrictions of writing that were present in modernist literature. But, as postmodernism achieved its goal of challenging and overturning the modernist restrictions of writing, the challenging aspect of the ‘anything goes’ attitude became superfluous (30). Whereas ‘anything goes’ first served as a rebellious and unrestricted stance in postmodern literature, it had already become mainstream at the beginning of the 1990s, and did therefore not serve its initial purpose of shocking and challenging anymore, as it lacked engagement with anything.
As a result, the accompanying characteristics of postmodernism, such as irony and relativism (which supported the ‘anything goes’ attitude), became purposeless. Particularly postmodern authors such as David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers noticed that the ‘anything goes’ attitude had become a burden, as it prevented them from actually engaging with pressing actualities. With “E Unibus Pluram” (1993), Foster Wallace reflects critically on the status of literary fiction in the United Stated in the 1990s. He argues that irony is not only critical, but also highly destructive. If irony is used in order to destruct rather than to critique, it becomes a tyrannical tool that detaches the literature, television program, or any type of cultural artifact it is being used in (Wallace 183). As a reaction to this development, Foster Wallace and Eggers attempted to avoid the numbing effects of irony and relativism in their literature, by critiquing this change by means of engagement with, and thus without completely breaking with, the postmodern legacy (see e.g. Infinite Jest 1996; The Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius 2000).
This critical attitude towards postmodern characteristics such as irony and relativism while not completely overthrowing them is an important aspect discussed by all the theories on later, late-, or post-postmodernism, as they all argue that postmodernism is not being overturned by these newly defined periods, but rather reconsidered. This reconsideration of postmodernism, however, became increasingly urgent due to pressing social and political events in the 1990s and the early 2000s. As Kathleen Wall argues, it appeared during these times that postmodernism was unable to react appropriately to horrific events that needed engagement by literature, such as the genocide in countries such as Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, let alone critically deal with the attacks on 9/11 (757). In other words, the move away from postmodernism should be understood first and foremost as a gradual shift that was forced to develop faster due to pressing issues in society, which literature needed to engage with.
This importance of literature turning from a detaching state to an engaging state is hinted at, but not overtly admitted to, in Reconsidering the Postmodern. With their collection of essays, Van Dijk and Vaessens offer a clear explanation of the growing redundancy of postmodern irony, indifference to/separation from society, academic jargon, and relativism. Although they do not directly claim so in their book, it could be argued, based on their findings that all these characteristics have one particular effect in common: the detachment of literature from the world and its readers. For example, as we have considered earlier, the use of irony, which initially offered a “liberating and highly critical” approach in literature, had increasingly become a permanent and all-penetrating
aspect in postmodern literature with detaching effects (15). As a result, irony rather disengaged the text from the reader and the world outside of literature. This also goes for the idea of an ‘anything goes’ culture, which is particularly unsatisfactory in a society where “the growing impact of mass-culture and the radicalization of society” are centralized, with the result that readers would rather find themselves detached from a literary text that would display such a discourse than be engaged with it (17-18).
This ties in with the effects of the second failed characteristic of postmodernism: indifference to/separation from society. As mentioned earlier, in order to be able to critically deconstruct the world both inside and outside of the text, the postmodernists took a detached stance with regard to society and their readers. However, this indifference to or separation from the world outside the text became “reduced to a minimalistic inwardness,” with no tangible engagement with society whatsoever (16). This detachment was also fueled by the excessive use of postmodern jargon, the third failed characteristic of postmodernism. Many academics “cultivated a hypercorrect discourse” with which they detached themselves from the world outside of academia, and thus those readers (17). Not the content of these works, but rather the display of the argument caused this detachment, a process also recognizable in postmodern literature itself.
According to Reconsidering the Postmodern, late- or post-postmodernism offers a reconsideration of, or turn away from, these unwelcome detaching aspects of postmodernism. The difference between late- and post-postmodernism lies in the different positions on whether this change or shift in contemporary literature signals either a continuation of postmodernism (late-postmodernism) or a break with postmodernism (post-postmodernism). To what particular category a certain literature belongs depends on a number of variables, according to Van Dijk and Vaessens, such as the nationality of the literature and the author under consideration. In literary studies in general, it depends highly on how the literary critic approaches literature and postmodernism. However, what all theories on late- and post-postmodernism do share, is that this turn in literature is characterized by a turn to the real in literature, often by means of social or political engagement, and autobiographical acts. In addition, both definitions are considered to be a reaction to certain aspects of postmodernism, such as the extreme use of irony and relativizing, that became superfluous for its time.
As argued earlier, the ‘failed’ characteristics of postmodernism all share a certain detachment of or disengagement with the world outside of literature: a detachment that
has proven unsustainable in contemporary literature. As early as the 1990s, postmodern authors (such as the earlier mentioned David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, and Michel Houellebecq) attempted to re-engage with the world outside of their literature. They considered extensive irony and high relativism to numb not only the text, but also the engagement of both the author and reader with the text and the world in which that text exists. In order to escape this detachment, many contemporary authors have turned to a more real or reality-based literature by means of tools such as sincerity, authenticity, and realism (see e.g. Fleming 2000; Gonzalez 2008; McLaughlin 2004; Van Dijk and Vaessens 2011; Van der Poel and Van Wesemael 2015).
These characteristics of late- or post-postmodernism hold a two-fold purpose: 1) to (re-)engage the reader with the text, in order to undo the detachment between text and reader postmodernism had created; 2) to (re-)engage literature with pressing social and political issues postmodern literature had distanced itself from. This thesis argues that the idea of engagement lies at the core of late- or post-postmodern literature. As Robert McLaughlin remarks in “Post-postmodern Discontent: Contemporary Fiction and the Social World” (2004), contemporary writers are increasingly attempting to intervene socially with their fiction (and, at times, their non-fiction). He too recognizes that postmodernism eventually had a detaching effect on literature, and that current authors are increasingly in search of a more sincere and authentic engagement with their readers and the world in their novels (59). McLaughlin is one of the few literary scholars that turns to the theory of engaged literature as proposed by Sartre. However, as discussed in the previous section, social and political engagement is often assessed by its appearance and not by its possible effect on the text, the reader, and, in some cases, the world.
Engaged literature
In literary criticism, the theory of engaged literature has been considered mostly as a genre, or trend, in late 19th and early 20th century French literature (Encyclopaedia
Britannica) or is not mentioned at all (Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism). This is also
exemplified by the omission of the notion by M.H. Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms (2005), while the descriptions of “realism” and the “social novel” do show some similarities to the term. In the case of the social novel, Abrams states that that genre “emphasize[s] the influence of the social and economic conditions of an era on shaping characters and determining events; often it also embodies an implicit or explicit thesis recommending political and social reform” (201). The last part of this description comes
closest to what is meant by littérature engagée, or engaged literature, as it suggests that a social novel could call for social or political action, which shows a resemblance with Sartre’s theory of what littérature engagée is: a piece of prose that shows a clear engagement with pressing social and/or political issues.
A description coming close to engaged literature is mentioned by J.A. Cuddon in the section “Committed Literature” in the Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (2012), in which he, in contrast to Abrams, does in fact mention both the notions engagement and commitment in connection to literature, and describes the committed writer as follows: “A committed or engagée writer (or artist) is one who, through his work, is dedicated to the advocacy of certain beliefs and programmes, especially those which are political and ideological and in aid of social reform” (139). In order to achieve this political or ideological action, the author needs to “detach himself from the work in order to calculate its effect” (Cuddon 139). This description of committed literature shows resemblances to Sartre’s theory of what engaged literature should be, but simultaneously, as we will see in a bit, goes against Sartre’s ideas completely.
As the examples above show, a simple understanding of engaged literature does not exist. It is for that reason that this thesis first explores the theory of engaged literature as proposed by Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1940s. This section examines what lies at the core of his monumental work What is Literature (1948), and analyses how the idea of engagement in literature takes a different path in postmodern literature by looking more closely at works that critiques Sartre’s approach. Additionally, it discusses how different interpretations of Sartre’s theory of engaged literature have enabled literary studies and literary theory to often disregard engaged literature by considering it to be merely a French phenomenon and not a form of literature applicable to other literatures worldwide. Finally, the link will be made between the rise of post-postmodernism and Sartre’s idea of engagement.
Littérature engagée: the origins
The notion littérature engagée was popularized at the end of the Second World War by philosopher, novelist, and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre. In What is Literature (original in French: Qu’est-ce que la littérature) Sartre argues for a literature that engages with pressing social and political issues particularly in prose. It is important to note that Sartre makes a clear distinction between poetry and prose and their roles in engagement. The poet, according to Sartre, does not engage with reality, but rather uses reality to their own benefit (namely the creation of poetry). The author of prose, on the other hand, engages
with reality in order for the reader to engage with it too (13). The greatest difference between prose and poetry, according to Sartre, is that the former is “utilitarian. […] The writer is a speaker; he designates, demonstrates, orders, refuses, interpolates, begs, insults, persuades, insinuates. If he does so without any effect, he does not therefore become a poet; he is a writer who is talking and saying nothing” (19-20).
Sartre continues his argument that the author of prose must have an aim in writing, and additionally needs to have something relevant to say about an object in order to reach that aim (21-22). Furthermore, he argues that “[t]o speak is to act; anything which one names is already no longer quite the same; it has lost its innocence” (22). In other words, whether we want it or not, prose writing is inherently engaged, as prose is always written with a certain purpose that is worth communicating to a reader. By means of this engagement with an object, Sartre argues, the author attempts to reveal the situation to both themself and the reader in order to change it. With that engagement, the author simultaneously is more involved and more immersed in that world/reality (22-23). To the engaged writer all words are action, as all utterances attempt to change something about the state of things (23).
Additionally, Sartre argues that the engaged writer has the responsibility to show the reader the realities of other people, as well as inform them about the true reality of the world the reader lives in (24). What prose offers the reader is to give them the knowledge to act in full consciousness of the world and the impact of the self. In other words, due to prose, no reader should be left “ignorant of the world and […] nobody may say that he is innocent of what it’s all about” (24). With both writing and reading thus comes a responsibility to the world. However, Sartre does not argue that engaged literature must convince the reader of the opinion or ideology of the author. He compares it to how it “is assumed that no one is ignorant of the law because there is a code and because the law is written down; thereafter, you are free to violate it, but you know the risks you run” (24); on the basis of this comparison it could be interpreted that engaged literature forms a certain ethical code.
Although the above suggests that engaged literature is primarily concerned with communicating relevant and real issues through prose, Sartre additionally urges that engaged literature should not lose all literary qualities (26). Here, he directly addresses the critics who have accused him of not valuing autonomous literature and thus aesthetics. On the contrary, Sartre argues, beauty or aesthetics is an essential feature of prose, as it adds charm to the engagement that is presented. This beauty should perform as “a gentle
and imperceptible force” which “does not coerce; it inclines a person without his suspecting it, and he thinks that he is yielding to arguments when he is really being solicited by a charm that he does not see” (26). Sartre states, again, that to think that engaged literature should not be concerned with beauty is a wrong conclusion to draw from his work (27). Rather, he argues, writing consists of both engagement and aesthetics, as an author first needs to know what to write about (engagement), and how to write about it (aesthetics) second (26).
As mentioned before, Sartre is well aware of the critics who oppose his thoughts on engaged literature, and it is important to note that, in the foreword, Sartre already addresses those contemporaries who critique his understanding of engaged literature while their critique shows that they have clearly misunderstood or misread him. In addition, What is Literature is filled with responses to those contemporaries who comment that his ideas on engagement are not concerned with literature and instead support the idea of autonomous art, or rather ‘art for art’s sake’ (27). Sartre argues that these supporters of autonomous art argue that art, and thus literature, should not be concerned with “temporal affairs”, as these hinder the timelessness of good literature (27). Furthermore, he states, these critics believe that because engaged literature finds its qualities in engaging with social or political issues bound to a certain time or age, it rejects this timeless quality of literature and art on the whole, which makes it more alike to journalism than any art form. In other words: engaged literature is no real literature. This point ties in with the engaged novel and its rather complex history, which is for the greatest part due to the division of authors and literary critics between engagement on the one hand and autonomy on the other. In this division, engagement is often understood as a literary engagement with social, political, and philosophical events and issues exemplary for the respective present a novel is written in. Autonomy, on the other hand, is believed not to engage with such actualities, and rather focuses on the literary text itself, in terms of universality and timelessness in the tradition of l’art pour l’art as proposed by Théophile Gautier in the early 19th century. Sartre, however, argues that literature can and should be engaged and autonomous simultaneously, in which the actuality of the prose does not restrict the autonomous position of its author.
The complexity of the opposition between engaged and autonomous literature commonly made by authors, critics, and scholars is discussed by Arnold Heumakers in “Aesthetic Autonomy and Literary Commitment: A Pattern in Nineteenth-century Literature” (2004). He argues that the notions of engagement and autonomy have been
considered opposites ever since the 16th century. According to him, authors, but also artists, philosophers, and critics have argued that literature, and art in the broadest sense, should be either engaged or autonomous, a logic in which a combination of the two was not considered to be ideal (24-25). However, Heumakers argues, the division between engagement and autonomy in 19th century literature was not as clear-cut as authors made it appear. By offering examples of Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, and Oscar Wilde, Heumakers discusses the ambiguity of these authors in their constantly changing stances, where one day they would celebrate autonomous literature and the next day engaged literature, but they would never argue for a letting the two exist together (21-24). In his study, Heumakers considers many different interpretations of autonomy and engagement, but does conclude that in the ideal of autonomy, “art does not coincide with the world, but forms a separate and absolute domain, an autonomous world with its own rules and laws” (29). What literary engagement does, on the other hand, is to relate to the world outside of the novel (and art on the whole). These opposing views of autonomy and engagement are continuously addressed and argued with by Sartre throughout What is Literature. He keeps emphasizing that literature should serve a social, political, and philosophical purpose, and should simultaneously maintain its literary qualities, which renders the objection of his critics, that his idea of social and political engagement in literature would inherently destroy its literary qualities,invalid.
Quite contrastingly, Sartre recognizes, these critics also argue that literature should not only seek beauty but should also “deliver a message to its readers” (28). He questions what kind of message that should be. The writer can only present the reader their own engagement, and thus the ideas, thoughts, and ideals present in a novel will belong to the author. However, the main reason for the author to present this information to a reader is to make them engage with that with which the author engages (42): “To write is thus both to disclose the world and to offer it as a task to the generosity of the reader” (60). And in order for the writer to reach the reader in the most effective way is by means of a prose that is both engaged with subjects worth communicating and beautifully written (58).
The creation of fiction that engages with reality and its aesthetics are of equal importance, according to Sartre. The author should present the object with which they engage in its totality, while the aesthetic presentation of that topic should invite the reader to interpret and assess the subject at hand (61). However, Sartre’s main rule of engagement is simultaneously broad and narrow, as he argues that engagement’s
objective is to attain ultimate freedom for every individual. By this freedom Sartre means consciousness of being – if an individual is conscious of their own being, they are free to make their own decisions and make up their own minds. Sartre argues that all good novels are engaged novels with this freedom as their main objective, which should be presented as universal, in which case the freedom of all people can be argued, while none should be rejected (62).
Freedom is an important part of Sartre’s theory on what literature is, as he concludes
What is Literature by stating that literature should not be misused by the author as a means
of (falsely) influencing their readers. According to him, the author “merely makes an appeal to [the reader’s] freedom, and in order for his works to have any effect, it is necessary for the public to adopt them on their own account by an unconditioned decision” (159). He continues by stating that although it should not be the objective of literature to directly influence its readers, literature could lead “in a collectivity which constantly corrects, judges, and metamorphoses itself” to action at “the moment of reflective consciousness” (159). In this way, engaged literature holds an ethical responsibility, as it ought to inform the reader about actualities in such a way that they are able to individually make up their mind about these issues (or relating ones).
In summary, Sartre argues that engaged literature should engage with pressing social and political issues in prose writing, in order to attain ultimate freedom for every individual. The presentation of this engagement should be aesthetic, open, and free, which, taken together, ought to enable the reader to form their own opinion about the topic. By means of combining engagement and autonomy, the engaged novel attempts to realize a level of freedom that is not (yet) attainable in reality. However, these characteristics of engaged literature as presented by Sartre are not often taken into account by literary theory and criticism, which will be discussed briefly in the next section.
Interpretations of engaged literature
As we have seen, littérature engagée, engaged literature, or, as some scholarly works refer to it, committed literature, is used in many different forms and by different definitions in literary studies. Anthologies and glossaries concerned with literary studies, literary theory, and literary criticism either omit the notion or offer an irregular or incomplete understanding of it. Besides these works, it is also important to note that scholars and critics have interpreted Sartre’s work quite diversely over the years. This difference in interpretation could explain why there is no single understanding of engaged literature in
literary studies. This section aims to understand the complexity of the different interpretations of engaged literature, which supports the claim of this thesis to define an understanding of engaged literature in order for the notion to be used in literary research today.
We already took note of how engagement and autonomy are often considered each other’s opposites; an approach that still has its effects on understandings of engaged literature today. Take for example the scholar Amanda Crawley Jackson, who, in the article “The Style of Engagement and the Engagement of Style”, explores the inconsistencies between Sartre’s literature and Sartre’s philosophy on what literature should be in What is Literature. Productive for our understanding of the different interpretations of engaged literature is Crawley Jackson’s understanding of the term: in her article she summarizes Sartre’s littérature engagée as a literature that should “be cleaned up, stripped down, and pared back to the bones of its most basic communicative function” (21). In other words, Crawley Jackson understands Sartre’s theory on the engaged novel to entail that such a novel should be primarily concerned with social and political engagement, and less with the literary characteristics of the novel.
This approach of Sartre’s engaged literature shows similarities with definitions of engaged literature we have considered earlier, such as the definition of “commitment” as presented by Cuddon and the thought that engagement in literature will strip the novel of its aesthetics and autonomy. What these works show, is that Sartre’s proposal for engaged literature to engage with pressing social and political issues while not losing its aesthetics is often disregarded. In Littérature et engagement: de Pascal à Sartre (2000), Benoît Denis offers an overview of the different interpretations and uses of engaged literature throughout literature and history. In doing so, he assesses engaged literature from a mainly historical perspective, while presenting the many different forms in which engaged literature takes shape. According to Denis, we first have to conclude that “toute œuvre littéraire est à quelque degré engagée, au sens où elle propose une certaine vision du monde et qu'elle donne forme et sens au réel”1 (10).
Even though he believes that all literature is engaged to at least some extent, Denis argues that, at the same time, many different forms and interpretations of engaged literature exist. He distils these down to two main groups: either engaged literature is
1 Translation: any literary work is engaged to some degree, as it provides a certain vision of the
understood as “une ‘moment’ de l'histoire de la littérature française”2 or as a trans-historical manifestation in literature (17-18). With this distinction Denis offers an explanation for the omission of engaged literature in literary studies: either it is only a phenomenon present in a certain literary age in French literature, or it is something inherent to literature as “all literary work is engaged to some degree”. Additionally, he draws a distinction between “littérature engagée” and “littérature d’engagement,” in which the former concerns all literature that strongly address political and social issues from the late 19th century to now, and the latter is best understood as ‘literature of engagement’ that includes all literature until now that connects to contemporary political or social events in some way or another (11-12).
Denis’ approach of engaged literature shows that, due to the many different interpretations, engaged literature is a difficult notion to apply in literary studies not concerned with French literature. However, Denis does offer a further understanding of how the notion of engaged literature has developed since Sartre in not only French, but also other literatures. Whereas other studies describe engaged literature as mainly propaganda literature, Denis closely follows Sartre’s understanding of it – engaged literature addresses pressing social and political issues and simultaneously maintains its autonomy in order to encourage the reader to individually form an opinion on these matters, that could (rather than should) lead to action. For the analyses that will follow in the next section, it is the following interpretation of Sartre’s littérature engagée that we will use: a literature that is concerned with social and political issues with the aim to attain ultimate freedom for every individual.
Thus this engagement is an ethical one, and must be understood as the “littérature engagée” as suggested by Denis: an engaged literature that overtly addresses political and social issues in order to urge readers to Sartrean action (being, to make up the own mind about the matters at hand). This engaged literature exists of certain elements. First of all, the author of engaged literature writes with a purpose, in order for their writings to have a certain effect on people. This is carried out by revealing the subject the author wants to address, while refraining from directly influencing the reader – engagement is about informing, not indoctrinating. Therefore, the engaged author reveals the reality of the subject so it remains relatable to the reader. To achieve all this, it is of importance that the engaged text is also written with an aesthetical purpose, and not, as Crawley Jackson proposed, “cleaned up, stripped down, and pared back to the bones of its most basic
communicative function”, because it is through aesthetics the reader will be able to absorb the text in the best way.
Furthermore, in this whole process the author must remain autonomous; the engaged novel remains literature and should not be mistaken for a propaganda piece. If it does read like one, it should not be considered literature. The eventual purpose of engaged literature is that the reader attains freedom, which translates as consciousness of being that results in the reader being able to make their own mind up about the issues presented by the novel. It is not the goal to agree with the opinion of the author in that matter, but for the reader to consciously make up their own mind about the matter that might even result into action. By means of these characteristics of engaged literature we will analyze three contemporary novels that clearly belong to late- or post-postmodern literature.
The Contemporary Novel and Engaged Literature
The selected novels are Saturday (2005) by Ian McEwan, On Beauty (2005) by Zadie Smith, and The Illusion of Return by Samir El-Youssef. These novels have in common that they are written in English by British authors and that they are published after September 11, 2001. In addition, the novels either address 9/11 directly, or refer to a certain topic related to 9/11, such as anxiety, terror, alterity and othering related to Islam or refugees. Furthermore, each of these novels show their engagement with pressing social and political issues.
This does not entail, however, that in this thesis these novels should be understood as simply post-9/11 novels. Just as much as this thesis does not draw conclusions on whether the move away from postmodernism should be understood as a continuation or a break, it does not offer conclusions on generic terms such as the post-9/11 novel either. It does acknowledge that, especially in literary criticism to American literature, the post-9/11 novel has received quite some attention in research into responses to the first ever international attack that happened in the United States. What this criticism aims for is an understanding of the social and political effects of 9/11. The novels considered in this thesis are not selected on the basis of linking to that aim directly, but rather on the basis of the timeframe in which they are written. As mentioned previously, different opinions exist on when the move away from postmodernism occurred: during the 1990s or after September 11, 2001. In order to make sure that the novels belong to the same
period as much as possible, the latter date has been chosen as the point in time when contemporary literature, as presented in this thesis, begins.
What this thesis aims to do is to examine how the selected texts help us to recover a Sartrean understanding of engagement. Additionally, it is not without reason that engagement is increasingly present in contemporary literature, and it is literary studies’ duty to understand such trends. By merely stating that this engagement in late- or post-postmodern literature is different from the detachment present in post-postmodern literature is not enough. How do late- or post-postmodern engagement and postmodern detachment relate to each other? To what extent does contemporary social and political engagement relate to engaged literature present in Sartre’s day? What different forms and types of engagement have we seen over the years? As mentioned by Denis, “any literary work is engaged to some degree, as it provides a certain vision of the world and gives shape and meaning to reality.” However, the level and way in which the (contemporary) novel shows its engagement can differ greatly. It is time for literary studies to shed the restrictions advocates of autonomous art and literature have put around the theory of engaged literature, and to explore the presence and implications of social and political engagement that defines many literary works today.
Saturday
Set in one day, Saturday captures what was supposed to be just another Saturday in the life of neurosurgeon Henry Perowne. Perowne, the protagonist, wakes in the middle of the night feeling “alert and empty-headed and inexplicably elated” (3). While he ponders over the euphoria he is experiencing, he suddenly becomes a witness in what appears to be a plane crashing in the horizon (5; 13-14). He is immediately reminded of the horrors of 9/11, and philosophizes how flying has lost its innocence and airplanes themselves “look different these day, predatory or doomed” (15; 16). Even though Perowne realizes that the plane could be burning due to mechanical failure, he does fear a terrorist attack, a fear that is constantly present in the novel. As Perowne continues his day of running errands and preparing for the family dinner at night, he is faced with another unexpected and unforeseen threat as the result of a minor car accident. In the aftermath of the accident, Perowne has agitated his victim, who appears to be a criminal and is determined to ruin Perowne’s life. He surprise attacks Perowne, and his family, at his house later, which unfolds in uncertainty, fear, and, eventually, an ethical solution to the problems they are faced with.
As this short summary of the novel shows, the narrative engages with quite a number of pressing social and political issues. There is no question about when in history the novel is situated as the story is set on a particular day: Saturday February 15, 2003. It is on this day that the worldwide protests against the Iraq war were held that argued against the ‘war on terror’ result of another middle-eastern war. With that choice, McEwan overtly engages his novel with an actual event and thus to its time, and as a result it cannot be interpreted without acknowledgment of the world it is set in: a post-9/11 world that’s being haunted by fear of terrorism and that simultaneously has an ethical responsibility to minimize the spread of more terror in the world. Through engagement with these pressing topics and without losing sight of the importance of aesthetics, McEwan’s novel fits the model of engaged literature as proposed by Sartre perfectly. suggests that the lives of the Londoners are all dominated by terrorism on this particular day.
One of the most prominent things Saturday aims to do, is to offer critical notes regarding the binaries that characterize the post-9/11 society, such as good vs. evil; victim vs. terrorist; us vs. them; self vs. other; west vs. east; Christian vs. Muslim. Immediately after the attacks on 9/11, politicians throughout the west introduced this discourse of binaries. It is argued that this discourse is the result of how then U.S. President George W. Bush reacted to the attacks in New York and Virginia (the Pentagon) in his first address to the nation. In his opening lines he already speaks of the victims of the attacks, who belonged to a society of freedom. These people were victims of “evil, despicable acts of terror” and the perpetrators did not only attack the victims who were “fellow citizens”, but also the American way of life and the American freedom (“To the Nation”). Throughout the speech, Bush presents the U.S. positively and innocent by using characteristics such as “victimized”, strength, “great people”, “great country”, freedom. ‘Them’, the ones who caused the attacks, are characterized as perpetrators, terrorists, attempting to destroy the U.S.
This rhetoric of us vs. them has become an inherent part of the ‘war on terror’ discourse. The declaration of the ‘war on terror’, first by U.S. president George W. Bush, but followed quickly by the likes of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the French president Jacques Chirac, played into the emotions of disorientation and fear caused by the traumatic effects of what had happened. In order to overcome their trauma caused by 9/11, people needed to understand what had happened and why. The discourse of fear that had been fueled by Western politics gave the explanation that the victims of the
attacks could as well have been other Americans, or even targeted Western countries on the whole, as it was an attack on the U.S. because they are “the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world” (“To the Nation”) – a characteristic European countries such as the U.K., France, The Netherlands, and Germany identify themselves with. This binary thought that Western ‘freedom and democracy’ are under attack still lives today, as political responses to terrorist attacks immediately seek to distance their countries and politics from ‘barbaric’ terrorist attacks.
With Saturday McEwan engages with this politically created binary of us vs. them and the fear of terror by the other. As mentioned previously, the protagonist Perowne wakes in the middle of the night and sees a burning plane on the horizon when looking out his bedroom window (14). After observing the plane for a while, Perowne lost sight of it in its descent, leaving the destiny of the plane up to two options: it already has crashed or will crash, reminding him of the Schrödinger’s Cat experiment (18). However, Perowne cannot let whatever happened to the plane go, and goes down to the kitchen to turn on the news (27; 29). It is suggested by the narrator that this fear of an attack has resulted in Perowne’s obsession-like consumption of news broadcasting – it seems he wants to know everything that is happening in the world, especially when it comes down to terrorist threats (32). He fears an attack on London or England, similar to 9/11, but the crashing plane turned out to be a cargo plane that had to make an emergency landing at Heathrow due to a burning engine (35).
Perowne seems to be obsessed with the news, which is illustrated by him experiencing “the pull, like gravity, of the approaching TV news. It’s a condition of the times, this compulsion to hear how it stands with the world, and be joined to the generality, to a community of anxiety” (176). The fear for another attack in Europe or America is constantly present, and “the television networks stand ready to deliver, and their audiences wait. Bigger, grosser next time. Please don’t let it happen. But let me see it all the same, as it’s happening and from every angle, and let me be among the first to know” (176). This perverted longing for more shocking events to unfold and be shown in broadcastings is exemplary for its time, according to Anneke Smelik, who recognizes a particular change in the spectatorship after 9/11. She argues that “many commentators have mentioned the difficulty spectators have in seeing the viewing experience as “real” rather than a Hollywood fantasy, because […] their horizon of expectations had been cruelly shifted” (Smelik 2).
This difficulty of perceiving the ‘real’ for reality is thoroughly acknowledged and analyzed by philosophers and cultural theorists Slavoj Žižek and Jean Baudrillard. Both argue that the events of 9/11 pushed for a reconsideration of how the real was being perceived. When the two planes hit the Twin Towers on that September morning, responses were filled with unbelief and trying to get to terms with the reality of those attacks, a reaction that was shared by Ian McEwan’s essay “Beyond Belief” (September 12, 2001). In
Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Žižek stresses what McEwan describes: that the majority
of the public worldwide experienced the attack and the collapsing Twin Towers through visual footage on TV. The way in which the footage of the burning tower, the second plane flying into the other tower, the panic in the streets, the accounts from people, the final collapse, etc. was framed and edited, was “reminiscent of spectacular shots in catastrophic movies” with which the real became experienced as fiction (11).
Furthermore, Žižek argues, before 9/11, the realistic-looking content of Hollywood disaster movies used to belong to fantasy that made up the fiction. After 9/11 this had shifted and “America got what it fantasized about, and that was the biggest surprise” (15-16). In a similar fashion, Baudrillard, in The Spirit of Terrorism, states that “we have dreamt of this event”, suggesting that the attack was indeed something not only the American population, but also the rest of the world had fantasized about (5). In both Žižek’s and Baudrillard’s responses, the events on 9/11 have restored the distorted view of reality that predominated pre-9/11 society, as Žižek refers to it as the cherry on the cake of “twentieth-century art’s ‘passion of the Real’” and Baudrillard views it as the inevitable “destruction of any power that has become hegemonic to this degree” as America was (Desert of the Real 11-12, Spirit of Terrorism 5).
Žižek’s and Baudrillard’s responses suggest that 9/11 marks a change, a shift in cultural and political society. The untouchable hegemony had been attacked on its own turf, fiction had become reality, and the world was left with questions previous knowledge could not answer anymore. This difficulty of coping with the shock of the events is also present in other reflections on the 9/11 attacks. Whether news coverage, critical approaches or considerations from popular culture, an often-made remark is that the attacks, though real, seemed fictional, as if they were not real. Similarly, critics have commented that news coverage of the attacks immediately subjectively narrated what exactly was happening in New York and at the Pentagon instead of objectively covering the incidents (see e.g. Amis; McEwan; Rothberg).
If we follow these interpretations of Žižek and Baudrillard, we understand the subjective narration of 9/11 by news broadcasters, newspapers and so on, to be the result of how much impact fiction and the hunger for the real have had on our lives and our perception of reality. As Žižek clearly states postmodernism was more concerned with not mistaking fiction for reality, which he understands to have been subverted by 9/11: “we should not mistake reality for fiction – we should be able to discern, in what we experience as fiction, the hard kernel of the Real which we are able to sustain only if we fictionalize it” (19, emphasis original). In other words, Žižek saw a responsibility for those fictional products, such as film and literature, to present the difference between reality and fiction.
This new responsibility for fiction, reminding us that reality must not be confused with fiction, bears many resemblances with the move away from postmodernism discussed before. Postmodernism was characterized by irony and relativism that led to an ‘anything goes’ attitude resulting in a detachment from pressing social and political issues. Although throughout the 1990s voices were raised for less detachment, it was the ungraspable attacks on 9/11 that made this move away from the values of postmodernism more urgent and tangible. Baudrillard argues that because the reality of 9/11 clashed with the reality known before 9/11, “nostalgia assume[d] its full meaning” (12). This longing for nostalgia is accompanied by modes of authenticity and sincerity – characteristics of post-postmodernism. What all of these aspects share is that they aim to grasp the reality by means of engaging with it. Therefore, it could be argued that Henry Perowne’s obsession with news broadcasting is his attempt of engaging with the world. In that view, we can also understand Sebastian Groes’ interpretation of Perowne’s spectatorship as an example of engagement. Groes argues that Saturday shows a divorce between the public and private that happened post-WWII, which, he believes, “can be traced historically in the personal growth of Perowne” (108). He understands “Perowne’s obsession with round-the-clock news broadcasting [as] an indication of his thwarted desire to connect with the general public in a wider narrative” (Groes 112). However, at the same time Perowne is skeptical towards any effort to engage with the world. For example, when it comes to taking action on current social or political issues, like participation in the anti-war protest, he shows his rational self by presenting understanding of both sides of the discussion while refraining from taking a side within the matter (73). Perowne rather detaches himself completely from pressing social or
political issues due to his pessimistic view that he won’t be able to make a change happen, than to engage actively with them in the hope of making a difference.
In this matter, the character Perowne shows similar characteristics to the state of postmodernism during the (late) 1990s – by being skeptical of the world around him, he relativizes everything with the attempt of approaching matters as rationally and realistically as possible. However, this technique has resulted in Perowne not being actively engaged with the world at all anymore, which could explain that the narrator calls him an “uncultured and tedious medic” while his daughter Daisy has “been addressing what she believes is his astounding ignorance, guiding his literary education, scolding him for poor taste and insensitivity” (195; 6). Furthermore, she “thinks he's a coarse, irredeemable materialist. She thinks he lacks an imagination” (134). In order to ‘fix’ her dad, Daisy gives him many books to read, amongst which are Charles Darwin and Joseph Conrad, in the hope one day he would understand the value of literature (134).
Perowne agrees partly with his daughter, as his education and later work and fatherhood have prevented him from reading literature. On the other hand he also believes that his life has shown him “enough death, fear, courage and suffering to supply half a dozen literatures” (6). It is important to note that although Daisy gives Perowne reading lists with the aim to make him more engaged with the world and culture, Perowne “submits to her reading lists – they’re his means of remaining in touch as she grows away from her family into unknowable womanhood in a suburb of Paris” (6). Again, the character of Perowne shows similarities to what postmodernism stands for, as he wants to engage with his daughter (through literature) and the world (through news broadcasts), but at the same time he seems skeptical of how he is supposed to attain that engagement. When he is confronted with the march against the war in Iraq, for example, he philosophizes that “the state of the world [is what] troubles him most, and the marchers are there to remind him of it,” but he does not take any control in attempting to take action by joining the marchers (80).
This pessimism is what fuels his fear or anxiety concerning a terrorist attack from an unknown, international source, as he muses that “[t]here are people around the planet, well-connected and organised, who would like to kill him and his family and friends to make a point. Scale of death contemplated is no longer at issue; there’ll be more deaths on a similar scale [to 9/11], probably in this city” (81). We could argue from Perowne’s pessimism that to him it seems pointless to engage with the world around him, both publicly and privately, while he simultaneously desires to find that connection. However,
throughout Saturday he remains rationally in control of his surroundings and what happens to him, even when he gets into a car accident with the criminal Baxter. In the aftermath of the accident, it threatens to become a violent scene, but through a calm and rational approach to the matter, Perowne, “the professional reductionist” that he is, is able to literally diagnose his way out of the physical threat Baxter is posing to him (272; 91-99).
It is not until Baxter and his fellow-criminal Nigel become a private threat by invading his home that Perowne’s rational, analytical, and distanced approach of his surroundings appears insufficient. Baxter is determined to “rescue his reputation in front of a witness,” and attacks the Perowne family on a personal level in such a way that it forces Perowne to truly and fully engage with him (206; 210). Perowne almost immediately turns to the same strategy as in the counter with Baxter in University Street: he tries to rationally talk Baxter out of his act by addressing his neurological illness and offering him treatment (215). However, Baxter does not let Perowne fool him again, and makes him stop talking (216). During the ordeal, Perowne feels the urge to act, something he has never physically done ever before (213). Then Baxter and his companion make Perowne’s daughter Daisy to strip naked in front of everybody, with the threat to rape her afterwards, but her naked body reveals her secret pregnancy and turns both men reluctant to carry out their plan (218-219).
Instead, Baxter makes her recite from her collection of poems, and on covered encouragement from her maternal grandfather, the poet John Grammaticus, recites Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” (220). In the narrator’s description of what Perowne was thinking, the poem appears to appeal to his imagination and senses: “The lines surprise him […] They are unusually meditative, mellifluous and wilfully (sic.) archaic” (220). Perowne is swept away by the words that conjure up an image of Daisy and her lover (the father of her child) on a beach, who kiss and who must “love each other and be faithful” (220-221). When the poem has come to an end and the mirage of it has lifted, it seems that it had an even greater effect on Baxter, who seems to have lost his highly aggressive attitude and wants to hear it again (221).
The narrator, in the meantime, asks whether it is possible “within the bounds of the real, that a mere poem […] could precipitate a mood swing” (22). After the second recital, Baxter becomes elated and struck by its beauty. In the realm of Saturday it appears that it is indeed within the bounds of the real that a poem can have such an effect. Baxter, of whom is suggested that he has received very little education and is not
presented as a very intelligent character, reacts to this unexpected effect with astonishment: “You wrote that. […] It’s beautiful. You know that, don’t you. It’s beautiful. And you wrote it” (222). With both Perowne’s train of thought and Baxter’s reaction and his sudden change of heart – he implores Daisy to get dressed as if nothing happened – as reactions to a poem, it is suggested that poetry, literature, or at least aesthetics in general can have a moralizing or ethical effect. An effect that is also recognized by John Grammaticus who “after Daisy recited Arnold for the second time […] began to feel sorry for that fellow” (229).
In addition, it is after the recitals of “Dover Beach” that both Perowne and Baxter ethically act on their thoughts, which ties in with Kristiaan Versluys’ approach that “poetry has an ethical appeal: […] it prepares the ground for the denucleation of the self and the priority of the Other” (193). It could be argued that the poem has caused Perowne and Baxter to understand their surroundings better, namely the Others, and forces them to act ethically to the situation at hand. For Perowne that is still overthrowing the threat in his house but for Baxter this has changed. For Baxter the goal with which he came to the Perowne house to avenge his lost pride of earlier that day, but after hearing the poem this cause seemed unimportant: Baxter now wants to receive help for his illness, which will soon cause him excruciating pain and discomfort. In a way, the beauty of the poem has caused him to engage with his surroundings in a more positive manner and has led to ethical action: not hurting this family anymore and seeking help for his condition.
The ethical action in Perowne’s case is somewhat delayed, in comparison to that of Baxter, but the poem does make him more conscious of his surroundings and of his own being. Whereas at first he contemplated action, but chose reasoning with Baxter, he now decides that, in reaction to Baxter’s esthetical behavior, “[i]t’s time to act” (224). Perowne and his son Theo exchange glances and inaudibly agree to attack Baxter and Nigel in that moment, but their action is interrupted by Baxter saying to Perowne that he wants the treatment he offered to him earlier. Again Perowne’s action failed, and he takes Baxter to the study upstairs where eventually Theo makes Baxter fall down the stairs and hit his head, upon which Baxter is taken away by an ambulance for surgery (227). Still, Perowne has not really acted in the situation. Instead, he has rationally calculated the chances of several scenarios of interfering, and it was Theo who found the opening to defeat Baxter’s threat.
Perowne’s ethical action occurs later, when the authorities have left their house and he is having dinner with his family, trying to come to terms with what happened. In this moment he receives a call from the hospital asking him whether he is able to come in and operate on, what Perowne knows to be by the description, Baxter (233). Here it is neurosurgeon Perowne, who ironically spends his days working on regaining or repairing the consciousness of others, actually acts in the Sartrean understanding of it. By deciding to operate on Baxter with the intention to help him and not, as his wife Rosalind fears, out of revenge, Perowne choses to ethically act on his newly attained consciousness. The reason behind this action is that Perowne feels he is responsible, that he poorly handled the situation at University Street and now wants to redeem the situation and Baxter’s invasion by helping Baxter and forgiving him (239; 278).
Even though Perowne eventually did become conscious and acted ethically in the situation with Baxter, the question remains whether this action will be repeated in the future. In his assessment of whether he wants to pursue charges against Baxter, Perowne decides that he wants to drop them, as Baxter’s illness has probably caused most of the unfortunate events in his life. In addition, his health prospects are so bad that he will not be able to live long before the “nightmare hallucination begins” (278). Perowne explains this attitude not as forgiveness, although he holds himself responsible for the cause of the events, but rather as “realism: they’ll all be diminished by whipping a man on his way to hell” (278). In other words, it is due to ethical reasons that Perowne decides to let Baxter go, but will he also apply that action to, for example, his engagement with politics?
Central to the plot of Saturday are the different forms and modes of threat and anxiety. By engaging with the post-9/11 imagined threat of terrorism, the Islam, and effects of the war in Iraq on the one hand, and on the other with the actual domestic and personal threat of a small-scale criminal like Baxter, the narrative offers a broader perspective to both issues. Whereas Perowne engages obsessively with news coverage on the social and political events in Britain and the rest of the world, he has difficulty with engaging on a personal level with his family and his surroundings. Throughout Saturday he fears a terrorist attack and is predominantly preoccupied with the war in Iraq, but he is reluctant to take action through, for example, participation in the march against that war (186). However, when he receives a direct threat from Baxter at his family home, he cannot fight the urge to act, and eventually, with the help of poetic aesthetics, he is able to act ethically in the situation that is presented to him.
Saturday is clearly a post-9/11 novel as the social and political issues and fears related
to that date are abundantly present. As will appear in the consideration of On Beauty, the post-9/11 novel comes in different shapes and forms, and addresses many different social and political issues that are exemplary of the post-9/11 period.
On Beauty
Set in Wellington, Massachusetts, a fictional college town in New England, just a bridge apart from Boston, On Beauty unfolds the story of a trans-Atlantic family during a turning point in all their lives. The Belsey family consists of Kiki, an African-American woman from Florida and a hospital administrator, Howard, a white English academic from East End London who teaches at Wellington college, and their three children: Jerome, the eldest, who was born in England and has become a devout Christian during his studies at Brown University; Zora, the middle child, who was also born in England and who, during her studies at Wellington College, has taken an interest in ‘highbrow’ socio-political activism; and Levi, the youngest of the family, who is born in the U.S. and is still in high school. He shows great interest in Black culture, and Haitian culture in particular, which have turned him in a ‘lowbrow’ activist.
On Beauty shows many different forms of engagement with its time, but to approach
On Beauty as a post-9/11 novel in the same way as Saturday would be a mistake, as the
former is not as overtly concerned with 9/11 and uses it more as a marker in time than as a topic. For Saturday, the post-9/11 world seems to function more as a genre, as it is overtly influenced and shaped in content by events that have sprang out of the events on that September 11. With On Beauty, however, the instances in which 9/11 is mentioned function in order to address the importance of other issues that not have to do with the spread of threats and anxieties that followed the attacks. For example, at the wedding anniversary party of Kiki and Howard, attended by predominantly white people, the most popular conversation was the date on which it was celebrated, 9/11: “‘Strange date for it, though,’ […]. And then the usual response: ‘Oh, I think it's a wonderful date for a party. You know it's their actual anniversary, so … And if we don't reclaim the day, you know … then it's like they've won. It's a reclaiming, absolutely.’”(107).
But is it really a reclaiming? It seems that On Beauty exactly challenges that point of view. Throughout the novel, the people who talk about 9/11 are white people such as Howard and Claire; Claire and Jack; Howard via e-mail to his predominantly white faculty members (120; 151; 394). Furthermore, all these conversations emphasize how nothing is being done about the current political situation, namely the Iraq war. Upon
mentioning her concerns to Jack he responds with: ‘These are dark times,’ said Jack solemnly, threading his fingers through each other like a parson. ‘And yet what can the university do, Claire, but continue its work? Doesn’t one have to believe that at times like these the university joins arms with the fourth estate, exercising our capacity for advocacy … helping frame political issues … that we too sit in that “reporters’ gallery yonder” …’” (151).
Jacks response suggests a detached stance, and not a stance that shows engagement and urges action. This is also recognized by Claire, whose concern grows, and she reminds Jack of the anti-war rally they had at the university a Tuesday back, which only attracted a hundred students: “the Wellington anti-Vietnam rally in ’67 brought three
thousand people to the yard, and Allen Ginsberg. I’m kind of in despair at the moment.
People round me act more like the first estate than the fourth if you ask me” (151). However, as we will see later, only few of the characters in the novel really act and the cry for something to change remains mostly just that.
Comparable to Saturday is On Beauty’s use of modernist texts. As many studies show, McEwan has drawn the form and style of Saturday from the works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf (e.g. Groes; Wallace). The intertextuality in On Beauty is predominantly built on Elain Scarry’s essay On Beauty and Being Just (1998) and E.M. Forster’s novel
Howards End (1910). Besides that the title On Beauty hints to Scarry’s essay by use of the
first two words and its mentioning in the acknowledgments, the title also suggests that the novel performs as a theoretical or philosophical reflection on what beauty is, on its possibilities and perhaps about the different understandings and manifestations of beauty. And so the novel does, or at least to a certain extent. However, On Beauty’s use of
Howards End goes a bit further, as the complete storyline is molded in both form and
content after Forster’s novel. How this plays out is closely analyzed by Catherine Lanone in “Mediating Multi-cultural Muddle” (2007) in which she draws parallels between the two novels both in content and in form.
Interestingly, Forster’s influence on the style of On Beauty is that it is also muddled, something admitted by Smith herself in the essay “Love, Actually” (2003), which offers a celebration of Forster’s use of inconsistent characters and narrative structures. She argues that Forster’s creation of muddled characters “was a study of the emotional, erratic and unreasonable in human life” and that his narrative structures were “impulsive, meandering, irrational, which seeming faults lead him on to two further problematics: mawkishness and melodrama”. Smith goes on to say that Forster’s style was consciously
