Jonathan Lethem Says We Are all Sub-Cultures Now ( And I Agree)

November 1, 2011

I really, really like this interview with Jonathan Lethem over at Fiction Writers Review. There are lots of great parts, so you should read the whole thing, like his take on the supposed death of the novel or publishing industry or whatever. But I really particularly liked this:

And I think a lot of American life resolves into certain versions of subculture. The people I know in rural Maine will say to me, “Not only have I never been to New York but I would never wish to go.” It’s just an inconceivable world. Well, Mainers don’t go to conventions where they wear nametags that say “I’m from Maine and my name is such-and-such.” But they are also participants in a sub-cultural identity as Mainer—specifically, this flinty, caustic, sea-salty, coastal Maine identity is a subculture. It may not have as many love beads as being a hippie, and it wouldn’t be very willing to see itself in the framework I’m proposing as analogous to MFA programs. But it’s another kind of sub-cultural choice that’s been made.

There are only subcultures, in a way, is what I’m saying, and then an idea of a whole or outside. Even “mainstream” literary authority—let’s just say, to be able to isolate more or less what we mean—the people who are routinely asked to write reviews for the New York Times Book Review and therefore, and let’s please understand that it is therefore, guaranteed that their own books will be reviewed by the New York Times Book Review, among whom I will now number myself. As hegemonic and oppressive as the assumptions that go with that, the degree to which that subculture has the privilege and utilizes the privilege of pretending there are no other literary cultures besides itself, it’s also still a subculture, where social reinforcements and tribal ritual prevail. And where a limited number of people are executing maneuvers amongst one another as though it is a whole world, but it’s not.

YES. THIS.