Psalm 44

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Let me start with a complaint: What is absent from much of contemporary fiction, which in the USA is conceived of as middle-to-highbrow entertainment, is the ethical import of literature. As it is, the word fiction largely stands for (deliberately) made-up narratives aiming to entertain the culturally enlightened reader. Literature, on the other hand, is nothing if not continuous ethical and aesthetical engagement with human experience and history; one reads/writes literature in order to confront the hard questions of human existence; entertainment might not be applicable. While the word fiction equally applies to The DaVinci Code and Remembrance of Things Past, only one of those is literature; the other one is trash. (“Do not argue that all values are relative: there is a hierarchy of values,” Kiš wrote in his “Advice to a Young Writer.”) American populism of the knee-jerk variety requires cringing at the thought of literature (and, for that matter, at any thought that is not confirming what is already agreed to be true), because it is — what is the word flung about by the humble sons of the one percent? — elitist. (Kiš’s advice: “Do not write for an elite that does not exist: you are the elite.”) But literature is inherently democratic, as it is the way for everyone and anyone who can read to enter the difficult and vast field of everything that comes under humanity. “Do not write for ‘the average reader,’” Kiš wrote to the Young Writer, “all readers are average.”

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