Since Litbreak Magazine “celebrates diversity” of the literary kind, I’ve been thinking more about it. I recently had a contributor who questioned our “diversity initiative” as if we were trying to be diverse because we weren’t. That infuriated me because I’m, like, 90% outlier. My love of elite culture is an inexplicable fluke.
Notice I called that guy a “contributor”, so we settled our differences, although we had quite a verbal slugfest going. A friend was pissed off that I ended up accepting his work but adjudicating difference can be worth it. I’ll sacrifice my ego if it means Litbreak gets a good post out of it.
Upcoming, we are publishing a story that includes a vulgar word right in its title. The reason that word is staying there is that it violates middle class mores, as does most of the story. If you are saying we are “aiming” for diversity but of course we mean middle class diversity, then I’m calling you a liar. You’re asking for incense to be thrown on the altar of middleness before you will accept the work.
After years reading different kinds of literature, I’ve come to esteem realism the most, like the “dated” realism I’ve found in the works of Zola and Chekhov. One reason I’ve come to love realism so much is that it’s impossible to achieve, so it’s a challenge. Realism is as elusive as the unicorn which that medieval tapestry so charmingly has claimed to capture. The moment you seem to fence literary realism in, it slips away from you.
Pure realism would mean capturing the world without prejudice and you can’t do that. Every breath you take is time-stamped and therefore part of the historical record, subject to interpretation. Take a film from the 1950’s and a current film meant to depict the 1950’s and it’s like comparing an organic to an artificial rose. Both can be artistically valid but they’re not the same thing.
There are at least two great films about Marie Antoinette. One is a 1938 MGM studio system classic and the other is the 2006 movie by director Sofia Coppola. You are likely to learn more about filmmaking in 1938 and 2006 from these movies than you will learn about Marie Antoinette. If they are both realistic portraits of their subject in the 18th century, then why does one movie look so 1930’s and the other so early 21st century? If you supplement those films with some serious scholarly reading about the subject, you will still only come up with an approximation of “Marie Antoinette” that its subject might not recognize. The effort to achieve realism is a struggle of approximations.
If diversity is a species of realism then all social classes and geographic sectors and types of people have to be considered of equal interest. Content that is historical, legendary or religious is likely to be unrealistic since it is subject to excessive interpretation or unexamined formula. Such content is also likely to be reactionary. There is no one more reactionary than a superhero.
If we assume diversity can’t just be realistic to be diversity, does that mean that we have to honor all sorts of nonsense? I’m willing to honor the nonsense of Lewis Carroll’s Alice but not willing to honor the nonsense that Trump was cheated out of his election. It’s a problem if you claim unicorns are real and we can capture them. What nonsense you honor is part of the culture wars, but I hope you’ll want to experience diversity, in Litbreak and elsewhere.
