Page 11 - Lamplight Magazine (1)

‘I just think it w ould be indec en t these day s for wr it er s t o talk of
any thing else but violenc e.’ Unsurp risingly, Louis is the cliché
lit er ary p artisan. T here is a long hist ory of re ali sts de fending the
sanc tity of realism, roman ticists de fending roman ticism, e t c . e t c. It is
a young writ er’s f aith tha t his o wn lit er ary ideas hap p en t o be the
c orrec t ones. B ut clearly lit er a ture w ould be a miser able, boring
business if everyone follo w ed Louis ’s advic e. W ha t is perhap s most
surp rising is tha t a man so f resh t o the c os y lit er ary elit e he sc orns
should have adop t ed their ideas. W ha t he calls for is merely ano ther
sp ecies of elitism and lit er ary e xc lusivity. Ho w in t eresting tha t the
maxim of a ‘lit er ary revolution’ (a t erm which str ictly means no thing)
should be just as or more restr ictive than the ‘ lit er ary establishmen t’
it op p oses. Part of me w onder s if Louis simp ly suffer s f rom the
classic French w eakness for p ithy and mor ally p omp ous sta t emen ts
(S artre, Camus, Zola, e t c). A c ondition I am no t immune t o, by the
w ay. E lse w here, without irony, he re fer s t o his o wn writings as
‘sp ac es of objective truth’. A ll w rit er s need this w onderf ul op timism
in their p rojects if they are t o sp end the long, laborious hour s
required t o writ e some thing. Eq ually, they need t o under stand the
c on fused and c onc eit ed though t which a w ards their o wn ideas
objective truth ye t denies it t o o ther s who, c oinciden tally, disagree
with them. T his is esp ec ially tr ue of a writ er whose ‘objective truth’
is a bag of skele tal sociolo gic al in t erp re ta tions. T here is truth in art,
there is truth in Ed dy , ye t truth disap p ear s when it, as Damian G r an t
writ es, ‘unseasonably asserts itself t o be so’. G r an t g oes on: ‘T he
ap p eal t o the in ferior, demonstr able tr uth,’ – the aut obio gr ap hical,
the sociolo gical, the objec tivity all p riz ed by Louis – ‘is a distr action,
a self-injury; it is the writ er asking t o have hi mself taken a t a lo w er
valua tion’.
S inc e Ed dy , Louis has p ublished tw o books and c on tinues t o be
an ur g en t and c elebr a t ed voic e. Perhap s it is revealing of where our
global lit er a ture stands tha t its critics and reader s will hap p ily
ignore the p rose if the political line is dr a wn in the c orrect p lac e.
For liber als it’s a reaction t o the homo g eny they sense and for
c onserva tives it’s nervousness over saying any thing embarr assingly
reac tionary. W hen reading Ed dy I w ould sug g est everyone a tt emp t, a t
least for a momen t, the imp robable: sep ar a t e your p olitic al sen timen t
f rom your artistic one.

B ib lio gr aphy
T he End of Eddy , Edouard Louis
Real ism (T he C ritic al Id iom ), Damian G r an t
Ed ou ard Lou is I n terview , A ng elique Chrisa fis: h ttp s://www.theguard -
ian.c om/books/2018/ jun/ 09/edouard-lou -
is-i-w an t-t o-be-a-writ er-of-violenc e-the-more-you-talk-about-it-the
-more-you-can-undo-it
10