Keep it Simple?

Posted on March 4, 2003 in Thinking Writing

I’ve been praised for the short story I’ve circulated within my circles and I’ve been warned that the language may be too difficult for the “mass market”. A lot of attention has been given, lately, to the Stalinist tactics of the American capitalist state as manifested in John Ashcroft’s political persecutions and George Bush’s warmongering. I mark a third embodiment, the demand of the capitalist marketing apparatus to “keep it simple”.

Only writers, indoctrinated in the new canons of universities which are little more than training schools for pseudo-literary word factories, complained that there were words in my writing that “the ordinary Jo/e might not understand.” This working class of people, I dare say, truly know what their bosses demand of them. I point to the last years of the Stalinist era in Russia and its resurrection under Brezshnev to a parallel for this: crushed by the need to survive, they write as their managers think the masses must be.

Stalin persecuted artists, not so much for ideas, but for creating things in a style that people had “a hard time understanding”. Modern art, music, and literature all suffered under the tyrant. A famous case is that of the trio of the country’s greatest musicians — Khachaturian, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich — who were brought before a tribunal of their fellow artists for composing works that local orchestras would find too difficult to play.

I labor under a counter-revolutionary canon — and by this I mean I am as much against the revolution which has taken place since accountants took over the publishing houses as I am against the revolution that spawned Stalin — that the People are not so stupid, that they keep dictionaries by their sides, and that they use them. (Notice how dictionaries have been dumbed down in recent years, too, however.)

To other artists, I say have faith. Create using the materials — be they tones, words, pixels, or globs of paint — as you feel fit. The people are not so dumb that they can’t see sincere expression. They will view it and think about it.

Which may be what the powers that be in this country don’t want.

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Another take on my readers: A few of them were concerned that the story was “too good” for the average reader. Personally, I’ve never met an average reader who was as stupid as they claim her or him to be. Those who do not write did not complain about the words: only the writers did.

Is this arrogance or a externally-cultured sense of despair, the fatal pretense that the intelligent must always live alone?

My mother used to tell me that my alleged “brains” were my gift and it was a sin to waste it. I don’t claim to be smarter than most people, just more educated in some things. It may be a duty of mine — if there is a deity who sets us tasks — to show others what I have seen for the betterment of all. I do believe in Society for certain, if not in God: since I must live with other people, why not offer them ways to see what I have seen and to think about what I have thought about in the language that I find natural?