The Believer
The Believer: George Orwell’s the Freedom of the Press, a proposed preface to Animal Farm, expurgated and footnoted (with a bias).
First of all, I have to thank Daniel Levin Becker for the Sisyphean task of seeing this to publication. I know that I'm indebted to him, and to a bunch of other people at the Believer who I haven't been in direct contact with. They assidiously fact-checked everything in here, a very old-world and conscientious thing to do. My gratitude.
In short, this is an Orwell essay that I rewrote in the context of Snowball's Chance, which is my parody of Animal Farm that was recently rereleased (tenth anniversary) by Melville House.
And now, I'll defer to the first of 17 footnotes:
- Penguin’s 2000 edition of Animal Farm included the essay “The Freedom of the Press,” which was identified as “Orwell’s Proposed Preface to Animal Farm” and dated 1945. The essay was first published in The Times Literary Supplement, 15 September 1972. You are reading a footnoted and elided version of that essay. By reading further, you risk participating in a crime; what I am doing here may be technically illegal.
http://www.believermag.com/exclusives/?read=article_reed_orwell
Paris Review Daily: Animal Farm Timeline
Paris Review Daily: Animal Farm Timeline
Nikolai Kostomarov, Stamp of Ukraine, 1992.
So this is a timeline I put together about Orwell's Animal Farm.
I wrote it in the context of Snowball's Chance, which is my parody of Animal Farm that was recently rereleased (tenth anniversary) by Melville House.
Here's the first entry...
1879–1880
Nikolai Kostomarov (1817–1885) pens his story Animal Riot, a farmyard allegory that takes as its analog a hypothetical Russian revolution. A century later, in 1988, the English-language Economist will compare Kostomarov’s 8,500-word story to George Orwell’s 20,000-word Russian Revolution allegory, Animal Farm (which, unlike Animal Riot, ends badly), finding numerous points of comparison. For example, a bull in Animal Riot:
“Brother bulls, sisters and cow-wives. Esteemed beasts worthy of a better destiny than the one which inexplicably befell you and made you a slave of tyrant Man! … The hour has come to cast off vile slavery and take revenge for all our ancestors tormented by work, starved and fed repulsive feed, who collapsed dead under whips and heavy carts, who were killed at slaughterhouses and torn to pieces by our tormentors. Rally with hooves and horns.”
Old Major in Animal Farm:
“Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let’s face it: our lives are miserable, laborious and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength … Why do we then continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our prob-lems. It is summed up in a single word—Man.”
Paris Review Daily: Circus and the City
Paris Review Daily: Circus and the City
“The Elephant,” 1797. Broadside with woodcut illustration, printed by William Barrett, Newburyport, Massachusetts. Collection of The New-York Historical Society.
oops, slideshow on Bard's New York Circus show. I never put it up here. Seems a little out of context now, but I start by jaking around about the election. 21 slides!
As we—like Lady Justice at her scales—weigh the virtues and policies of our presidential candidates, our very future in the balance, it is perhaps not without merit to reflect upon the classical history of democracy, and a fledging nation, now great, which has taken up a banner of representative government as passed down from the Greeks and Romans of antiquity. Perhaps, as well, as the airwaves are electric with the storied truths apropos to this most momentous of elections—this cotterpin in the history of humanity, perhaps the very universe, this year of destiny, of DECISION 2012!—we might look to the birth of our comedic and dramatic tradition, which we will find in the Dionysian festivals of Ancient Greece. Or, wait, is it more of a circus?
Circus it is. Hollywood may claim Aristotle as a father, and Washington may fancy itself an ancestor of the Roman Republic, but don't we all know that our truer father is P. T. Barnum—tabloid king and political boss—and that our truer tradition is the circus, three rings?
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/10/31/circus-and-the-city-new-york-1793-2010/
Vice: The Golden Age of the Cockroach
Vice: The Golden Age of the Cockroach
Illustration by Michele Witchipoo
Every era in art has a new favored subject. The Etruscans looked to Hercules; painters of the Renaissance reenvisioned the Bible; the American Ashcan School rendered sensitive tableaus of poor urban life; and the later half of the 20th century, dominated by the PoMo-ism of downtown NYC, crowned a new king, the cockroach, which was not only an available resource, but a stand-in for the artist—a heroic outcast, thriving in the ruins of civilization.
The oeuvre of the cockroach is best understood as a series of distinct ages that, in turn, comprise a whole. During the Reformation, the cockroach was reconsidered; the Enlightenment percieved the cockroach as potentially “divine”; the Golden Age saw the pinnacle of the discipline; the Silver Age was consumed by celebrity; the Bronze Age refigured the subject as metaphor and victim; the Age of Decline represented the subject in absentia and/or in parts. As far as I can tell, no one has completed, or even attempted, to survey the cockroach's place in the art world, so consider this seven-part piece that examines an artistic era that scuttled by so quickly, hardly anyone even noticed it.
Bomb: The Tragic Last Stand of the Skyhorse Clan
Bomb: The Tragic Last Stand of the Skyhorse Clan
A brilliant piece that Brando wrote about "presumed identities." Here's the Bomb tagline and a few selects. Thanks Brando, for the dedication ...
Brando Skyhorse peels away layers of presumed identities and discusses recent books about Native Americans.
… If art, if literature, is a form of love—it is—the exclusion of subjects is the equivalent of banning mixed-race couples. Creative separatism is defended like this: so-and-so doesn’t have the experience to write about the subject. But artists often reach beyond their own lives; part of the drive to be an artist is to understand outside oneself. That non-Western stories are so xenophobic is more a mechanism of our marketplace than our artists. “Coming home” is the advertising platform. You join culture, you buy this, you will be happier. The “I” story, the story of personal want, ambition, desire, is the story of capitalization itself: the capitalization of identity. The question of high market (literature) or low market (Hollywood, genre, etc) is merely one of degree; the assimilation in a low-market context results in winning the Gold, or the Academy Award, or whatever, while the assimilation in a high-market context is one complicated by misgivings (which, however profound, don’t offset the “rightness” of assimilating). ...
… Western arts, Western artists, Western appreciators of art, function as a first wave of assault. Very much like a missionary movement—which is entirely well-intentioned but subversive of the occupied culture—the arts wash over a culture, drenching a people with the cult of “I.” On an international stage, the arts are unaware, or perhaps insensible is the right word, to their goal, the first economic goal–to strip the culture of anything of value, to replace all worth, including personal worth, with a need for Western goods, ideas and affirmation. Western arts place individual identity under continuous assault. The message: success/failure is a process of self-discovery, of true identity. Of course, this “true identity” is ersatz, furnished externally through cultural transactions, through the stuff—CDs, jeans, books, movies—that you buy. ...
Slate: This is Not Art
Slate: This is Not Art
Jeff Koons Balloon Dog, broken.
Wrote up the curatorial effort of Elka Krajewska and Mark Wasiuta. Work that has been declared no longer art (by art insurancers): on display at a gallery.
Kathleen Madden and Paul Frantz were featured in here, but they hit the editing room floor. I called Paul, who works at google, "an entirely affable stormtrooper." Here, I'll grab a paragraph from the middle:
To give a brief explanation of art that is no longer art: Sometimes the cost of restoring a work of art exceeds the value of the work, in which case the insurer declares a total loss, and the work is declared no longer art—that is, of no market value. The damage can range from obvious to subtle—from a ripped painting or shattered sculpture to a wrinkle in a photographic print, or mold damage which can’t be seen at all. As it wouldn't do to send the not-artwork to the crematorium—the work might be of scholarly value, or might one day be worth repairing, or might one day be more easily repaired—the work is stored, not dead, but in a state of indefinite coma. The Salvage Art Institute, Elka's curatorial brainchild, collects and exhibits not-art.
Paris Review Daily: Times Square Show Revisited
Paris Review Daily: Times Square Show Revisited
Views of the Time Square Show (organized by Colab), 1980. Photo collage by Terise Slotkin
A piece I wrote about the revisitation of the Times Square Show:
At what date on the calendar, at what precise location, did counterculture become pop culture? And who do we mark down in the history books as the hero, or the villain, who masterminded the switch? There is an answer: “The Times Square Show.” In June of 1980, more than a hundred artists, under the auspice and directed by the vision of Colab (Collaborative Projects), took over a four-story building on Forty-first Street and Seventh Avenue and mounted a two-month exhibition. There were big names: Tom Otterness, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf, Nan Goldin. Oops, wrong turn; the notion of individual heroism, of the creative ego that strives for and achieves recognition—in other words, a modernist view of the artist—is an anachronistic way to view “The Times Square Show.”
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/10/10/crossroads-of-the-art-world/
Publishing Perspectives: 2002 vs. 2012
Publishing Perspectives: 2002 vs. 2012, one book, two editions
Ok, I wrote this back in July for Publishing Perspectives, which is Ed Nawotka's brainchild, and an insightful window on pubishing—but I'm reposting the piece here because it's posted on Publishing Perspectives as an image, and it's not searchable. The idea: to compare the two publishing journeys, etc, of the two editions of Snowball's Chance. Here's the piece again:
Snowball's Chance by John Reed. When the book came out, I related. I had the spirit to make a few insurrections—went to a Christopher Hitchens right-wing diatribe and corrected him from the audience when he talked about me. At my readings I drank more than usual and encouraged my audience to drink more, and to contribute animal sounds. I gave out rubber animal noses. (Oh, I wrote Snowball’s Chance just after 9/11: Snowball returns to Animal Farm, brings capitalism.) Then nine years went by, and, uh, I looked at the book again; a tenth anniversary reprint was in the works. I called James Sherry, the original publisher. The prose melted when I tried to read it. The thing was nonsensical.
"James," I asked, "I don't understand anything in here, what does that mean?"
"It means," said James, "you wrote it."
Ten years. Just long enough to think, times weren’t so different, and just long enough to remember, yes they were. In 2002, blogs were for tech-savvy dweebs. Amazon was a book & crap bazaar. The Village Voice had a literary supplement, and cost one dollar. To find an article in a magazine, you had to get out of your chair, go outside, and go find it. To research a subject, you went to the library. People didn't throw up boutique lit journals in an afternoon. (I have one going official in September: statorec.com) You had to print on paper. You had to spend money, printing on paper, to have a publication. And then again, everyone made more money. Critics, writers, agents. And yet, why don’t I yearn for 2002?
2002—the end of an age. 2012—the beginning of a new age. But how to compare? What does one compare? And in what context?
2002 vs. 2012, ONE BOOK, TWO EDITIONS, TEN YEARS IN THE BOOK TRADE:
| SUBJECT | 2002 | 2012 | STALEMATE | EXPLANATION |
| BIG PRESSES | ✓ | My first novel had come out with Delacorte, and there was a frenetic race to publish books about 9/11, and I had an enthusiastic and reputed agent, and it looked to me like Snowball would find a place at a big house. Then, the lawyers chimed in—the best guess was that parody was no longer protected speech in the United States. If anything, since 2002, the people of “big publishing” become more politically engaged. But traditional venues for book coverage—newspaper coverage, for example—are scarce in number and those venues that do remain are pinched and heavily reliant upon advertising, which necessitates ad-friendly content (the right demographic, the right message), which further pinches what books the newspapers will cover—what stories can be told. | ||
| SMALL PRESSES | ✓ | I had always held out the hope that Snowball would find a place in paperback at a big house. We did get a few offers—but we always thought we could do better. Melville House, which was just establishing itself when Snowball came out, is now a lauded entity (Snowball is lucky to have them), and distributed by Random House. Overall, the small presses have a much better reach than they did in 2002—perhaps the best reach they’ve ever had. The caveats: there are legions of them, and many are publishing material that is, uh, not good. Of course, that’s a problem with presses of every size, and it’s very difficult to argue with any trend that localizes arts. | ||
| DISTRIBUTION | ✓ | James Sherry, the publisher at Roof Books, knew that the challenge for Snowball would be distribution. We naively thought we could address it, but our schedule was too ambitious. We ended up distributing with SPD, Small Press Distribution, which is now one of the leading options for small presses. In 2002, the obvious best option was PGW, Publisher’s Group West, which offered a realistic alternative to Ingram. In 2006, PGW went into bankruptcy—caused by mismanagement. Not only did the bankruptcy leave the monolith, Ingram, the sole proprietor of major distribution, it cost publishers like McSweeney’s and Soft Skull whole seasons of earnings. Of course, ebook, direct, online retail distribution, have all become realities—but the lockdown on major distribution has become more pronounced, and is without doubt the single most horrendous thing about contemporary publishing. | ||
| BOOKSTORES | ✓ | When Snowball’s Chance came out, despite the media attention, placement in B&N was a continuing battle. People walked into the store carrying newspaper clippings. Then, when Snowball sold out before the pub date, B&N didn’t restock. Perhaps rightly, the store that ordered the most books—I haven’t since seen so many of my books in one store—was St. Marks Books, about a block from my apartment. While the small presses have penetrated the remaining big bookstore (B&N), the small bookstores are vastly reduced in numbers, and less likely to offer alternative perspectives on culture—rather, most small bookstores have become “better” versions of the big bookstores, their list is more selective, their emphasis more literary, but it’s the same span of books you’d find in B&N. | ||
| ONLINE BOOK SALES | ✓ | 2002, online book sales were still speculation. What mattered to Snowball was bookstore distribution. But if Amazon wasn’t yet significant competition, it was looked on, quite accurately, as the threat to in-person retail it would become. Online books sales, not just through Amazon, have allowed for a major change in what can be published. “Outliers” are possible, and books with specific demographics can distribute directly to their markets. Books can be printed one-at-a-time. Huge steps in the history of human knowledge. | ||
| EDITORIAL | ✓ | James Sherry, who edited Snowball, is a brilliant editor. I’m afraid the kind of work he did on Snowball isn’t something that one would be likely to see today—not at a big house, and not at a small house. Book editors edit less. But in terms of magazines, journals and whatever other literary venues, there are excellent editors, and more of them than ever. I’m finding myself writing numerous essays—stuff I couldn’t have dreamed of doing in 2002. (Including this piece for Ed Nawotka at Publishing Perspectives.) The essay is in a period of Renaissance, and online editors have been disencumbered of the costs and responsibilities of print. | ||
| THE WRITING ITSELF | ✓ | In 2002, you went to the bookstore and looked around. Now, people make their choices, and their choices are influenced by what they see online. Those who are able to resist the constant temptation of propaganda and idiocy are able to employ the internet to inform themselves on subjects of interest and personal aesthetics. It’s that population of people—among the what? six million writers?—that has raised the overall quality of U.S. creative writing. With distribution as is, however, there’s not much evidence of that in the marketplace. | ||
| STATE OF NARRATIVE | ✓ | The traditional venues of book coverage—major newspapers, etc—are flailing to attract advertisers. Their readerships are shrinking, so they tell advertisers they have the “right” demographic. People who buy, who buy to be, who value money, who value the making of money. To attract the right demographic, editors, for example, gear their content to sync with the desirable demographic. In finding that demographic, the venue further shrinks its audience. Vicious circle. Snowball isn’t telling the story it’s supposed to tell; it’s not a “coming home” story. (“Coming home,” the comedy of Greek drama, is the go-to story of the marketplace. You participate in culture, you “buy in” and you find happiness.) I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, but I’m guessing that Snowball, as in 2002, is more likely to see political coverage than books coverage. | ||
| ECONOMY OF WRITERS | ✓ | Advances have gone down, payments for journalism/reviews are laughable or not there at all—and yet there are new opportunities, ebooks, interactive, etc, and being a writer, it seems to me, isn’t the act of immolation it once was. Maybe that’s just me, of course—it could be my unfailing optimism. Go buy a copy of Snowball and join me. | ||
| DEMOCRACY OF LITERATURE | ✓ | Email me and we’ll talk about it. jr @ johnreed.tv That’s the up side. The internet makes discussion, even radical discussion, a plausibility. Without the internet, I doubt Snowball would have participated the way it has. (I can’t tell you how many people tell me they’ve read the book, people who I quickly realize are just saying they read the book, which is heartbreaking, but I suppose they’ve heard of the project, or they wouldn’t bother to lie about it.) The downside to democratized arts: the normative conversation is dull, facile, and filtered by servile and/or oligarchical thinking. | ||
| BOOK COVERAGE | ✓ | For the reasons touched on in “Big Presses” and “State of Narrative,” traditional book coverage is diminished—in word counts, in number of venues, in overall scope. But there is the internet, without print costs, which has revived long form criticism. When Snowball came out in 2002, longform criticism was dying. I wonder if the new edition of Snowball has potential, as a lede or otherwise, for longform essays. Maybe. I’m planning to write four or five long essays about Snowball, Orwell, and Animal Farm. (This is one of them.) | ||
| READERSHIP | ✓ | Readers can find what they’re interested in. They’re more informed about what they’re interested in. They can tell other people about the things they’re interested in. They can “network” based on what they’re interested in. All this was just starting in 2002. Now, it’s part of how we live and experience books. | ||
| LITERATURE IN EDUCATION | ✓ | Blind, unthinking hero-worship is characteristic of an educational system dominated by a cultural hierarchy. “This is great because we told you it’s great.” It’s not surprising that in our ever more atavistic and conservative creative economy, the bullying in U.S. education has only gotten worse. It’s difficult for me to see much of an upside, have much optimism, about the academy’s mind-numbing approach to “classics.” At least I no longer have the sense that I’m in total isolation. Attacking classics, whether it’s Jonathan Lethem or Zombie Jane Austen, has become a category—and it’s a badly needed conversation. | ||
| SELF-PUBLISHING | ✓ | The same day I talked to Dennis Johnson, the publisher of Melville House, about the Snowball paperback, which would make me about .85$ per book, I talked the to “curator” of an ebook series, which would make me 1.70$ a book. And the ebook would only be 15,000 words. Snowball is about 35,000 words. The downside to self-publishing: self published books are self published (the overall quality is often very low) and if you don’t understand the book business, if you don’t have a highly specific and active market—the unicorn vampire market, for example—you’re probably killing your baby. | ||
| LITERARY CULTURE | ✓ | In 2002, I had very little awareness of thriving literary communities outside New York City. Now, I know for a fact they’re all over the place. Local arts, local writers, local collectors, local readers. Deeper thinking and the engagement afforded local communities. And these communities aren’t just a geographical occurrence—communities are forming around interests, passions, common causes. | ||
| COPYRIGHT | ✓ | While the copyright claims against Snowball, i.e. those of questioning the legitimacy of parody, are no longer viable, in the last ten years, we may well have seen the birth of perpetual copyright. Uh, for large corporations that is. | ||
| PARODY | ✓ | 2002, it looked like parody in the United States was over. But by a miracle—an American miracle—parody was staunchly defended by a conservative Supreme Court. Furthermore, the U.K. has set about reviewing its stance on parody (they want the income that comes with the full dose of parodic entertainment, The Daily Show, etc). Snowball, threatened by the Orwell estate in 2002, is not currently under any legal danger in the United States—and the debate on parody in the U.K. points to (hmm would it be all right if I ended patriotic?) one of two outcomes: either a U.K edition of Snowball, or the continuation of a total inability of U.K. entertainment to compete with upstart Americans. |
Out Magazine: Where Are All the Angry Young Men?
Out Magazine: Where Are All the Angry Young Men?
A piece I wrote for Out about Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz, by Cynthia Carr:
http://www.out.com/entertainment/art-books/2012/07/16/david-wojnarowicz-fire-belly-cynthia-carr
David Wojnarowicz. Two reasons you may not know that name:
—our culture can’t remember, can’t deal with, can’t fathom the angry young man;
—it’s too hard to spell (and pronounce).
Let’s deal with the second reason first. Everyone spells it wrong. Forget it.
And the first reason, of course, is why you should know who David Wojnarowicz is. Where are all the angry young men? Contemporary life is not only culturally constrained, it is a compromise of privacy, of identity, of rage. We have to log on. We have to survive. Network, or perish. What happens to the fuming young artist who sledgehammers his dealer’s wall? Who ditches his friends by the road in Nevada? Who marches in and takes paintings out of the exhibit? It’s a romantic picture, the outsider, the rebel, but in reality, we are all too replaceable, too jaded, too doomed to wield our mallets. Or perhaps, we are too doomed to do it all the time. The anger that David Wojnarowicz channeled, his lashing, spitting invective against a life prescribed from birth, has become familiar, a mundane emotional disorder, easily treated by another prescription. Rage, at the governmental handoffs to hemorrhaging corporate behemoths, at the senseless cues of teleprompters, has become the dial tone of everyday life.
Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz, by Cynthia Carr. Two reasons why it should be anticipated as the cultural biography of the year:
Bomb Magazine and DB Art: Whitney Biennial 2012
Bomb Magazine and DB Art: Whitney Biennial 2012
Ok, proposed experiment: what if one were to write about a cultural event in two venues, one venue being a corporately owned venue, one venue being an independent, arts venue? Let's say they're both excellent venues, with excellent editorial.
http://db-artmag.com/en/69/feature/no-place-like-home-the-2012-whitney-biennial/
http://bombsite.com/issues/1000/articles/6549
The 2012 Whitney Biennial presents a ranging meditation on home. The theme is fitting, in that the museum is in the midst of moving to a new home, the fourth in its history, a 200,000-square-foot newly constructed building in Chelsea. With thirty-three film, video, digital, performance, and installation artists, accounting for 30+ hours of watching time, the emphasis on the show is distinctly media. (Thomas Beard and Ed Halter contributed to the curatorial efforts of Elisabeth Sussman, the museum's photography curator, and Jay Sanders, an independent curator apprised of performance.) There's so little space left over that the remaining artists—ten sculptors, six painters, two photographers, two text artists, and one textile—are contained in a greatly reduced Whitney. The impression is of two distinct Biennials: a media, performance, and installation Biennial, which looks to the future of the Museum, and a "formal" Biennial, which stands the turf of historically held territories.
more here: http://db-artmag.com/en/69/feature/no-place-like-home-the-2012-whitney-biennial/
We are privatized. In the United States a trend toward privatization has commodified domains traditionally thought of as public or free. “Most of what we currently perceive as value and wealth,” noted Alan Greenspan in 1999 speech at the Gerald R. Ford Museum, “is intellectual and impalpable.” The seemingly innocuous statement was a bombshell, one that would eventually explode the Western economy: valuation was no longer an objective assessment of materials, it was a subjective assessment of ideas. The Information by bestselling author James Gleick, chronicles the seismic economic shift, exclusive to our time: information is available, but at a price.
more here: http://bombsite.com/issues/1000/articles/6549
Bomb Magazine: The Eye-Popping Spectacles of Stuart Sherman
Bomb Magazine: The Eye-Popping Spectacles of Stuart Sherman
Wrote up a long piece for Bomb on Stuart Sherman. Got 1000 words, wrote 2000, and they gave me another 1000 on the revision. Thanks Clint!
... The new catalog Beginningless Thought/Endless Seeing: the Works of Stuart Sherman documents and reflects upon the performance and mixed media art of this mercurial artist, gathering archival materials from a 2009 exhibition curated by John Hagan, Yolanda Hawkins and John Matturri. Sherman (1945-2001) was an early member of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company and Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre; he matured into a wide-ranging creative force: performances, film and video, writing, drawing, collage and sculpture. The catalog compiles essays written by Sherman’s colleagues, stills from performances, and reproductions of Sherman’s drawings and collages. Entries and poems from Sherman’s journals are inset in the pages, allowing Sherman to posthumously contribute to the dialogue. ...
more here: http://bombsite.com/articles/6375
the Rumpus: The Politics of Narrative
the Rumpus: The Politics of Narrative
Long piece on the politics of narrative and narrative structure, via a roundup of recently published books:
... With the beginning of the twenty-first century, the sprawling literary novel has regained pre-eminence. The realist recoil is cyclical—Bellows springs to mind as indicative of a generation that tended toward socially engaged novels of nebulous structure. In the larger political context, the “realist” novel indicates conservative values. The novel that puts content second to structure parallels a nation (a globe) that espouses an ideology of the systemic over the sovereign. To maintain that content comes before structure is a precept for revolution: a particular idea, person or solution comes before the nation, the corporation, the praxis.
Max Brand (Frederick Schiller Faust), a prolific pulp western writer of the 1920s and 30s, maintained that there were two types of stories: coming home, or leaving home. The assertion neatly correlates to the classical definition of comedy and tragedy, as well as a content-first v. structure-first division of the arts. The coming home story (usually comedic or “feel good”): the cowboy accepts and/or is accepted by society. The leaving home story (usually tragic or “dark”): the cowboy rejects and/or is rejected by society. Structure-first stories, i.e. coming home, tend to be about assimilation, while content-first stories, i.e. leaving home, tend toward dissent.
The difficulty of reading a text that puts forth a dissenting structure is that it is self-aware. The sentence-to-sentence qualifications, the adjustments to expected language and idiom, place readers in unfamiliar territories. In counterpoint, the assimilative text is necessarily unconscious of its own intentions. The conformist can’t “try.” (The grade school realization: you can’t try to be normal, in the trying, you’re abnormal.) The conformist story, i.e., the “coming home,” must assume that the state of conformity is the norm. The hero gains acceptance, which is “better.” To acknowledge that a conformist state must be gained, or acquired, is to acknowledge that the conformist state is as difficult to attain as some other alternative state. In the context of literature, the acknowledgement would be tantamount to acknowledging that the structures commonly perceived as “easy” or “naturalistic” are only so because readers have been guided, or indoctrinated, to them. ...
Here's the full essay @ the Rumpus:
http://therumpus.net/2011/12/the-politics-of-narrative/