Philip Roth gives the side-eye to modern literary politics
And will the arts ever be free of Palestine?
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Does this book read as too parochial—or too ‘Zionist’? The pitfalls of Writing While Jewish
Back in 1963, the late Philip Roth wrote an essay for Commentary entitled “Writing About Jews.” It’s a powerful manifesto about the purpose of fiction—one incidentally about postwar Jewish America—but with broader relevance. Is the point of an individual novel or short story to portray all of humanity, or something specific about human nature via a handful of characters or even one protagonist? Is it the responsibility of artists from minority communities to depict their fellow group members in a flattering light, or even to attempt to achieve an accurate sweeping overview of the group in question?…
Sure, art is political. But do all Canadian arts need to share the same politics?
Shortly after Anne Michaels won the Giller Prize, Canada’s foremost literary fiction award, on Nov. 18, she posted a lengthy letter on social media. “I write in solidarity with the moral purpose of every writer bearing witness,” she wrote. “I write because the dead can read. Every reader throughout the decades who has written and spoken to me, whose gaze has met mine on the page, has given me courage. And with every word I’ve spoken tonight, I want to give that same courage.”
To which one peorson on Twitter replied: “My gawd, that’s a pretentious way of saying nothing.”
The implicit accusation is that Anne Michaels should have boycotted the Gillers, which awarded her a $100,000 prize, courtesy of the gala’s main sponsor, Scotiabank. Scotiabank has come under heavy fire by the pro-Palestinian movement for its investments in Israel—as have the Gillers, by association—and now, too, has Anne Michaels.
After recently discussing the messy politics of the Giller controversy, we wanted to zoom out and take a broader look at the politicization of the Canadian arts landscape. How did our art and artistic institutions become so deeply political? When did we start demanding artists weigh in on geopolitics? And why don’t we have more right-wing art to balance this out? Culture critic Lydia Perović, who writes the newsletter Long Play, joins Bonjour Chai to discuss.
The rest of the picture
Part of the backstory in this new memoir published at The New Yorker can be found in Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen having been part of a New York Times Magazine story written by her ex-husband in 2007, about seeing himself and his then-wife cropped out of a group reunion photo at his modern Orthodox high school. The photographer later explained it wasn’t because she wasn’t Jewish per Noah Feldman’s claim, but because he took pictures of 60 attendees from mutiple angles.
If you enjoy what we’ve been doing every week at Bonjour Chai, you’re invited to make a donation for #GivingTuesday. We’re able to send you a tax receipt in return, because The Canadian Jewish News is a registered journalism organization with Canada Revenue Agency.