The art of literary discomfort in the 'woke' era

When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you, said philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. And the abyss in a novel by Stanley Elkin (New York, 1930-Missouri, 1995) can be a humorous bail payer. A psychic cannibal called El Phoenician determined to eliminate all ideas of guilt. To make evil disappear, pretending to have consented to it to end up treating it, in reality, as it treats the world. Fatal. Just published for the first time in Spain by La Fuga Ediciones, The guarantor It is, like any work by Elkin, master of the incorrectly delirious, an uncomfortable novel. And how does such a novel fit into today's seemingly correct publishing market? Can the reader overlook his ardently self-destructive construct? Misogyny, racism and the unkind treatment of reality? And the real thing could be a terminally ill child on the way to Disney World (it happens in Magic Kingdom, another of his novels published in Spain) saying things like “only the insane believe that life is hard. Hard? “If it's softer than silk pajamas.” He, who is about to die of a ridiculous illness.

There is a type of literature that is dedicated to delving into what we dislike. That exposes the reader to very dark corners that do not cease to exist just because one tries to ignore them. The Royal Family (Pale Fire) by William T. Vollmann is an excellent example. Reading it is a descent into an insurmountably sad state of mind, a way of experiencing depression, a dive into the abyss, which the characters inhabit. There are prostitutes and two brothers. One of them is in love with the other's wife, and the other's wife is in love with him. But something happens and she disappears, and what remains is a void that swallows the monumental novel—more than 1,000 pages—and with it the reader. “Literature must delve into the darkness, because there is nothing darker than the human soul,” says Silvia Sesé, editor of Anagrama, who defends the role of another guarantor of uncomfortable literature, this one in its ranks: the Frenchman Michel Houellebecq . “He does nothing but deal with the big issues, and he does it, yes, from a point of view that is always uncomfortable for us, but he also moves us,” she says.

Another great example is something has happened, by Joseph Heller (Random House). The creator of one of the funniest (and most famous) novels in history (Catch 22) wrote its reverse and created what is probably the most odious character—the most abject narrative voice—in literature: Bob Slocum, a perverse office worker, who hates his entire family and thinks obscenities about his own daughter, and abhors even the last of his employees because, deep down, he is afraid. He says it. An atrocious fear. He doesn't understand anything. He is not in the world. The world is something that happens and he is someone who just can't stand it. And that's why he intends to destroy it inside his head. “That's something key. Because what must be avoided is the incorrectness that ends up blaming others. Why are we concerned about the work of Elfriede Jelinek? Because she starts from herself. It is she who stands in front of the mirror. She doesn't point at anyone. The same thing happens with Irvine Welsh or Lionel Shriver,” says Sesé. In some way, they make the reader witness to her self-destruction. What emerges, emerges from a place where few dare to go.

“Elkin lamented throughout his life that he did not sell books,” remembers Luigi Fumaroli, editor of La Fuga and, therefore, of Elkin in Spain, as well as a good handful of authors like him. Among them, Bruce Jay Friedman, similar in task—that of dismantling the cowardly office worker, the broken man—in Stern; or Hubert Selby Jr with The demonanother big mistake, responsible for Last departure for Brooklyn but also of Requiem for a Dream and, above all, The room, a novel that contains the most unbearable description of rape imaginable. “As an editor, I have always been interested in uncomfortable books. In some way, they are talking about what we do not see. They give a vision of the world that we do not have. And you see less and less things like that, less things like The guarantor, which speaks in that way, wild and brilliant, with a style capable of immolating the character, about the change of era as well. Because deep down she is kicking against what is happening in North American society. That is changing and is leaving people like El Fenicio behind,” says Fumaroli.

“We editors are also in an uncomfortable place today. Publishing for adult readers means taking these risks, but it is not done to disturb or seem provocative, but to move the reader inside. In woke up [el progresismo] everything is apparently clear and luminous. There is nowhere to hide,” says Sesé, who is not a supporter of “care.” “Being so careful can lead to paralysis. He mainstream Today in that sense it is like a steamroller. The editor must be awake because, furthermore, the intentions of that steamroller change every day. You don't know where it's going to come from, but you know you have to avoid it. Literature cannot become the recreation of a single thought. She should ask herself the uncomfortable questions we ask ourselves, because if she doesn't, something else will,” Sesé argues.

Fumaroli does not believe that the reader is one who only looks for “beautiful things,” but rather he is convinced that he can enjoy the twisted, aware that he is looking at an artifact that aims to take him to a place he may not have been before. As Pierre Guyotat does in Eden, Eden, Eden (Bad Lands) or Ann Quin in Three (Bad Lands / Underwood).

Gilbert Sorrentino, the least known of the postmodern writers, one of the clearest teachers of David Foster Wallace—the most overwhelmingly enlightened of the addictively uncomfortable writers—said: The infinite joke is almost a black hole, narrative breaking down into particles—that “a writer who cares about political correctness will, in all likelihood, be one incapable of writing satire, because satire, by nature, offends someone or something.” He said it in 1994. Sorrentino—of whom Cielo Eléctrico published his decomposed and not at all correct collection of stories The moon in flight in 2021—he referred to satire because it was his specialty—his sense of humor was as macabrely brilliant as Elkin's, very black—and pointed out the theme of offense, which is never gratuitous.

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