Disposable and Doomers

Friends,

A review I wrote of New York Magazine writer Sarah Jones’ new book Disposable (America’s Contempt for the Underclass) is publishing today on the website Real Clear Books. The book is frankly a nightmare, and you should not buy it. You should, however, read my review! I’ve really been enjoying the opportunity to write criticism because it gives me a chance to zoom out and really dig into my thoughts about issues in the culture at large. I thought I was going to like this book. Instead, it helped me crystalize my thoughts about certain cultural trends that I strongly disagree with. So, thanks to the author for pissing me off.

As I have stated in previous essays (if you haven’t yet, check out my first post on working class memoirs), I’m a life-long liberal who is disillusioned, not just with the Democratic Party but with what I see as the illiberal bent that has come to define much of the Left. I have decided I will no longer participate in it, nor will I attempt to justify it. Instead, I plan to take it on in my writing—not all of my writing is political, by the way, but this review certainly becomes so.

The criticism of my stance seems to be that criticism of the Left right now somehow emboldens Trump or diminishes the Left’s power to counteract the radical Right. I disagree. The Right holds power in all three branches of our government, but the Left still remains (just barely, perhaps) the main purveyor of America’s cultural institutions and identity. I believe that liberalism is under assault from both the Right and the Left, and I refuse illiberalism from either side. Clearly, I am not a Senator or a news anchor at CNN, so I am doing this in the ways that I know how: by writing about it and talking to people. It could be that my arguments at this moment in time, when huge forces are at work across the globe upending the lives of millions, seem small bore. So be it. I want to live in a culture where I feel accepted, and I want a political party that shares my principles.

Currently, writing this as I am from a friend’s apartment in Kentucky, where I have been doing landscaping work on horse farms for the past few weeks, I feel very far from the corridors of power. This is fine by me. I love it down here and it has been good to get out of New York for a while. I’ll be headed back to Brooklyn in another week or so.

I’m incredibly grateful to you for reading. Please like, share and sign up for a paid subscription. Also, feel free to disagree. I’d hate to live in a world where everyone has the same opinions. Also, I’m a little late to recording an audio version of this post. Today is windy and threatening to rain so, if I am unable to work outside, I’ll record and post this today. The audio is a lot of fun for me and it keeps me humble as some of my sentences end up sounding like real groaners when I have to say them aloud.

Below, I’m including a letter to the Editor that I sent to the New York Times that they did not run. The letter is a response to a review of the play Doomers written by Matthew Gasda running at the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research. Recently, I reviewed the play Dimes Square, also written by Gasda, and he and I have become friendly. That said, I haven’t seen Doomers, and I don’t give a shit if the Times liked or didn’t like the play. I responded to the review because I was disturbed by the paper singling out of a specific word in the script. It used to be think word policing was the realm of sour-faced preachers, but now, apparently, The Times is giving it a shot. I’m including this, because to my mind, it is another example of faddish illiberalism attacking common sense. I think this is bad for the arts, politics and conversations at bars. I hope you find something in this letter or in my review of Disposable that entertains and excites your brain. Definitely check out the book review, and feel free to hit me up if you have any thoughts on any of this.

Best,

Michael

To the Editor,

In Laura Collins-Hughs Feb. 11^th review of Doomers, a play by Matthew Gasda, Collins-Hughs writes that a line in the play which “uses a slur for the intellectually disabled…got a nasty laugh at the performance I saw.” Ms. Collin-Hughs then claims that this unnamed word “is having a resurgence” (I’m assuming the word is “retard,” but I can only guess), and continues by asserting that this word “is fair game for a playwright to use.” This, of course, implies disapproval of the word. More damagingly, it indicates that other words are not “fair game” for playwrights to use. Has the critic read Mark Twain? Is she familiar with the plays of David Mamet or Carol Churchill? Has the critic read Shakespeare, a playwright whose plays explode with curses and slurs, a playwright who indeed invented many of those curses and slurs?

Ms. Collin-Hughs, and by extension, the New York Times, seem to be saying that the language of theater should conform to the tastes of polite upper-middle class liberalism. That theater must, in fact, obey the rules of a cocktail party they’d personally feel comfortable attending. As a writer and a passionate lover of theater, I offer my full-throated disagreement. For a major media organization to criticize a specific word used in a play, and to criticize an audience for the critic’s perceived reaction to that word (the audience’s laugh was, according to the reviewer, “nasty”), is a stultifying, damaging act that can only lead to self-censorship by playwrights hoping to have their work reviewed by the Times.

Theater should be full of insults, bad language, prayerful language, vitriolic language, spiteful, joyful, malicious, sexual, hilarious, vital and experimental language. To indicate that some words are okay and, by extension, that some words are not okay, is to openly lay claim to the idea that fashion and politics and politeness are more important than uncensored expressions of the human condition. At a time when, as The Times so boldly likes to remind us every day, many American’s rights appear to be under attack, the paper should stand up for the right of artists to express themselves with whatever language they deem fit.

Regards,