If literature is the written product of extraordinary human creativity
and the record of our insatiable desire to know and be known, to find meaning
in our existence, then the answers that Amy Ellis Nutt pursues in “The Wreck of
the Lady Mary” qualifies her article in the knowing but neither the being known
nor quite the measure of rich and beautiful language or venture into meaning. Tom
Wolfe’s musings over the corpse of the U.S. Space Program in “One Giant Leap to
Nowhere” qualifies in discernment of knowledge and creativity of
self-revelation with language that plays and dances in search of meaning from
life experience. And then, Gary Shteyngart’s deprogramming adventure in “Only
Disconnect” is nothing if not the desire to be known, written in prose with the
care of poetic verse as he pursues the question on his mind, searches for value
in the changing brain-scape in which we now live.
Nutt tackles an arduous reporting task to bring her detailed and clear accounting of what happened to the Lady Mary and her crew on that one terrible night. The story is engaging and logically told; the victims sufficiently identified as flesh and blood human beings with families and lives forever cast from their moorings.
Her article follows a plot line and suggests an antagonist
in Reederei Thomas Schulte but it lacks the voice of a literary narrator, the
voice that invites readers to see beyond themselves while simultaneously
creating deep inward vision, forcing them to choose whether to believe or deny some
greater truth. Her piece is an exemplar of excellent reporting, meticulously described to allow her readers to closely observe a tragedy, adequately humanize its victims, and sense political urgency. It is the work of a fine journalist. The photos, maps, video and graphics contributed by Andre Malok provide visual data to enhance the article’s veracity. (The intimate photo of the lone survivor and the ghostly image of the Lady Mary are art with or without context.) My question to the premise of newspaper articles as literature is: what would it accomplish for all serious journalism to strive to be considered literature, in the classic sense? Doesn’t meticulous reporting answer a unique set of social needs (i.e.: inform the public, uncover problems to be addressed, record human endeavor, loss, and limits, etc.) apart from those that literature fills?
I was, on the other hand, powerfully struck by the language and intimate exploration into the human condition that Shteyngart achieves in his brief offering. For instance, the moment when he shakes free of the modern world’s electronic snare to fully enter the pages of book he has been struggling to re-fit his digitally addicted mind to:
Slowly, and surely, just as the sun begins to swoon over the Hudson River and another Amtrak honks its way past Rhinebeck, delivering its digital refugees upstream, I begin to sense the world between the covers, much as I sense the world around me, a world corporeal and complete, a world that doesn’t need the press of my thumb, because here beneath the weeping willow tree my input is meaningless.
What is the role of reader input? It was once true that the effect on meaning provided by the reader’s life experience, emotions, intelligence, etc. could be attested by marks made in margins, or by words and phrases underlined and highlighted, but never moved or changed or spring-boarded back at the author without serious commitment or inconvenience. Pre-digital age, if a reader didn’t like what a writer of fiction, poetry or nonfiction had to say, the option of entering the public forum with written expressions of discontent were: Dear Editor or write a review or publish one’s own book.
Gary Shteyngart. I find this image of the Russian-born American writer priceless, even without his lyrical words.
But Shteyngart is getting at the power of the modern human thumb—not as in the opposable digit that separates us from the majority of the animal kingdom—but, as in the fluttering pointy tool for key-tapping and touch-screening. And he does it with hypnotic assonance, “Slowly…surely just as sun begins to swoon” drenching us in gorgeous imagery before coining the aptly charged phrase, “digital refugees.” Shteyngart reclaims what is left of his mind in its newly acquired state of digital deficit; he searches for himself in the reflection of his friends—face-to-face, human beings actually together in both time and space
Wolfe’s Op-ed piece is sparkling with literary device. He plays with the American identity as combatants in the wars of the space frontiers, drawing mood from a moment “a small step” in context of a name “Neil Armstrong.” He formulates language novelty with ease, as in “dead-and-be-done-with-it death,” concurrently shocking and painting a strong image of the demise of NASA that no one noticed, amusing the reader’s sense of that awkward thought of being dead but not dispatched. He delights the ear with “just the beginning, the prelude, the prologue!”
Image from How the "Right Stuff" Went Wrong: Tom Wolfe & Stephen Hawking on the Apollo Moon Landing
As we read, we come to know Wolfe in his journalistic
infancy, interviewing a displaced space-age engineer and childhood dreams of
writing the story of America in space. He interprets life in metaphor (purgatory,
single combat, David and Goliath) and he creates meaning by arguing that the
lack of space philosophers is the source of NASA’s downfall.
Nevertheless, literature continues to be a fluid concept with the digital age stripping away paper and ink, just as paper and ink once replaced animal skins and clay tablets out-convenienced cave walls. What remains constant, in my judgment, is literature’s pursuit of meaning in the human experience and its characteristic richness of language and profundity of inquiry.
