Untouched America

Page 27 January–February 2008 Bursey continued from previous page describing the scenery and places for my readers as though they were blind. I wanted something which would be alive from the first word to the last.” Josipovici is now in his mid-sixties. His prolific output (memoirs, criticism, essays, novels, and plays) and his writing virtues—a restless, quietly relentless intelligence, an appreciation for painting, music, and religion (especially Judaism), a keen interest in creating the right structure for his ideas, and, judging by his tone, a considerate attitude towards readers in general—has not been rewarded with a substantial audience. This neglect may be due partly to his being categorized as an experimental writer. He had choice words on this sidelining in an essay published in The Mirror of Criticism (1983): It is a shock to any artist who has only thought of getting things ‘right,’ of pinning down that elusive feeling which is the source and end of all creative activity, to wake up one morning and find himself labelled ‘experimental.’ Yet that is what happened to me… …[M]ost other reviews I received for those two novels, Migrations and The Air We Breathe, seemed to share the same assumptions : there are writers and there are experimental writers; the ‘experimental’ is a sub-branch of fiction, rather like teenage romances or science fiction perhaps, but differing from them in being specifically highbrow, and, like other highbrow activities, such as abstract painting and classical music, it is totally unconnected with the real world; however, we should tolerate this for the health of art (and to show how tolerant we are). Happily, obscurity has not affected Josipovici’s integrity as an artist. His work continues to appear from Carcanet in the UK, and The Singer on the Shore (Carcanet Press, 2006) has received positive reviews there and in Canada. In February, Ecco Press brought out the US edition of his extraordinary novel Goldberg: Variations (first published by Carcanet in 2002). As with his other work, Everything Passes poses questions which make a reader think and feel. Arespectful author, Josipovici trusts that his readers will privately investigate their beliefs in a ceaseless search for answers. Jeff Bursey’s book reviews have appeared in Books in Canada, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Quarter After Eight, and The Literary Review. His academic articles have appeared in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal, and Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System (co-authored). UnToUcheD AmericA sean Bernard FisH, sOaP and BOnds Larry Fondation Illustrated by Kate Ruth Raw Dog Screaming Press http://www.rawdogscreaming.com 165 pages; cloth, $24.95; paper, $13.95 The lit journal Granta recently issued its quasicontroversial /prophetic decadinal-list (the humbly named “Best of Young American Novelists”) meant mainly to spark interest in the lit journal Granta, and of the many things about the article that festers is an observation dropped in the introduction, where critic Edmund White gripes in passing that American fiction writers refuse to write about class (issue 54). First, let’s be specific here about “class”: it means poor Americans. Not poor Americans with Tourette’s or poor immigrants in America or poor Americans in gangs or poor American war vets— in other words, it doesn’t mean Americans whose poverty is secondary to something more intriguing. Just poor folks. It doesn’t sound like much to write about, but still there areAmerican writers who write about poor people, and artfully—William T. Vollmann , Russell Banks, and Chris Offutt all come to mind. But while White’s claim isn’t entirely true, the point stands that poverty isn’t written about nearly as frequently as, say, terrorism or middle-class ennui or comic books or much of anything. Poverty is part of our landscape, part of our literature, and Larry Fondation is its standard bearer. Why is this? Maybe less writers today come from poor backgrounds. Poverty used to be a more common literary theme because writers were around—or were themselves—poor folks. InWilliam Faulkner’s universe, generals and plantation owners shared campfires with country bumpkins. Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, Ralph Ellison all wrote...