BOXING CLEVER: In defense of stupid writers.

One of the most cringe-inducing genres is the defense of a great writer on precisely the wrong terms. “Dickens is really a conservative!” “Eliot really liked the Jews!”

And, for exactly the same reasons, “Keats is so complex!”

No, he kind of desperately isn’t. This is not the way to defend him.

You can defend Keats the way I defend Poe: When this guy hits a thing, it stays hit. Poe is a ferocious poet, not an intelligent one. “Annabel Lee” is obvious in the way a Childe ballad is obvious–and heartbreaking the way a Childe ballad is heartbreaking. And it’s only our contemporary prejudice in favor of the individual quote-unquote genius, I think, that prevents us from seeing that Poe is a master. He knew how to say important things in a way that nobody else could manage. (“Hop-Frog,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher”–and yeah, I do tend to think if your creation passes into the common vocabulary over at least a century, it’s because you understood something deep and true about human nature.)

Poe is kind of dumb, you know? He isn’t complex. Hans Christian Andersen is only marginally more intelligent. The thing that they mostly do is hit things very very hard.

Sometimes people can be intelligent and punchy. Emily Dickinson is the obvious example. And I’m not trying to argue that if you have to pick between hardcore and complex, you should always pick hardcore. I’m not arguing that Miss Lonelyhearts is better than Emma, even if the former is more blunt and the latter is more intelligent. (I strongly prefer the former, but this post is not, I hope, solely about my own preferences.) All I’m trying to do is suggest that something can be stupid and still great; really, all I’m trying to do is to keep people from defending astonishing but dumb works of art on the grounds that they’re “deep.” No. They’re fierce–that really isn’t the same thing.

ps: I would also be really interested in a discussion of deceptive works, which hide their complexity and intelligence under a heavy screen of genre. I’d argue that Donna Tartt’s Secret History, most of the well-known Chandler, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and James Whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein” fall into this category.

pps: Oh hey, I remembered that this post was supposed to be about Faulkner, actually. Um… yeah. He isn’t that smart. But As I Lay Dying is still terrific. I’m sure there are smarter authors who couldn’t hit horror as hard as he does there–I mean, honestly, I think probably Michael Chabon or somebody is straight-up smarter than Faulkner, but that’s seven different kinds of not the point.