Tom & Alissa

This guy has so many bees in his bonnet that it’s a bit hard to read the article; apparently, Brooklyn is at fault for what he considers maudlin “wonder-filled” prose.

This is the central idea in his essay:

Unfortunately, it’s false to all human experience to find “growth” in tragedy. In fact, the dull truth is that pain is tautological. The only thing suffering teaches us is that we are capable of suffering.

I haven’t lived a full life yet, but I’ve experience my fair share of suffering and pain; I believe that stories have the potential to help people live through their pain and come out on the other side. People do it. It’s not crazy, and it’s not immature or pie-in-the-sky to believe that we can grow through pain, become closer to our fellow man, and see the loveliness.

Now, I realize that lots of people don’t like the books he cites in the article (Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Chabon, whose latest he clearly has not read, Dave Eggers, even A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - although weirdly, he finds Jonathan Lethem to be an exception). Fine. Some of these books are not to people’s taste, have stories that are too spun out or meandering, or in Eggers’ case, are wildly self-congratulatory.

But in reading the article, you begin to see that his real issue is with beauty in fiction; beauty that transcends tragedy, that dares to dream a little. Call me naive, but I don’t think a sense of wonder excludes the truth.

And the whole Brooklyn thing is just so weird. (I love how he says that “Brooklyn’s always been the overlooked sibling among the boroughs.” Really? Not Staten Island? Have you ever actually left Manhattan, sir?)