The Corporate Fictioneer Who Cannot “Read”

Mas'ud Zavarzadeh and Donald Morton

ONE

In moments of crisis (when what he believes to be a set of self-evident truths has been put into question), Tobias Wolff relieves himself of the complexities of thinking and coming to conceptual grips with issues by a quick retreat to what he regards to be the bedrock of the “real": raw experience, the literal, the formalism of style. For Wolff, appealing to “experience” (in this case, the moment when he was literally interviewed for the Syracuse University Magazine) is what allows him to evade messy politics (which starts from the moment when an interview is published and takes on its consequences as a public text). It is the appeal to experience that lets him remove the social from sociality (and elevate his own personal interests above collective interests). The “real," however, is not a matter of personal experience, not a private "event," but an effect of history and of the materiality of institutions. But for Wolff, the corporate fictioneer, for example, Vietnam is simply a place where he enriched his “experience." And he delivers his enriched “experience” in his own special “style." Vietnam then becomes not the zone of wars of imperialism, the crisis moment of monopoly capitalism, but an aesthetic site: a workshop for forging a style (in his case, a “style," as we shall explain, that “pays").

The “literal” ("experience"), thinly ("minimally") disguised as “style”, has always served Tobias Wolff as a secure retreat from the social, the historical, and the political economy of wars and class struggles. To him the world is simply a backdrop for his craft, for his monosyllabic corporate prose that transparently SHOWS (rather than explaining or analyzing) “experience” as the bedrock of “self-evident” truth, which he then uses to measure the craziness of the “other." The aestheticization of the political and the suturing of experience have, over the years, proved a very effective strategy for Tobias Wolff. They have enabled him among other things to substitute “style” for thinking and “experience” for historical truth; they have helped him to contain “critiques” of his practices as instances of the craziness of the “other." To him “experience” is beyond critique. In fact Tobias Wolff detests nothing with more passion than critique: we will shortly see what he does with those who critique him.

Wolff has not only used this strategy in effect to evade the political and social issues of the times but has taught many others his lessons of formalist evasion concerning the urgent issues that affect people's lives and has deployed such a pedagogy of evasion and anti-conceptual formalism as the organizing structure of his corporate fictions. However, before producing a symptomatic “reading” of his text, we must situate it in the broader coordinates of the institutional project of the Wolffian pedagogy (of anti-intellectual populism) whose main function is to provide entertainment as an alibi for evading politico-intellectual concerns. We must, in other words, situate his letter of October 30, 1995, in its historical, institutional, and political context.

During the recent scandal in the Creative Writing Program (when it became clear that, contrary to institutional claims, the sexual harassment committed against Jennifer Cotter was not an exception but a repeated pattern in the behavior of Stephen Dobyns), the initial strategy used by the faculty in power (who had benefited from all the “perks” the University had granted them for so long) and most of those whom they had taught (and who hoped one day they too could emulate the masters and enjoy what they enjoy) was to discredit the very charges brought up by Jennifer Cotter by aestheticizing the political. One Creative Writing Program member, therefore, following the Wolffian pedagogy of evasion-by-style, wrote a letter to the editor of the Syracuse Post-Standard declaring that Jennifer Cotter's “charges” against Stephen Dobyns were symptoms of what Wolff calls a “braindead” person. Why? Because, the letter claimed, Ms. Cotter's prose was “bad” and because, according to the Wolffian pedagogy of the formal, it is self-evident that “bad prose” is the mark of the absence of “truth." According to this person, Ms. Cotter's supposedly “bad prose” casts serious doubt on Ms. Cotter's “truth." Consequently, the writer implied (while leaving the “official” conclusion up to the “authorities") that Ms. Cotter's sexual harrassment case was a “bad” case. In this bankrupt pedagogy, then, aesthetics is the test of the truth of the political. This is exactly the strategy Wolff himself deploys in his letter of October 30, 1995: he displaces the political (a discussion of the matter of HIS POWER in the institution) with the aesthetic (a discussion of OUR PROSE STYLE—what he regards to be “bad prose").

The politics of this strategy which is woven into the Wolffian pedagogy of evasion is exactly what we had already described in our letter to Dean Jensen of October 25, 1995. There we explained that this was the pedagogy of narcosis and that it produces in the reader a “false consciousness." This “false consciousness," we further explained, naturalizes reactionary social policies that protect the interests of the ruling class. These fictioneers who deploy aesthetics to numb the consciousnesses of the people and thereby normalize reactionary social policies are the clerks of the ruling class and not critique-al intellectuals: they should not be shaping (as Wolff is) the trajectories of the (literary) humanities in the university.

The founding epistemological move in Wolff's letter of October 30, 1995, is that since we write (what he, in his innocence of all complexity and by taking his own monosyllabic corporate prose as the norm) regards to be “bad prose," there is no truth to our questioning of the politics of his institutional power. Following a tested strategy of the privileged clerks of the ruling class, the truth of our questioning of the politics of his power in the institution is then further discredited by a second move (another level of “proof"): Wolff flashes his wallet and states that we are the powerless who must shut up or otherwise he, with “half” of his “salary," will put us away in an asylum for the “brain dead” and thus forever silence us and all who might have any sympathy with our questioning of his power. In other words, Wolff is deeply satisfied that his access to more money demonstrates his “rightness”: money is the measure of all things for Wolff (CORPORATE FICTION=MONEY). This totalitarian gesture of the use of the power of money to subject those opposed to the ruling power to psychoanalysis and hospitalization, to subject them, in other words, to a forced and not “voluntary" narcosis what in fact constitutes the foundation of the Wolffian aestheticization of politics.

It is also a mark of this totalitarian mind (that cannot deal with intellectual opposition other than by just putting opponents away in dark hospital corners) that it is indifferent to the pain of others. Thus in Wolff's mode of approaching “politics” in the imaginary of his letter (the mode endorsed by a “creative" person who is supposed to be the very model of “sensitivity"), physically challenged citizens (those who suffer from brain illnesses) are used merely to provide an amusing backdrop for his pathetic and cruel “humor." For the corporate fictioneer, illness, suffering, wars, the pain of victims of sexual harrassment [sic.] and other unjust social practices are all merely a backdrop, the scenery against which he unleashes (the violence of) his style, places where his anger erases thinking and where the innocence of experience displaces the complexities of history.

It is the convergence of “money” ("half of my salary"), cruel indifference to the pain of the other (the “brain dead"), and desire to get rid of the other (those who write what is to his personal taste—and shouldn't anyone with common sense “know" “ugly" prose?) that is normalized through the “false consciousness” which is constructed by Wolff's corporate fiction. This is the same “false consciousness" that sends people into a long night of sleep rather than sending them into the streets to protest when Newt Gingrich (another writer of corporate fictions) dismantles Medicare. Of course, like Dobyns, who declared he is economically beyond “need," Wolff does not need Medicare—after all, Wolff declares that with “half of my salary," he can purchase hospitals into which he will put those who question the legitimacy of his institutional power. But of course others do need Medicare... and it is the corporate fictioneer who entertains these needy people (with stories told in a nice “simple"—normal—prose style) who lulls them into forgetfulness of the social by the (dis)simulations of personal experience and thus prevents them from acting against an oppressive capitalism whose only priority is keeping the rate of profit high and which, to accomplish its goals, employs all the diversionary and entertaining devices of TV ads, Dome events, corporate fictions...

We have made this point: the University has provided Tobias Wolff with such an abundance of cash and institutional resources that with only “half his salary" he can put away/displace all his opponents—indeed has been putting away all his opponents by depriving them from any position of power or room to voice their opposition to his practices in the University. Anyone who dares to question his practices is a “braindead" crazy. Unable to critique practices, Wolff instead personalizes issues and in a show of a pathetic lack of ability to think through the issues, he targets individuals by marking their bodies ("braindead"). For him the contestation of ideas in an open and democratic manner is more of a physical crushing of others—an annihilation of persons—than a critique of their practices. To critique, Wolff would need to conceptualize; and to conceptualize, Wolff would need to read and think. These, however, are all essentially alien practices to him and to his pedagogy of evasion.

We have further pointed out that in a university, which is supposed to be dedicated to the freedom of ideas and the equality of its workers, this asymmetry of power is not acceptable. It is not acceptable that there are faculty who receive so much money from the University that with half of their salary they can put away (or even imagine putting away) in mental hospitals those who question their practices.

TWO

Wolff writes that what we have described as a propaganda machine is simply a matter of chance: thus once again, in his simplistic and literal experientialism, he shows his inability to read any prose that does not transparently SHOW experience. In our text, we have marked the campaign blitz not as a singular moment, but rather as the allegory of all the on-going and unjustifiable privileges endowed by Syracuse University on corporate fictioneers and the institutional space and resources given to them. We know the “literal facts." But the literal facts/the bare experience do not constitute the historical truth which is the only subject of our concern: we are interested in the moment when, the manner in which, and conditions under which discourses become social practices and acquire public consequences.

A “little” narrative

In the spring of 1995, the former chair of the
English department, responding to our
comments on the publicity blitz then under way, 
told us that the “interviews” were done before 
the scandal; but he added that he (the former 
chair) had advised the College not to publish 
them... that, in other words, he had advised 
the College to show some sensitivity to the 
sexual harrassment [sic.] case then unfolding 
and to the anguish of the victim...

But (and this is our point that escapes Wolff's literal literacies) the College did not care about anything other than its investment in corporate fictioneers.... It cares only to continue to prop up its heavy investment in corporate fictioneers who cannot read beyond the literal level and get stuck in “raw experience" and populist aesthetics. So, yes, we know the literal “facts": we had a discussion about them with the adminstrator [sic.] then in charge. However, we have used those “literal" facts to show that there is another dimension to them: that they exceed their literalness and become figures of catachresis..., tropes of metalepsis,... they become a theater for the representation of power. It is surely a sad commentary on the level of intellectual practices in the Creative Writing Program, in the Department of English, in the College of Arts and Sciences, in Syracuse University as a whole, that at the very time when people across the US and around the world are discussing the O. J. Simpson case not on the literal level but as an allegory of race relations and the brutal and unjust use of power in established institutions, Wolff and his College and University supporters want to shut down any kind of reading except literal reading!

Our point (to repeat) is that even at a time when the pedagogical practices of the Creative Writing Program were (and continue to be) questioned (in the Dobyns' case of sexual harrassment), [sic.] instead of questioning and interrogating those practices, the College/University merely redoubled its supportive investment by giving that Program enhanced visibility. Wolff's letter says the appearance of the articles in the Syracuse University Magazine and the College's Connections should be examined strictly as a question of the timing of the interviews (that is, to be “literal" about it, all was planned before the Dobyns scandal). Even if we take that approach, was the wake of that scandal then the appropriate time to continue those plans? What, in other words, is the relation of the University's public relations campaign to protect its investment to the actual pedagogical climate within the Program? In other words, it does not matter WHEN the interviews took place: what matters is WHEN they were published and WHY they were published WHEN they were. We have argued that the time of publication was a function not just of “the natural course of events” (a mere literal chronology) but of the institutional power of corporate fictioneers and their University supporters. Saving “reputations," avoiding personal “embarrassment," repairing the damage done to the Creative Writing Program and its University investors by “bad press," took precedence over the pedagical [sic.] priorities of teaching the lessons about the serious social issue of sexual harassment. A university is a place where pedagogical and intellectual questions (not raw institutional power justified simply by who has the fatttest [sic.] purse) should have priority. But instead Syracuse University is a place where Wolff with half of his salary can buy up, displace, hospitalize, silence all opposition.

After all, the University could have stopped, postponed, refused to publish the interviews. (Such a course was indeed suggested by the former chair of the English Department.) There was nothing (except preserving the power of the corporate fictioneer and the zeal of the Syracuse University administration to keep him happy) that made publication of these interviews necessary at the very time of pain and suffering of the victim and at the time of pedagogical crisis in the Creative Writing Program and in Department of English at large. The time of publication, the orchestration of not one, not two, but a series of texts AFTER the sexual harrassment [sic.] case is what we are discussing. We are saying these “literalities” exceed their literalness... and such an excess is always a mark of power. Of course, such questions as we have been raising and are raising here, like most others that should be raised in a University, have become taboo in Syracuse University, its College of Arts and Sciences, its Department of English. No one dares to raise them, because Wolff, with half of his salary... will put them in a hospital... only twisted persons (queers and dark Bolsheviks) with twisted writing would—in their “afflictions"—dare to do that.

THREE

The same literal, simplistic reading which shows Wolff unable to conceptualize any mode of understanding of language other than transparent common sense reflected in monosyllabic corporate prose shows in his description of the Dean's window. Once again Wolff uses a literal fact/experience (the chronology of an upcoming creative writing conference) to displace the historical truth. The question (to repeat the already repeated) is not the chronological (that is, factual) coincidence of the display and the conference. The question is the materiality of the display; its violence to other modes of writing has institutional, historical, and intellectual consequences. The question is that the College/University should thoughtfully set intellectual priorities and decide what is displayed and where in relation to those priorities. It is our point that Wolff's institutional influence (so evident in the cash and the resources) is such that his interests always automatically without regard to the “other” constitute the priority of the College/University. Now to spell this out more simply: the display window on the third floor of the Hall of Languages is NOT a salesman's display case. That window is for the public marking of the faculty's intellectual, critical, and scholarly work. As someone devoted to manipulating the College's resources for various promotional purposes, Wolff knows better than anyone that there are many other places for displaying works associated with a conference.

Our point was (and this is what escapes the literal mind of the corporate fictioneer) that the Creative Writing Program and its norms of entertainment can only be made visible and predominant by putting the Syracuse University faculty's intellectual and critique-al work in eclipse. The occupation of the Dean's window is an allegory of a specific kind of

é c r i t c i d e.

It signals the killing off of that mode of writing that does not earn money in order to make room for the writing that brings money in. It represents the substitution of profit-making writing for un-profitable critique-al writing opposed to mere profit.

FOUR

The aestheticization of politics and the installing of anti-intellectual populism in the place of critique-al thinking, the displacement of the excessive and metaleptic with televisional transparency, allows the corporate fictioneer to obscure the questions we have raised in our text. Those questions are: In a university's humanities division, why is a corporate fictioneer given so much in the way of institutional power, space, and financial resources that he can now set the agenda? Why is he allowed to dictate the terms as the model of practices in the humanities? Why has the corporate fictioneer's soporific muzak become the foreground discourse of the humanities at Syracuse University? Isn't the role of the humanities (especially at this historical moment of the vigorous resurgence of retrograde forces in US and other Western cultures) the role of resisting and not embracing the corporate culture of the commodity and its underlying principle of “anything for profit"? Is not the role of the humanities to bring about critical thinking and question the priorities of the corporate with its monosyllabic prose and simplistic thinking, with its preoccupation with huge profits (that gives twice as much money to certain professors as they need)? Why is a corporate fictioneer given so much money when the average salary of faculty in this university is far below the average salary of faculty in other universities (while administrators salaries are high) and when the University library refuses to buy critical books and periodicals? Is not the education of critique-al citizens the goal of humanities pedagogy or is this announced goal simply a sound-bite for use in recruitment videos? If the University is committed to what it puts in its public announcements and in the pious lectures of its adminstrators, [sic.] then why have the texts of corporate fiction (that entertain and amuse and dull the minds of readers instead of bringing about a critical understanding) become the norm of the literary humanities at Syracuse University? Why does the College/University continue to support this norm when recent events have so clearly demonstrated its social bankruptcy and complete emptiness?

These are the questions and no amount of monosyllabic corporate prose will obscure them—not now, not in the future, not even after Tobias Wolff has terminated all intellectual opposition with his fat and flashy wallet. Truth is not a matter of style or “half” of a corporate fictioneer's salary: it is the outcome of relentless critique-al pressure on populist practices which rely on a common sense that merely serves the interests of the status quo.

The main question we have raised is that of power in the university. And this is not such an alien concept, a point which even Wolff shows he recognizes—in his letter of October 30, 1995—by pointing to the power of his purse to show contempt for thinking and by opening the letter with the tell-tale sign of struggle:

"I surrender."

The literal and the joke exceed themselves and overflow with meaning that transcends the minimalist reading, the only kind that Wolff is comfortable with. The metalepsis (implicating power relations) is there; but, as usual, entertainer Wolff goes not for serious intellectual analysis or socially responsible explanation (that would only lead to “trouble"—it wouldn't “pay") but for the popular and easy joke ("I surrender") and so the opaque allegory of power that haunts him also escapes him.

PUT AN END TO DISCRIMINATION AGAINST INTELLECTUAL AND CRITICAL CULTURE WORKERS!

★