Tick, Tick, Tick
This year’s Deutscher Buchpreis was awarded to Kim de’l Horizon, a self-professed non-binary author who doesn’t really need to profess anything since he looks like Conchita Lopez. To quote Jerry Seinfeld, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Being gay myself, I do mean it. That’s what made my recent online experience so puzzling. I commented on an article referencing it, that nowadays literary prizes and success have turned into ticking identity boxes and celebrating causes instead of literature. Or let’s put it this way: your book might be good as it is, but referencing a particular issue or being in a social bracket that’s currently hot makes literary success much more likely. Salman Rushdie is controversially persecuted for his Satanic Verses, a book that few of his supporters might have read in the first place, myself included. It culminated in a stabbing during a public performance.
The fact that getting stabbed doesn’t earn you a Nobel prize (it was awarded to Annie Ernaux) gives us hope you don’t need to be a martyr to earn it. Literary prizes are not humanitarian aid: your sexual identity, skin color or nationality are nowadays all meant to make you special and distinguished from others, but the sad true many won’t face is that identity doesn’t make up for talent and does not warrant success or media attention. There are also examples like Amanda Gorman, who got into the spotlight because of Joe Biden and his posse. However good she might be she must be aware that in that whole picture, her work doesn’t really matter because it’s not what the whole thing is about anyway. If anything, it makes you admire people like the Nobel laureate Louise Glück even more, for the lack of melodramatic demeanor and overbearing theatricality.
Well. I did not yet read Kims book so this isn’t about it. It’s what it stands for: political correctness, populism and decadence. A sign of the times instead of beauty transcending time. Political statements instead of profound voices. Privilege attained through suffering. This isn’t a Disney fairytale: a princess waiting for a saving kiss isn’t about misogyny. It’s about little girls wanting to wear a plastic tiara and dance with a prince. You shouldn’t project your own biases on their unspoilt souls. Give it a rest and let them be kids and make their own mistakes. Preventing your daughter from watching Cinderella (as admitted by Keira Knightley) won’t prevent her from getting knocked up at 18. So let’s all stop behaving like it really works. We just want to convince ourselves it will because woke media suggests it does. After I commented on the celebration of non-binary writers, I was blocked. So much for the freedom of speech, since there was no offence intened, just frustration at the state of affairs that had nothing to do with literature whatsoever. But someone out there decided I should be silenced, showing the aforementioned freedom in what we like to call the free world is restricted by a digital barb wire even sharper than the one Viktor Orban uses to keep the immigrants out of Hungary.
If you know what’s good for you, you’ll think twice before writing a Facebook status or a Tweet. Because getting canceled by identity crusaders might make you sympathize Donald Trump. It’s superfluous to say I hate writing about this because it’s not the first time it’s happening. As much as I want to believe for the cause to be the right and snsible direction, it makes me question my loyalties and throw them into the ideological bin. Is it still worth fighting for? Are we allowed to disagree or is the world one large echo chamber where we only hear our own voices? Maybe the train for a meaningful change has already left the station. Not because it had to, but because we did nothing to stop it. Since it requires to reach down to the muddy bottom of deep socio-ideological chasm that’s been standing between us and common sense for so long we hardly remember what it looked like before polite disagreement became an endangered political species.
To make things even more silly and disrespectful, Kim pulled a little performance while receiving the award on stage, by shaving his head in solidarity with Iranian women, as if something like that will help anyone but him (I know I’m supposed to say “them”, but I won’t) and put even more spotlight on his commiseration that turns someone’s genuine suffering in a country far away into a PR stunt. It reminded me on the spamming on Monica Bellucci’s Instagram profile that’s being bombarded by bots trying to make her engage in the issue. Modern society loves “grand” gestures because they’re harmless, since those who make them are safely tucked away at home and can simply change the channel when news from Mariupol ruin their appetite. A cynical attitude like this might not be very popular, since the first victim of freedom usually is free speech as we have witnessed repeatedly since we unilaterally decided that those challenging our own values or opinions don’t deserve to have a voice. It might be a voice we dislike, but ignorance won’t make it go away, rather persist until it has the upper hand to repay the disfavour. I’m too old to be depressed about this: my skin got thick as the result of having to engage in debates.
It shows the very core of human beings: how far we’re willing to go to prove a point, at what price and who we are willing to sacrifice for it. I don’t particularly care for Kim de’l Horizon. It has nothing to do with his writing. But it sure raises a question of perception of literature. Does it have to be a spectacle to be acknowledged? Does it need to be controversial to be appreciated? I’m too young (I hope) to qualify as eligible for the Diogenes school of thought, but the way things are going, it might be a good idea to buy a preemptive barrel. Better safe than sorry. And if the Deutscher Buchpreis laureate is really insisting on helping women in need, he might consider donating the substantial award sum to help the victims. Of course, I might be wrong, but something tells me that’s unlikely to happen.
