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It caused some consternation when I declared in this piece from last year that the Canadian poet Rupi Kaur is a more interesting writer than the literary establishment is generally willing to grant. Maybe the headline is a little trollish, but I stand by the central argument, which is that technology—the internet and cellphones and social media—will, in time, prove a catalyst that changes our language and, in turn, our literature.
Technology is affecting the way we think, and Rebecca Watson’s little scratch is a novel that captures this. Though rightly termed “experimental”—the book is told not in verse, exactly, but in scattered bursts of language that defy easy description—there’s something here the reader will recognize: |
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Isn’t this how we think these days, the digital time in the section quoted above the narrator’s quick glimpse at her phone? Are you reading this missive on your phone? Have you glanced at the hour, the weather app, the news alert? I admit the linguistic play seemed off-putting at first, but I quickly came to appreciate Watson’s depiction of how the modern mind moves.
If little scratch looks difficult to read, it teaches you how to navigate it. The eye adapts to its odd configurations. This tidily echoes how technology itself is teaching us a new way to read, the swipe of our finger almost a unit of poetic measurement. Unlike Kaur, Watson lets the words flow, jumbled and urgent as our thoughts are, like Kerouac and his scrolls.
The narrator’s namelessness gives her an everywoman quality, as does her job; she’s an assistant in a newsroom, but what’s salient here is her lack of power inside a white-collar institution. The novel’s principal engagement is with trauma—the scratch of the title is a physical thing, a tic that has to do with an incident of violence the narrator is mostly failing to reckon with—but I thought it a great example of the contemporary workplace novel: |
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This isn’t a long book; that’s part of how the author is able to pull it off. It covers the events of a single day, and I’m not sure any writer could sustain this particular formal experiment over a longer period of fictional time—whether a reader could exist inside a character’s brain, synapses firing, for a week, a month, a year. But it charms. The book’s unconventional strategy fell away as I read; I cared about the narrator as one does a well-drawn character. She scratches at her skin throughout the book, and eventually I felt it.
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Quarantine has been trying for many serious reasons, so it’s a small matter, but I miss art. I think of going to the museum or the movies as I do about going to the gym: imperative for mental health. I can work out on the bedroom floor, I can watch a film on my computer, but I can’t replicate the experience of wandering through the Met or the MoMA or the Brooklyn Museum, located mere blocks from my home but as inaccessible as Mars. Books about art are an option, but one of the things I most love about art is that it offers a respite from books, which are so much a part of how I make a living. Sometimes I don’t want to read; I just want to look.
This piece by Barry Schwabsky investigates the experience of looking at art on Instagram. The critic begins with what I’ve long taken for granted: “reproductions (whether printed or digital) just don’t do the trick of communicating a work’s innate materiality, however rarefied or seemingly intangible that materiality may be.” With that caveat, the author acknowledges that he’s found whatever we’re looking for in art—stimulus, solace, diversion, mystery—by following artists on the digital platform.
His experience has been distinct from mine. I find the art I respond to on Instagram tends to be photography, which meets my eye’s expectations for the medium. Cindy Sherman is adept at using the technology to create horrific self-portraits. There are many striking images of architecture in particular that I enjoy seeing in the feed between my friends’ cappuccinos and smiling children. I follow many museums on Instagram, which their social media staff use to react to political or cultural events or just to celebrate some prize in their collection. Perhaps my own conviction that reproductions won’t suffice is just getting in my way.
That said, The New York Times recently offered me that particular, much-missed experience of art. The critic Jason Farago looked deeply at a woodcut by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. It’s akin to attending an exhibition; the digital design—it zooms in and out to focus on various details—invites you to look deeply, and there’s just enough text to give you insight and information. It’s a smart and thrilling piece of criticism, almost public service—a bit of transcendence in a moment when we could really use it. |
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| Speaking of art, next Tuesday, I’ll be joined by the critic Kyle Chayka to talk to Matthew Prinzing, one of the directors of The Gates, the 2007 documentary on the installation Christo and Jeanne-Claude erected in Central Park in 2003. It’s the concluding event in TNR’s Summer Film Festival; please join us! |
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| I was appropriately chilled by Nick Martin’s look at how the one percent are dealing with life during quarantine. |
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| Molly Jong-Fast’s writing about her family is difficult for me to resist. |
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I can’t get much high art, so I’ve spent my quarantine with its inverse. I’ve re-watched Designing Women, 30 Rock, and Seinfeld while I go about my seemingly endless chores (so many meals! so much laundry!). Sitcoms become interesting time capsules, and Lauren Michele Jackson’s look at Seinfeld from a contemporary perspective was illuminating.
Text Message is a twice-monthly column in newsletter form. Subscribe. Tell your friends. Drop me a line, at ralam@tnr.com. Stay healthy; stay home!
—Rumaan Alam, contributing editor |
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