"Opinions from Nowhere" by Jose Diego Medina
So little context is needed in the glut of messages (so much messaging), media (so much content), online lit culture (so much discourse) that’s shoved into us, day in and day out. All you really need is a gut reaction and an inability to stop. And if that passes the days, makes the despair that much more gossipy, who am I to yuck our collective yum? Or mental demise? We all dig our own holes.
But then there are those digging holes in some of the most powerful and influential media outlets in the world, passing off shaky opinions as informed enlightenment. That’s when it really begins to feel like a little too much.
This was the effect created by Pamela Paul’s recent opinion piece in the New York Times. In “There’s More Than One Way to Ban a Book”, Paul draws a line that she thinks connects the increase in book banning, led by conservative groups and Republicans, to a perception of culture policing by the “illiberal left,” which in turn inspires self-censorship on the part of the publishing industry.
“Though the publishing industry would never condone book banning, a subtler form of repression is taking place in the literary world, restricting intellectual and artistic expression from behind closed doors, and often defending these restrictions with thoughtful-sounding rationales. As many top editors and publishing executives admit off the record, a real strain of self-censorship has emerged that many otherwise liberal-minded editors, agents and authors feel compelled to take part in.”
Some expressions of these “thoughtful-sounding rationales” are: sensitivity readers, diffusing controversial material in the editorial process, and being responsive to online criticism of controversial choices. This is concerning to Paul given publishing’s history of sharing widely “ideas and narratives that are worthy of our engagement, even if some people might consider them unsavory or dangerous, and for standing its ground on freedom of expression.” She gives examples of books that faced cultural challenges and that are now artistic touchstones: from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Birded Sings to, more recently, Mike Pence’s book deal with Simon and Schuster. Yes, even the great public intellectual and well-known literary artist Mike Pence is not safe these days.
You might say, but, hmm, wait a minute—one of these is not like the others. Yes, and that’s the problem. Later, Paul discusses the constraints of self-censorship that have been adopted by the publishing industry in response to the recent criticism. She states that “even when a potentially controversial book does find its way into print, other gatekeepers in the book world — the literary press, librarians, independent bookstores — may not review, acquire or sell it, limiting the book’s ability to succeed in the marketplace.” It is a mind-boggling twist of rhetoric, sending logic flying out into space, that allows Paul to state with apparent seriousness that the gatekeepers of culture are book critics, local booksellers, and middle school librarians. Are these the agents preventing the free-form flow of ideas and caging provocative thought?
Somehow in this world view, the actual companies and people who acquire, edit, and distribute books in service of the market, the success within this market then dictating what types of future artists will be let into the fold are not the gatekeepers. For Paul it is not worth exploring how the traditional providers of independent thought and free speech are currently concentrated to five major publishers that dominate the book market (and which will tick down to four if Penguin Random House manages to successfully fight the Department of Justice's current lawsuit preventing it from acquiring Simon and Schuster). Paul also does not mention that the majority of those working within the publishing industry have historically been overwhelmingly white and, until fairly recently been led by an industry-wide opinion that “Black books don’t sell as well as white books.” Nowhere in this vaunting of the industry’s standard in diverse and free thought is it mentioned that around 70% of those working within this industry self-identify as white. How can open diversity of thought and person be the celebrated mission here when the reflection in the mirror is of a different ideal? This is not even touching the class impediments of middle to lower-tier editors working within the publishing industry who earn low wages compared to the cost of living, work long hours in an insular world that usually esteems the “right” credentials, preapproved by the “right” institutions. But, no, those aren’t bars to bang against because publishers are far from the gatekeepers in the world of Pamela Paul’s opinion piece. They share words, no?
Journalist and media critic, Jay Rosen, has a term he applies to the insistent need within newsrooms to be neutral, he calls it the view from nowhere. The view from nowhere (or bothsidesism) believes that a person can be something like a tabula rasa, operating from some spotless middle, free and clear of the stains of opinion. This ignores the fact that journalists (possibly supreme court justices, maybe?) have always functioned as an interpreter of fact and context, digesting and disseminating the information of any given moment, comparing it to what has been, and deciphering what it could mean, for the benefit of the public. Rosen believes that relying on this practice of making one’s self a blank space sets up an impossible dynamic between newsmakers, the media environment, and the audience, leading to unhealthy practices and skewed realities.
Paul’s skewed reality seems to be operating from a similar mindset as old-school journalism. In her view publishers don’t work for themselves but toward a lovely middle ground where all meet in an open field called freedom of expression. So great is free speech in the literature that there is no—nor has there ever been—a need for, say, mediation between creator, idea, and public. Yet, anyone who has ever worked in an editorial capacity knows that editing is, at its most essential, a form of mediation and that the most honest editorial practices recognize that personal taste and opinion are elements to be aware of in the process. A personal history of taste and opinion partly guides each side of the editorial relationship, making it a delicate balance of potentially eye-opening negotiations for both sides. You would think that Paul, who until recently was the editor of The New York Times Book Review, would be aware of that.
Paul also doesn’t take a moment to consider how in the consolidated world that is mainstream publishing, these benevolent publishers and high-ranking editors might have a few wee blindspots. It might just be possible that such an industry might not be fully aware of the heavy conversations happening outside galas, conferences, and pitch meetings. Of course, this isn’t to say that there aren’t internal reckonings happening within the Big Five, or that there aren’t amazing, actually independent publishers out there taking actual risks on art and artists challenging form, thought, and expression. This is only to say that a statement that makes mainstream publishing the bastion of spreading diverse ideas is lazy on the outside, and utterly classist on the inside.
But awareness, and the context that triggers it, is not really what Paul is interested in. Or better said, hers is an awareness that takes a slice and makes it the whole. I often find that that is the case in opinions against “the far left” and their critical habits. People like Paul usually kill their arguments immediately when they speak of “the far left” or “the illiberal left” because what they really mean is woke millennials or social justice worriers or liberals with a 401K and an excruciating sense of shame, or the other scary radical imps that dance around in minds traumatized by the Cold War. Anyone immersed any amount of time in true leftist media would know enough to recognize that ride-or-die leftists would not live their lives forever tweeting about the public outcries Paul finds to be overkill, like problematic bunnies in childrens books or bad book deals. They’re busy still licking wounds from Bernie Sanders's 2020 campaign, trying to mainstream working-class politics, lighting candles to Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky, or making memes about how Nancy Pelosi couldn’t convince a paper bag to vote for a Democrat.
Paul’s main gripe is not really with censorship or self-censorship either. It's not her interest to know what, to paraphrase Paul, this caution born of recent experience could mean in the context of the last few years. She dances around but never fully names the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and the resulting changes that were demanded of institutions nationwide, book publishing being just one of them. Paul’s main interest is in power, and who gets to demand what. Her fear is the fear of the system that has always been and is now being asked to update itself at a pace more comparable to the money it's taking in.
And to allow Paul some context, I’m sure when you’ve been immersed and mentored within an insular institution it can seem like a personal challenge when a different way of operating is asked. It probably is personal. Quick change can seem too quick when change so slow you barely notice it is the expectation. And there are many instances when collective outrage can go too far, when we demand from one person or situation a reckoning that is better applied to the underlying mechanisms that created it. We can acknowledge that there can be a hive mentality to justice online while also acknowledging that “cancel culture” is not the ravaging #1 social disease. The use of the word discourse is. And sure, maybe there has been an increase in sensitivity to certain topics and words but Paul doesn’t even try to detail what problems she sees arising from self-censorship within literature. She admits “that not every book deserves to be published” but fails to deepen the admission with an example or even a thought experiment. Because even presenting the possibility that certain books shouldn’t be published does cast a shadow on the eternal light of freedom of expression, doesn’t it? Never mind—look over! Instead, Paul chooses to shame those who are not actively banning lists of published books from public spaces.
Paul does not bother to deal with anything that might speak of ambiguity. This is initially made clear in her connection of Nabokov and Angelou to Pence. And when she doesn’t, giving a chiding example of a protest against a book deemed anti-trans, well, those instances are so personal, so fraught, so meaningful in this moment, that simplifying it to censorship does to human beings exactly what Pamela Paul does not want to be done to the abstract concept of freedom of speech. For issues so important she allows no context.
So, as it is, any faith in her argument, however sloppy it is, would require context from some (a wholesale faith in those feeding the book market with the best product possible, at least according to Pollyanna) and those that need none (the angry, mean, radical leftists who can’t stop banning, no, sorry, I mean, complaining on the internet). It feels like all that’s being examined is how annoyed Paul is with the internet, which, fair enough, but then let’s just say that and save everyone from bad interpretations made to look considered. In taking an expansive view of the state of culture it's always better to define your terms, your point of view, otherwise, in the service of neutrality and the greater good, you begin to slip into that bad faith ground zero of an inflexible opinion. And isn’t that too what Paul hates most about the haters?
To recontextualize how Paul ends her piece—with most of the chastizing weight balanced onto the illiberal left: Bad faith arguments, we’re better than this.
Jose Diego Medina is an editor at Epiphany. His fiction has appeared in Carve Magazine. He lives in Saint Paul, MN with his partner and their sleepy pup, Tito.
