Reading That Garbage
Salvage: Readings From the Wreck. Dionne Brand. 2024.
One way I think we all went crazy in the last decade or so (there are so many ways we all went crazy) is that willingly or not, we allowed Trump’s insane little verbal tics and aphorisms to enter all of our individual lexicons. I can’t even tell you how often I use the phrase “many people are saying,” or “many such cases” or “[X] is someone who’s done a fantastic job, and people are appreciating it more and more.” One in particular that’s been rattling around in my brain for years was from a tweet, reading (paraphrased, which is all he deserves): “The Coca-Cola company is not happy with me! Whatever, I’ll keep drinking that garbage.”
I drink more than my share of Diet Coke, something I’m not especially proud of; I’m sure it’s poisoning my body in all kinds of ways and only time will tell. I hate to give our once and future president credit for anything, but there’s an odd little insight here into the way we allow ourselves vices, all the time, despite the insults to both our literal well-being and our dignity (if he has a skill, other than being a talented bully, Trump is truly an expert at showcasing American vices). I know it’s bad for me. I know the people who make it don’t wish me anything good. It’s garbage. I’m still doing it though. “I know it’s bad, I’m going to do it anyway though” might as well be the defining philosophy of Trumpism.
This phrase occurred to me several times as I read this (very good) book of criticism. While I admired the book and Brand’s analysis very much, both got my hackles up a bit, made me defensive, in a way I’m still trying to sort out. I tend to really like postcolonial criticism; probably because at heart I’m a Marxist and I like material explanations for things. Books aren’t just products of individual minds, but are created by entire cultures and long chains of production and economic realities. But what reading this book made me realize is that the postcolonial critics I’ve admired most - namely Edward Said and C.L.R. James - are pretty firmly in the “I’ll keep drinking that garbage” school. Said would never tell you, I think, to stop reading Conrad, or Austen, despite the apologies for empire he found in their work. James would likely not tell you to stop reading Thackery. The uncovering of those apologies make the works more interesting, more resonant, as not just entertaining stories but as the products of and justifications for an entire way of life. Why wouldn’t you, if you want to understand how an empire works, learn about how it justifies itself to itself?
Brand, though, seems to stand firmly on the side of not drinking that garbage once you know it’s garbage. Why would you ever want to drink garbage? Why would you want to read writers who fundamentally don’t believe your humanity is worth centering? What do Austen, or Bronte, or Defoe have to say to a woman from the Caribbean that’s more meaningful than what she has to say about herself? I can’t answer these questions, and I do get the impression that Brand doesn’t expect me to; she wasn’t asking me. What was most interesting (and I think most admirably daring) in her analysis was the way she complicates the readings of even postcolonial literature from the white west. Jean Rhys, according to Brand’s reading, is as guilty as Charlotte Bronte of making excuses for colonizers and silencing the voices of women of color. J.M. Coetzee is as guilty as Daniel Defoe of prioritizing the stories of white adventurers over conquered natives.
As I’ve written in this space before, Austen’s Mansfield Park is my favorite book, despite its lack of fans, and it was bracing to read Brand’s cursory dismissal of it. She finds it tedious, a book with nothing important to say. I think she’s incorrect, and I personally hold to the Oscar Wilde position that art doesn’t necessarily have to say anything important at all. But who I am to say? Brand might be right; Austen is for me in a way it was never for her. Of course it’s easier for me to find value in it. Maybe the garbage is worse for some than for others.
What reasonable people tell you about diets is that what you really need is variety; most foods are okay in reasonable amounts but you never want to eat a lot of one thing or only one thing. That’s no way to live. I’d agree with that when it comes to literature as well. I’m afraid I’m going to keep drinking Diet Coke and I’m going to keep reading Austen, and I’ll tell other people they should too. It shouldn’t be everything, though. It can’t be.