Against criticism
Part of the underlying tension in Diary of a Bad Year surrounds the purpose of criticism. The narrator has been commissioned to write a series of essays which will appear in a German publication called “Strong Opinions.” The essays range in topic from statehood to Al Qaida, Machiavelli to intelligent design, music, and the afterlife. Nearly all express dismay with the political or social caliber of the world as it is now, with little anticipation that things will change. “These are dark times,” he says.
But neither the woman he hires to type his essays – nor her boyfriend – sees the world as he does. The woman encourages him to write about lighter fare, to tell stories about the birds, for example. The boyfriend goes further, and suggests that the narrator’s commitment to protest is a façade:
You put yourself forward as the lone voice of conscience speaking up for human rights and so forth, but I ask myself, if he really believes in these human rights, why isn’t he out in the real world fighting for them? What is his track record? And the answer, according to my researches, is: His track record is not so hot. In fact his track record is virtually blank. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year (197)
It’s not clear what the boyfriend is looking for in his research; but one could hazard a guess: a count of legislation passed, boycotts organized, fundraisers held? Perhaps a product endorsement or two? All things more substantial (more quantitative) than words on a page. The “real world” has no use for words; the “real world” measures everything in money.
Which is, of course, true; we don’t much value words – especially written words – anymore, if in fact we ever did. But it does not necessarily follow from that fact that words are themselves valueless. I suspect quite the opposite is true: we devalue words because they are a threat to our comfort, to our continued sense of well-being in dark times. We devalue words for the same reason that certain governments lock up activists in hidden jails: because unleashed they would wreck havoc on the systems they challenge. The only effective weapon against the word is to abort it before it can reach even one person’s ear.
And so the boyfriend, and many others like him, become convinced by the status quo that words are not the means to change. They become convinced that money and celebrity have more currency in the global market than words, that indeed words have no place in a modern world such as this. Words are archaic, relics of a past that we will not return to, like tuberculosis or polytheism.
It’s as if every potential writer carries a loaded gun, but has been convinced, through many and various methods, that the gun is not, in fact, loaded; that it’s a harmless toy, not worthy even of children, who play with much more sophisticated toys these days. And so every potential writer (every potential critic) tosses the gun aside and walks away, unaware of what they have relinquished.
There is, however, an upside: if at any point someone realizes their error – if at any point they remember the gun was loaded after all – they have only to lift their eyes to see the roads are littered with guns, every one loaded, every one longing to be raised and aimed, every one ready to fire.
