A Healthy Disdain for American Literature

I do have disdain for American literature. But it’s healthy, because I believe in creating alternative art as a mode of critiquing the art that came before. I think most writing is so terrible. I think television writing, for example, is so far ahead of what we’re creating in terms of literature. I think music across the board–I’m not just talking about pop music–is so far ahead of what we are creating in lit. One of the reasons I think that is because the creators in those genres and in those forms have had to democratize their art. And what writers think that means is, Dumb that shit down. Writers think, If you’re going to write a paragraph that’s going to take into consideration the life of fourteen-year-old girl who lives in Belzoni, Mississippi, right next to a creek, they think, Oh, I’m going to have to dumb down my writing. But that’s bullshit. The problem is, you don’t have to dumb it down. You have to do the reverse of dumb it down.

Hairpin pal Kiese Laymon talks about his disdain for American literature, writing to kids, and time travel in The Paris Review. His books are out now. [The Paris Review]