The Chris Moeller Archives

Performing an act of literature: A modern survey of modern Mid-American letters

One of the great writers of the last century, Nelson Algren, inspirer of Hemingway, drinking companion to Studs Terkel and Roger Ebert, and the once-dubbed “bard of the stumblebum” believed that Americans were, in his words, “a people with too many nervous judges.”

What he meant by it was that too few of us would interfere with established “law” and choose instead humanity and literature where required. John Brown served as a hero to Algren. “Old Brown of Osawatomie,” the author wrote, “didn’t know that nobody was going to give him a banquet for pulling the judge (of his crimes against the state) off the bench down into the dock.” Algren believed it was the “peculiar responsibility of the author in all ages of men” to pull the proverbial judge into the dock. That is, literature should be socially- and politically-engaged. It should flatter no one in a position of power. He believed that widespread acceptance by a staid and complacent establishment was antithetical to the value of the writer.

It's in this spirit that I proudly announce having my book, "Lies My Blogger Told Me," rejected for submission into the Des Moines Public Library. No letters of declination were sent. No phone calls were dialed, or courteously returned. Library policy in respect to self-submissions reads that one uniformly agrees to surrender forever a copy of the book for consideration by the library system with no guarantee of adoption, and there will be no further communication on the topic. If you don’t see your book in a search of the electronic catalogue within 60 days, it’s somewhere leveling a workbench.

So a Des Moines-based writer's non-fiction accounts of the city and the region over a decade and a half, collected in an inimitable assemblage of essays and opinion, volunteered gratis, are not available for perusal at the Des Moines public library. What record will there be of living here decades from now? What duty assigned to a library is more important than preserving a record of its community and its times? To paraphrase one Ignatius J. Reilly, I apparently lack some particular perversion which today’s librarian is seeking. This is my company and I embrace it. Literature’s Ignatius once worked in the employ of the public library. He later had his library card revoked.

The municipality of Des Moines has the library it deserves. Their deputies don’t care for the local talent when, in actual fact, a medium-sized wing of the downtown branch should be dedicated to that and that alone. It's a snug fit for a town that only impersonates other cities, and has no personality of its own. "Dead" Moines takes everything at its pace, risks nothing, obsessed above all with steady economic growth. It's a nest of accountants, actuaries, and vipers. It's content to be, like its professional baseball team, junior cubs from larger bears, of a larger city-- a more important place, rather than a thing that is all its own. More interested in becoming the Portland, Oregon of the Plains than it is in any other place becoming a Des Moines.

Which company do you work for, this city asks? Which company sponsors you? Who do you belong to? Freelancers have value to Des Moines only so far as they reinforce, to the magazines that grade cities, the nationwide trend towards a synthetic Bohemia. Gather your share of the artists, they’re good for the local economy, but don’t actually give them anything. Hide the homeless. We’re Middle America, we don’t have homeless. Put the black men in prison. Almost half of them. Keep the South Side Chicagoans on the South Side of Chicago. Keep Moeller’s book hidden behind the counter. Was it my passionate failure to endorse the American political duopoly? And its war machinations? That derives a chunk of its affected legitimacy from our state's repugnant caucuses? Was it the JFK conspiracy stuff? Tell the truth, was it the defense of OJ?

Mediocrity, Algren wrote, wishes to bite something that will not bite back. I’m proud to absorb the munching into my meaty flesh.

posted by CM @ 6:25 PM