Post Episode Conversations

Money was also a theme in all the authors’ segments: the huge amount that the golf habit consumes; the fact that nerds became somewhat fashionable in the 1980s when the economy shifted in ways that put many of them on top; Hawley’s feeling that fame and money are the true American obsessions; and Jennings’ discussion of how the commercialization of country music inevitably “sanded it down.”

Once you get beyond having what we might refer to as a solid middle class life, does money make things better, or does it degrade things, as in the case of the authentic quality of country music?

All the authors on Episode #6 talked about class and all their books addressed the issue of class in America to a lesser or greater extent, each in its different way.

How do you think the issue of class plays itself out in American literature, and in the broader culture as well?

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Early in his segment Hemon strikes a note that reverberates throughout the rest of the show – that he and many others have “an ambiguous relationship with America.” Dan particularizes this when he says that he senses in Hemon’s writing and interviews the idea that “Americans are somewhat innocently or naïvely blank about the rest of the world, even today.”

In the discussion about a writer’s putative role as an educator, Hemon says “I really have no educational interest [when I write] . . . it’s the Americans’ problem if they don’t know about other lands . . . I’ve never thought for a moment that somehow I’m the one that’s supposed to represent Bosnian culture to Americans, or to anyone . . . .”

Clearly, Hemon feels strongly about this from his point of view as a writer. But, from a broader point of view, is he correct? Is it just America’s problem if Americans don’t know about and understand other lands and cultures, or does it in fact become the world’s problem?

At one point Winchester suggests that in rejecting the labels, respectively, of “Bosnian” or “Lebanese” writer, Hemon and Alameddine may themselves have essentialized about “Americans” on the program.
But Winchester himself says that “much of the flyover country here [in America] is people who are not in the slightest bit interested [in literature or the rest of the world], you know it’s game shows, and afternoon TV . . .”
Also, he tells a story about meeting a Chinese woman in a remote part of China who asks him to tell her everything he knows about Trollope. He then says “you wouldn’t find that in the middle of America, ‘can you tell me about Ivo Andrić [the Nobel Prize winning Bosnian author of The Bridge on the Drina (1945)], [or] can you tell me all about a great Lebanese writer,’ but you would find it in China, thank heavens.”

What do you think?

Both Hemon and Alameddine strongly reject the proposition that their books should serve to educate their readers about their (Hemon’s and Alameddin’s) individual cultural backgrounds – which are Bosnian, and Lebanese, respectively.

On the other hand, Winchester suggests that they will be read as representing their cultures whether they like it or not, and that people can get something valuable out of that kind of reading.

What role, if any, does or should an author have in educating her readers?