Literary Introverts Versus Extroverts
AN ONGOING BATTLE
(cover to the French version of a Robert McAlmon memoir about the 1920’s Lost Generation)
TWO THINGS recently caught my attention.
FIRST was a quote from Susan Sontag giving her perspective on articulate writing.
It’s not ‘natural’ to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little – have few verbal means. Eloquence – thinking in words – is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality.
The point of view, clearly, of an introvert. In many ways indicative of the classic stereotype of a literary person. (My own opinion is that facility with language comes with being among people, out in the world, especially in a vocal, even contentious environment. Will Shakespeare, actor, business partner and playwright, is a classic example. When I bartended in a tough Detroit saloon, loud debates and arguments were the norm. Not to mention my days in the loud and contentious writers troupe Underground Literary Alliance.)
THE SECOND literary item which caught my attention was this book review by Ryan Ruby in the Fall 2025 Bookforum, of a biography by Francesca Wade of Gertrude Stein, which embodies current establishment thinking regarding the Lost Generation in Paris in the 1920’s. In the essay, Ernest Hemingway receives one dismissive mention. Proto-Beat Robert McAlmon, a central figure of the scene as writer, publisher and motivator, is not even a thought.
The gushing over Gertrude Stein meanwhile is that of a firehose.
(So that’s who we blame!)
WHAT’S GOING ON?
Any excuse is proffered to justify Stein’s inaccessible prose.
But when Wade is confronted by writing she doesn’t understand, curiosity rather than resentment wins the day. As she gets deeper into Stein’s epic, Wade finds herself “hooked by its rhythms” and “eager to follow Stein’s restless sentences as they quest toward conclusion,” an experience she describes as “intoxicating.” Though never credulous toward her notoriously “self-mythologizing” subject, Wade argues that the best way to read Stein is to “trust her.”
(Would Ryan Ruby or Francesca Wade extend the same indulgence toward American populist authors like Erskine Caldwell and Aben Kandel, whose rough-hewn writing styles can be off-putting to refined sensibilities, including, or especially, graduates of Oxford?)
MOST IMPORTANT though to fans of the obscure and difficult is the introvert mindset which dates back to Henry James’ “The Figure in the Carpet”: looking for hidden meanings not available to just anybody. A concept dating back originally to Gnostic Christians, well depicted in Elaine Pagels’ landmark 1979 book on them and their writings. Original introverts, as obsessed with the self as are the promoters of autofiction and alt lit, shutting themselves off from the world. Resting in metaphorical armchairs in Gertrude Stein-style salons. As opposed to those who followed the mindset of Jesus and his crew, who were grounded, spoke and wrote simply, with clarity in Aramaic and working-class Greek, and pushed themselves out into the world. Exclusivity was not their thing. Neither was difficulty. They only changed the world.
NEEDED: Clear-thinking American writers, rough-hewn if necessary, banged-up, knowing too-well the traumas of life but full of ambition and energy, eager to promote their ideas and writing. Needed to announce these writers: new styles of literary criticism, from clear-eyed observers and participants willing to confront alternatives, to try the NEW, and to get right to the point in pursuit of change, relevance and art.
-Karl Wenclas for New Pop Lit NEWS
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