Translator’s introduction

When Sergio Chesán was first moved to write “The Working Class Reads How, Where, and When It Can” (appearing in Spanish cooperative journal, La Marea, and forming the foundation for this revised text) he wasn’t only responding to online articles of the “Top 𝒳 Summer Reads”, “𝒳 Best Books for … ” variety. He was calling out an entire culture, from social media to university syllabi, that consistently recommends us “the same canon of works written by … almost all white, heterosexual men … to devote our limited free time to reading”.

In this piece, Chesán not only defends the short story form from the political standpoint of today’s working class; he also dispels the myths that have kept this vicious cycle (or “pestilent … circle”) in motion for this long. Rather than “trying to gain prestige by adopting as [our] own the values of a class to which [we] don’t belong”, he calls on us to take control of our own literary outputs. To “start writing and reading how best fits us”.

Roy Duffield

Literature is no place for the poor. Yeah, I know, it sounds like the typical wannabe-provocative opening — and in a way it is. But it also perfectly illustrates what seems to be hidden behind a series of ideas (harmless, at first glance) that surround both the creation and the reception of literary works. And yes, the phrase does touch a nerve; especially because it’s weird, to say the least, that at the heart of an artistic discipline that’s always boasted of its transformative role, such deeply reactionary ideas still linger.

As an example of this, while practising that by now habitual behaviour among us for exorcising anguish: compulsively checking what others are saying on social media, I came across an article. The piece, which tried to spark up a debate over which is the predominant literary form of our times, was full of the usual tombstone phrases that have long been cliché in those kinds of articles: “the story is dead”, “literature is dead”, blah blah blah. (On a side note, declaring the death of something as you continue to make money talking about it seems to be one of the most common tricks in the book of today’s “intellectuals”.) But that wasn’t the worst of it: within those “pages”, literature was presented as an ideal, totally removed from the material conditions in which it’s produced, outside of all time and place. As if, instead of being an artistic expression by certain individuals within a set tradition, in a specific time in history, as part of an already established system, from which power relations derive that are impossible to completely escape, literature were instead a struggle between disembodied beings striving to achieve the heights of creation.

In the end, many of these articles end up being a patchwork of quotes from “leading authorities” with a vaguely patronising tone that tend to grossly overstate the potential of the literary “avant-garde” to transform society, conveniently avoiding the fact that not only have they consistently failed in this objective, but that, as of today, those institutions which haven’t become essentially marketing and PR agencies, have ended up reduced to a set of texts that get passed around in a sort of hermetic circle; spinning round and round, again and again, in a crazed search for that rare philosophers’ stone that might be able to change only their own position within the group. A state of affairs with which they seem to be content.

Another thing that’s become commonplace among the “intelligentsia” is their claim that great literature is written from a place of maturity (whatever that is), peace of mind, and constant toil. In other words, that haste is a trait of the young and inexperienced writer, whose impatience leads to an excess of intensity that can give rise to nothing but the most infantile poetic monstrosities, to “vulgar” works. For these champions of tradition, the novel, of course, is the superior form. The longer the better; anything that weighs less than Ulysses, Infinite Jest, or all the volumes of Proust put together, isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, because what it’s all about is writing “the great novel of our time” (never mind that to talk of “our time” in such a way is completely absurd, since there’s never one same “time” for all of us, nor, of course, a universal subject). But as the navel-gazing of these intellectuals is an infinite jest, they maintain the aforementioned stance and, under these premises, generate endless debates in which they tend to put forward the same canon of works written by their idols — almost all white, heterosexual men “of good standing” — claiming to base their choices “exclusively” on “literary quality”, as if the value of literature weren’t something socially constructed but, once again, something ethereal.

Having said that, and as I’m in the good habit — bad, some would say — of putting every point in perspective, I know perfectly well where these allegations are being written from and therefore that, deep down, they’re nothing but a way of justifying one’s own work and highlighting its value against the incoming hordes of new writers, who they see as a potential threat to their comfortable position at the supposed pinnacle of the cultural landscape. Actually, they have nothing to fear — after years of struggle in the profession, most writers end up realising that the only way to break into their pestilent literary circle is to play along, to play them at their own game — but the old guard, being the reactionaries they are, still fear for their lives. And their fear comes across all the more absurd when we consider that not just anyone can play with them at their game. Who can afford that peace of mind they speak of, that constant toil, when, in an increasingly precarious world, the endless working hours and the eternal anguish of not being able to pay the rent prevent exactly the degree of dedication they themselves consider indispensable? The answer is obvious, but no-one will admit it publicly, that by their standards there’s no place for the majority of literature produced by the working class. And they won’t admit it not because they don’t think it, but because to say it would be bad for their sales.

And when it comes to these book sales of theirs, they take a classist stance here, too. (How could we expect anything else?) While proclaiming at the tops of their voices the revolutionary nature of their literary texts, and how necessary said texts are for the emancipation of the “people” (a word they’d gladly change to “peasants” if the term weren’t considered a little out of place these days) they complain about what little attention they get, that people — especially “young people these days” — are a bunch of “philistines” that never open a book and prefer to spend their money on MDMA and video games. Just one question in that regard though: If they were in the precarious position of a young person today, burnt out, anxious, with almost no free time, what would they prefer? To read just a few pages of a very long novel or to watch an episode of a series or maybe play a round of some online game? And even if, all things considered, they still chose to read, would they prefer a novel or maybe a short story, or a couple of articles? And most importantly, why don’t they ask themselves these questions before declaring, and with such little feeling, the death of this or that?

On the other hand (and it seems ridiculous that this still needs to be pointed out at all) it’s simply not true that young people don’t read. The vast majority of studies on the subject are based on surveys that ask about the number of books read each year. The results tend to point out the big difference there is in reading frequency between people over sixty vs the other age groups, or between people with higher and lower buying power. The problem is, the conclusions that tend to be drawn from this data rarely take into account the amount of free time each group has at its disposal, or whether they read anything else other than books. It’s almost never considered whether older people read more books because they have much more free time or simply because young people read texts that are not necessarily books, like, for example, articles, posts on social media, blogs or comics (reads, to my mind, a lot more interesting than the latest novel by the latest Nick Sparks). And the truth is, if these questions were asked, we would soon realise that working-class young people actually read as much or more than older people, just that they read how, where and when they can: from their mobiles or tablets, on public transport, while queuing (having to stand in line being itself a marker of class) or right before bed.

Writers, for their part, work in much the same way. A few months ago, I attended the launch of the short story collection, La genealogía del ciervo by Sarai Herrera (published by Piedra Papel Libros), who, when asked about the places where she usually writes, and whether she’d thought about writing a novel, responded that she wrote “everywhere” (at work, on her breaks; on the bus; almost never on paper, but in the notes of her phone …) and that, for the foreseeable future, she couldn’t write a novel because what fits in best with the pace of a precarious life is short stories, which in turn, as a format, best reflect the fragmentary, disrupted, and goalless life shared by today’s youth. It was an answer that many young working-class writers could relate to, and I think it illustrates quite well the point I’m trying to make here: that while some preach from their ivory towers, others are just trying to express themselves as best they can.

The problem isn’t just that these opinions find themselves widespread in newspapers, magazines and universities; it’s that many literature lovers have swallowed them without a fight, some maybe falling into the trap of trying to gain prestige by adopting as their own the values of a class to which they don’t belong. I experienced an example of this in the first person when, not long ago, at Horror Vacui, the publishing house where I work, we published The Wilds, a book of short stories by the American writer Julia Elliott. At first, the tweet that announced the book’s publication was shared by numerous users of the platform, celebrating it profusely; but, not long later, after the anticipated appearance of a few chauvinist trolls who threatened us for our decision to publish only women, we saw among the people who’d shared our first post, that another type of comment had appeared, which tried to belittle the work by drawing attention to the fact that we weren’t dealing with a novel but “just a simple book of short stories”. It didn’t take too much detective work to see from the profiles which social stratum these users belonged to, or, even more upsettingly in the case of those not exactly “well-to-do”, which ideology they’d branded themselves with.

It’s as we get to this point that I feel it my duty — unnecessary, I know — to defend the short story as a literary form. As a reader, there’s nothing I have to be more thankful for than the existence of short stories: texts you can read from beginning to end in around half an hour, or — what amounts to the same thing — the duration of my journeys on public transport. This might seem like an irrelevant anecdote, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that, in the nineteenth century, when the increase in literacy rates among the working class gave rise to an explosion of new readers, many novels were sold in chapters, in pamphlets, and each instalment could be read in more or less that amount of time, which was the only free time the workers had, since the working day stretched way beyond eight hours and there were no significant breaks. So their length, along with their relatively low cost, ended up playing a big role in popularising literature to levels never before imagined. And it wasn’t just an increase in the number of direct readers, but also all those avid listeners who, not knowing how to read or write, asked their fellows to read them the stories out loud (in that case even more important that the length of the text wasn’t excessive) thus transforming the act of reading into a communal activity.

Having said all that (and not wanting to take too much more time on this) if someone were to declare the opposite of the article I read — that the novel is dead (an announcement that, it won’t surprise you to hear, has already been made) and that novels today have to be built as a series of interconnected fragments (as has also been said) such a declaration could be explained only by the changes in the material conditions of our time. At the end of the day, the work of literature is conditioned by the reality in which it’s written, and if that reality — that of its creators, that of its readers — changes, then the work changes, too.

And the thing is, if there’s anything all these discourses I’m criticising here have in common, it’s that they all come out of a deeply elitist view of art — the view that the search for originality should be put first, above all else (this “search” meaning an exhaustive study of the entire tradition, in order to then create a new work that both opposes and surpasses all that came before). Obviously, if this were the only value of an artistic work, only those individuals with an enormous amount of time to read almost everything that’s been written up until this point would be able to create valuable works. Guess again what type of people have not only more free time to read them, but also better opportunities to be able to obtain all those books. A clue: we’re not exactly talking about the vast majority of the working class.

To be fair, this idea is as widespread as that other, straight out of the talent show, that makes us believe we’re all special, geniuses waiting to be discovered, and all we have to do is find that wonderful something within us and offer it, not without first wrapping it up in pretty packaging, to the highest bidder. In the face of these two very common ways of viewing artistic activity, let’s place our own proposal: that from a work of art we should demand a different kind of originality; that it shows us other viewpoints, other sensibilities, other ways of experiencing the world, and not necessarily extravagant, because, in short, the invisible doesn’t have to be far from the everyday. Sometimes the invisible’s just a blindspot on the busiest road in the city. And although it’s true that to do this, to make the invisible visible, you need to know the different techniques of your art, it’s not necessary to have read thirty thousand books, as a certain writer of novels for “gentlemen” of suits, cigars and cognac recently went round claiming.

I hope it’s clear that, with this text, I’m not trying in any way to say that the common reader should be offered cheap tat strung together out of marketing slogans — the kind of books we might be offered by influencers, for example. People from humble origins can also be curious, sensitive, and have diverse interests; the working class is not a homogeneous mass, as many “red-brownists” would have us believe, maybe as a form of self-fulfilling prophecy, with the ultimate aim of getting us to buy their shit books or subscribe to their YouTube channels. That old one — the working class as one dumb mass — is nothing but another bourgeois cliché. We are not simpletons, we’re just exploited. And it’s precisely because our sense of who we are in this world is conditioned by the fact that there’s always someone else with our time, our efforts, and our energy at their disposal, that it’s so important that no-one invalidates the works we create, least of all ourselves. Let’s write when we can and in the way we can; read in the format that best suits us and, above all, not measure time as if all watches were equal, because they’re not — a watch made of the gold extracted through the suffering of our own will never be our watch.

Image: Tuur Tisseghem