The Contemporary Alexanders
Writers Unafraid to be at Odds with their Peers
After last week’s polemic, ‘Why Bad Writers are Necessary’, in which the Comandante urged his readers to be Alexanders, he was challenged by his friend, the Swedish-Bosnian writer Adnan Mahmutovic, to name some contemporary Alexanders. Never one to shirk a challenge, the Comandante picked up the glove.
But before we name some, let’s define our terms. ‘Contemporary’ literally means those living at the same as us. That’s a bit vague. Since the Comandante was born in the 1950s, that would mean anyone working since then. But he might be tempted to go back a generation, to the writers of his parents’ generation, because those were still important cultural figures in his youth - and many of them still are. We’d better define ‘Alexanders’ too. We don’t necessarily mean writers who literally took up arms, though a few of them in the list have, or did. Instead we mean writers who were not afraid to be at odds with their society, and even their own peers, writers who had, or have, the courage to write what they believe in, regardless of pressures to do otherwise. We are not essentially referring to literary merit, although we’d argue that all the writers on this list are deserving of respect. But the principle of selection is the very premise of this Substack: ‘Make war on your peers and on yourselves’ (Nietzsche.)
A couple of other caveats: we aren’t proposing that this list is exhaustive: certainly there will be other brave writers who ought to have been included. What’s more, the Comandante has deliberately not mentioned his own friends and acquaintances, although some, perhaps most, are worthy, in order to avoid charges of incestuous promotion. For the same reason, he will not discuss his own possible claim to be an Alexander. He also concedes that because almost no writer ever produces nothing but courageous masterpieces, many of the Alexanders on this list may be deficient in one or more of their works. (Example: Hemingway was an Alexander in his early career, but ceased to be one very early on, with the exception of The Old Man and the Sea.)
It’s also possible that there are writers of what the Comandante’s friend and doctor, John de Carvalho, calls ‘literary porn’ - writing that caters to the public’s prejudices, reassures them that they are wonderful people, and all in a pretentious way - and yet on occasion produce a genuine work of art. If you can think of any, let us know. We doubt it, because once you corrupt yourself, it becomes very difficult to be honest. You lose your dignity. You cease to be one of ‘the good’, as the Greeks called heroic individuals.
Given the limitations of space and time, it’s not possible to discuss the merits of each Alexander - or Alexandra - but whether you agree with individual cases or not, we hope you will agree that there are writers (and other artists) who have the courage of their convictions, and that most of these qualify. And we hope you will suggest others that the Comandante has missed.
Here goes, then: Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, Anthony Powell, and Virginia Woolf. Isak Dinesen (a.k.a. Karen Blixen), Albert Camus, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Junichiro Tanizaki, Nikos Kazantzakis, Lawrence Durrell. Hermann Hesse, Jorge Luis Borges, Kingsley and Martin Amis, Mark Helprin, Milan Kundera, John Fowles, Orhan Pamuk, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Michel Houllebecq.
Among these are writers from across the political spectrum, and from every continent except Australasia - so let’s include Peter Carey. They are all Alexanders in the sense that they don’t merely conform to the values of their societies, but explore them and regard them critically, either explicitly or more often implicitly, through the lives of their characters. If you read one of the ‘official’ news sources of the ruling elite, such as the Guardian or the New York Times, and accept everything it says uncritically, and agree with all your friends on every important issue, then you can be certain that you are no longer thinking for yourself, but have outsourced your thinking, and indeed your values, to the new masters. In fact, you are exhibiting herd mentality. Many so-called ‘artists’, the purveyors of ‘literary porn’, want to have it both ways: they desperately want to fit in with their cool peers, and never step out of line, and yet they also believe themselves to be ‘subversive’ because they are critical of the white patriarchy, colonialism, etc. But in fact they have merely exchanged one of kind of cultural hegemony for another; they support one faction of the elite against another.
And in case anyone objects to my idealising Alexander, consider the famous anecdote about the great conqueror and the philosopher, Diogenes, who according to the story lived in a barrel on the outskirts of Corinth, among a pack of dogs. When Alexander arrived in the city and the grandees all came to pay him compliments, Diogenes did not appear, so Alexander (who according to Robin Lane Fox would have been twenty at the time, but already a great general) went to see him. After greeting the philosopher, Alexander asked him what he would like to have done for him. ‘Just stand aside a bit, will you? You’re blocking the sun,’ Diogenes is supposed to have said. Alexander was so impressed that he told his companions, ‘Truly, I were not Alexander, I would like to be Diogenes.’
Of course we have our contemporary Alexanders and Diogenes figures, admirable artists who take risks, who dare to offend. They are not silent, because silence is complicity. They raise their voices, they insist on being heard, they do not turn the other cheek. Alexander was often in extreme danger, and suffered severe wounds. Once, besieging an Indian city, he jumped off a wall, alone, into a crowd of archers, and was nearly killed. Foolhardy or fearless? We may have to do the same.
Live dangerously, speak dangerously, write dangerously, fellow free spirits!