The New Weird, Or The New Normal?

Ever since the phrase "the new normal" entered the American mediascape following the 2008 economic crash, I have found it to be a curious phrase. No, more than curious, I have found it to be irksome. If you are of the opinion that humanity (and all that it creates) is a work-in-progress, then the phrase "the new normal" probably irritates you too. It carries with it a condescending sense of complacency, as though to say, "Hey, whoever you are, if you don't like the world and your role in it, just shut up. Get used to it. This is the way things are now, so don't go trying to change them."

The New Weird may not have been conceived in opposition to any idea of "the new normal," but in practice these two strike me as opposites. Now I would be lying if I tried to suggest that I have ever thought of The New Weird as a program for social change. For me, it has always been related to the mindset and perceptions of individuals (although I concede that if enough individuals change their mindsets some change might occur on a social level). I still think of The New Weird as a way to become more attuned to the miraculous weirdness that already exists in the world around us. A way to see ourselves and each other better, and in seeing better, we might also do better. Whether that doing is related to making art or making social policy makes no difference to me.

Existing as I do in an ongoing state of revulsion toward the phrase "the new normal," imagine the delight I must have felt when I happened upon this title of a recent article by Mark Spitzer in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The New Weird: What happens to literary realism when the truth is stranger than fiction?" Go ahead, imagine it: the discovery of a fellow weirdo, someone completely unknown to me who is also writing about The New Weird. Jubilation!

Spitzer teaches creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas, where he instructs his students to combine elements of the normal and the weird in their writing. In this article in the Chronicle he describes some of his theories and methods. In it, he also argues that contemporary American readers have lost their taste for realist literature, because the world we live in is already outrageously unbelievable. Today, he suggests, only the unusual can hold our attention. Spitzer writes:

"Basically, a new chapter has been opened in American lit. This is no longer a world where ordinary peasants visiting elderly relatives with tuberculosis can be endured for 900 Dostoevskian pages. This is a world of action, explosions, conspiracy, war, porn, plastic surgery, rovers on Mars, and Olympic champs smoking bongs on YouTube. Anything less is just plain boring."

Now as a lifetime member of the Hyperbole Fan Club, I understand where Spitzer is coming from. The unreal, the exaggerated, the nonsequitur, the unbelievable is incredibly enticing to me. And I like my cultural products to be just as big, loud, fast, and obnoxious as the next American. But something in Spitzer's argument still strikes me as curious, even irksome. He suggests that contemporary writers have no choice but to be intentionally, transparently, and outrageously weird because they must compete with contemporary news media for their readership. Journalists, he says, have an infinite stream of weirdness to work with. They simply have to record it, while fiction writers have to go out of their way to make up something weird enough to match reality.

Yes, the world is weird, the world is surprising, the world is constantly changing in unexpected ways. But Spitzer neglects to mention that thorough, objective journalism is a minority voice in the contemporary news media. He seems to forget that what passes for journalism these days is more likely to be CNN-style 24-hour infotainment, which is hyperbolic precisely because it has been engineered to be, and not because the events reported on are necessarily epic in nature. In fact, cable news has made an art of hyperbole, turning the absolutely banal into what seems like the most important thing in the world.

And I would argue that Spitzer's approach to fiction writing follows suit. He isn't teaching his creative writing students how to observe the world with a weird eye, and to craft their writing in such a way that others might catch a glimpse of that weirdness. Rather, he instructs them to juxtapose the quotidian with the fantastic, the fabulous, the strangely shocking. Like cable news, it might pass for entertainment, and it might hold a reader's attention. But this kind of writing will not help that reader to gain any new insights into the world she lives in. And for this reason, Spitzer's version of The New Weird seems tawdry to me, superficial, and an unfortunate waste of artistic and intellectual potential.

I maintain that weirdness is more than a fleeting entertainment. It is, I think, a creative approach to critical thinking, and a willingness to open the mind's eye to any and all questions. It is a way to  welcome for consideration the most unlikely thoughts, the morally ambiguous, the previously unaccepted or unacceptable. Weirdness is a way to challenge the status quo of narrow minded thought in any of its various guises. And within the outsider space of "weirdness" we are free to question the underlying assumptions of what passes for normality.