This interview was originally published on Frontier Psychiatrist November 14, 2014.
Aleksandar Hemon used to joke about writing a novel that was a “rollercoaster of sex and violence” and it looks like he finally did. The Making of Zombie Wars comes out in May. Inspired by his prior work and seeing the acclaimed Bosnian-born writer speak at the Chicago Humanities Festival, I wrote to ask about the idea of the “bi-cultural writer,” his current connection to Bosnia, the state of the literary community, and the American dream. Below are his responses, lightly edited for length and clarity.
Frontier Psychiatrist: I’m a big fan of Teju Cole and keep rereading the interview you did with him in BOMB Magazine. I want to ask you a few questions about that. You referred to Cole as a “bicultural writer.” Do you consider yourself the same?
Aleksandar Hemon: I do, but even as I say this it feels imprecise in that “bicultural” might be interpreted as operating in two cultures—which we might call “American” and “Bosnian”–simultaneously but separately. I can do that, but I like to think I mainly operate in the space of overlapping between those two cultures. I was just (re)reading a book called The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym, much of it about Nabokov, and ran across this quote: “Bilingual consciousness is not a sum of two languages, but a different state of mind altogether; often the bilingual writers reflect on the foreignness of all language and harbor a strange belief in a ‘pure language,’ free from exilic permutation.” Something similar could be said for the bicultural state of mind, whereby you can slip in and out of the limits of a particular culture, but still practice something that is much smaller and much more transformative, much more specific to your life and being, and create hybrid spaces that never last long enough to solidify into cultural monuments. A bicultural mind allows for a kind of difficult freedom that is not available to monocultural people (although one could reasonably argue that, outside the isolated societies in remote parts of the world, only the dumbest fascist mind is purely monocultural). It allows for the existence of cities that open like a pomegranate to someone like Teju. Ponder the fact that the best book in recent memory about New York was written by someone who grew up in Lagos.
FP: Also in that interview, you mention “As a diasporic person I’ve learned that it’s in fact really easy to leave your country. What is difficult is leaving its history, as it follows (or leads) you like a shadow.” This was in the context of the short-term America’s memory is. As a Chicagoan, I still recognize how institutionalized racism and prejudice has sadly shaped (and still shapes) this city to become segregated, that what should be a harmonious city of neighborhoods, creates more disconnect than unity, i.e., Northsiders viewing violence in this city as something that happens “over there” and isn’t a concern. Likewise, often when I travel abroad, I get asked about Chicago being a dangerous city, or if I own a gun since I’m an American. I’ve never had to permanently leave my home as you have, but I think that all people will bring their shadows with them wherever they go. Perhaps Americans are better at repressing or hiding these feelings.
AH: Well, the usual—and terrible– American myth is that you can be self-made here, which is to say that you can make your own individual past and their future. You can, according to that fantasy, be whoever you wish to be if you work hard, for this is the land of opportunities—you get to ignore the reality of other people’s lives, particularly if they “fail” to take advantage of those opportunities and live in poverty. The myth looks plausible only if all those whose opportunities have been systematically denied are erased from History, from the past and the present and the future. That erasure is not an American thing—it has happened and it is happening all over the place. What is American is the belief—pathologically persistent in the face of abundant contrary evidence–that this is the land of equally distributed freedom and opportunity, where the government is of the people, for the people, by the people. And if there is some inequality, it is but a glitch, or the failure of those who didn’t have enough audacity of hope, or didn’t work hard. American capitalism presents itself as an equal opportunity endeavor, but it has always been exceedingly brutal, it was founded and has always depended on ruthless exploitation. And now it is cranking up its brutality, for a sense begins to formulate among those who have benefited from it that they need to protect what they have acquired.
What perplexes me is the constant (re)production of the fantasy that some kind of American unity has been somehow shattered and that we should all strive to reunite. But this is, and has always been, a country of conflict, sometimes devastating, often productive. While New York coats itself in Wall Street-financed glamour, there is no way to cover up that conflict in Chicago. We see it every day. It is troubling, but also sobering. That conflict is coming to a head all over the country, because the logic of capitalism requires heedless acceleration. There was a time when the American democracy had a capacity of checking that heedless acceleration, but that’s over.
FP: “American cities tend to erase their pasts, particularly the conflictual parts, just as they marginalize the inconvenient and unjust parts of the present—the killing and the greed are always elsewhere.” This is a similar statement. Where do you think it was that made Americans this way? Are we any different than, say, countries in Western Europe?
AH: Western Europe is going through a similar process, but it is much harder to erase history there than it is here, for the French or the Germans are less likely to think themselves self-made, and more likely to think themselves made by history, catastrophic as it was. Besides, a longer, stronger history of resistance in Europe has put some checks on the brutality of European capitalism. There is a history of revolutions, student uprisings, striking, resistance. All that is fading, to be sure, but the erasure is harder to pull off.
FP: The interview concludes with a very fatalistic tone. Are you that pessimistic in general? Is it egotistical to think that this era is the one to destroy the world, when nearly every generation thinks the one after it is shit?
AH: It is possible to interpret the last couple of decades—or at least the era of war on terror—as an increasing conflict between democracy and capitalism. The unthinking assumption is that they are the same thing, or at least naturally go hand in hand, which is not true. Take China. In any case, democracy is losing, big time. The failure of Western democracies is more pronounced because of all the self-righteousness, because there is an inherent promise in “the government of the people,” and the constant stream of bullshit in the “audacity of hope” vein. The political system in this country is a farce, it works for the capital, while placating the citizenry. And it is hard not to see that political systems across the globe are entirely failing to address climate change, whose many consequences are unimaginable, while it is entirely certain that there will be (in fact, there already are) wars over resources. Today it is oil, tomorrow it will be water. It is not this my era/generation that is going to destroy the world—the process has started a long time ago–but it is each generation’s responsibility to do something about it. History is an ongoing thing, it does not divide itself neatly into era’s and decades, but I can only live in the time that was allotted to me. My children are 3 and 7 and I have already failed them.
FP: In August, you tweeted a lot with the #warchildhood hashtag, which it looks like you were translating from a book in Bosnian by Jasminko Halilovic. Were you planning on translating the whole book to bring to an English speaking audience?
AH: The book is already translated, and they’re looking for a publisher in English. As you might guess, it is difficult. It is not a moneymaker.
FP: Do you write in Bosnian at all anymore?
AH: I write in Bosnian all the time. I’ve been writing a column in Bosnian on and off for the past 18 years. I have published two books of columns in Bosnia, and have enough for two more. I also wrote a script with my friend, the Bosnian film director, Jasmila Žbanić, and the first few versions we wrote in Bosnian, then, for the reasons of production, switched to English.
FP: Did you read Studs Terkel (or any Chicago authors) before you lived here?
AH: Not Studs. I read some Saul Bellow, but I didn’t see him as a Chicago writer. I remember reading James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan (after whom Studs T. was named) books as a kid, but couldn’t and can’t remember much from them.
FP: Laila Lalami said at her humanities festival reading that the American literary community is timid and conformist. Outside of your recent tweets about the Nobel Prize, what are your biggest issues with American literary society?
AH: “American literary society” sounds like a bunch of old suburban ladies and gentlemen who have an annual fundraiser at which they give prizes to books that least disturbed them. I think Laila is right, while the words complacent and complicit also come to mind when talking about it all. I think there are many factors: the strident American anti-intellectualism which is married to the Puritan notion of morally edifying art; the expiration of literary criticism (and the rise of reviewing); the insistence on competence inherent in writing programs (as competence has nothing to do with art); entertainment as the main template for narrative engagement; the stupidity of capitalism (for which breading complacent mediocrity is essential); the fact that all of publishing is in New York, the Vatican of entitlement; the way that literature is taught in American schools and universities; the diminishment of the reading public related to the destruction of the press—not just by the domination of the internet, but also by the full participation in the idiotification project undertaken by the Bush administration.
At the same time, I know and can think of a lot of writers who are as troubled by the world, America, the state of literature etc. as I am, and many who are writing good and great books. And criticizing American literature from the European high-horse has no merit at all. Consider the fact that in the past how many years none of the writers awarded the Nobel could be described as “hyphenated.” The European cultural elites like their authors single origin, as they’re stuck in the outdated notions of national literature. In France there is a clear distinction—indeed segregation—between the French and the Francophone writes. The French were born French; the others are North and Francophone Africans. The French speak for France; the Francophone speak for the former colonies.
I would never offer the European model against the American one. It is far from perfect, but it is commodious and welcoming. And I also think that this fever of conservativism, this passionate defense of (mainly white) privilege all across the board is really a reaction to things changing. Much like history, American literature is an ongoing thing. It is far from over, from being formulated. Besides, the timidity of American literature is an age old complaint. H.L. Mencken complained about it in the twenties: “The normal American novel, even in its most serious form, takes color from the national cocksureness and superficiality. It runs monotonously to ready explanations, a somewhat infantile smugness and hopefulness, a habit of reducing the unknowable to terms of the not worth knowing.” But it hasn’t stayed like that since the twenties. Right now, American literature must engage with the rising intensity of the conflict taking place as we speak.
FP: How did you feel about the sudden interest in soccer from Americans in general and Chicagoans in particular during the World Cup?
AH: I didn’t think it was sudden. It has been rising. I’ve been playing soccer in Chicago for 20 years, I’ve always known people who cared. I think the gradual increase in the number of televised games has helped. And the attitude of soccer tracks nicely with the changes brought by immigration-related transformation and, particularly, the enfranchisement of Latino population. Soccer is a mark of change in this country. Guess what kind of people dislike soccer as un-American? Fox News campaigned against the World Cup. Ann Coulter wrote a series of demented invectives against soccer this past summer “Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation’s moral decay,” she vituperated. If I hadn’t already been playing and watching soccer since childhood I would’ve started just to accelerate the nation’s moral decay.
FP: You wrote a list of incomplete, random reasons you do not wish to leave Chicago. I know a lot of people that love it here and still want to leave. What does make you want to leave?
AH: I’ve been trying to sustain myself and my family by writing, teaching only occasionally and in various places. But if it comes to that—and it might soon—that I can no longer pay for my kids’ health insurance, I’d have to look elsewhere, as there are few jobs for me in Chicago. It would break my heart; I would feel displaced again. I spent a semester in New York a couple of years ago, and it was horrible. Now, that was exile. Even the pick-up soccer was terrible.
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