Saul Bellow’s novel “The Dean’s December,” released in 1982, details the blowback a writer faces after publishing an exposé on Chicago’s corruption. “You can’t live in Chicago without being sharply aware of the presence of this underclass,” said Bellow of writing about the city in the 1980s.
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TRANSCRIPT
- You can't live in Chicago without being sharply aware of the presence of this underclass.
People saying, 'We have to live this.'
'Why do we have to read it too?'
'Isn't that enough?'
I think it's a question of what the power of imagination still might be in a condition like this and what the power of words might be.
In the American moral crisis, the first requirement was to experience what was happening and to see what must be seen.
The facts were covered from our perception more than they had been in the past, yes.
The increase of theories and discourse itself a cause of new, strange forms of blindness.
The false representations of communication led to horrible distortions of public consciousness.
Therefore, the first act of morality was to disinter the reality, retrieve reality, dig it out from the trash, represent it anew as art would represent it.
This is your city.
This is your American democracy.
It's also my city.
I have a right to picture it as I see it.
Well, seems to me everybody in America needs to read that passage right now.
Cause it seems to me, with that particular rant, it was a classic Bellow rant, is more valuable today than in the early '80s when it was written.
(upbeat music)
