“WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP between radical aesthetic practices and actual political radicalism?”
“There are many — and various — answers to this question. One of the most interesting is suggested by a famous exchange between Lenin and the Romanian-Jewish writer Valeriu Marcu.”
“In conversation one day, Lenin said to Marcu, “I don’t know how radical you are, or how radical I am. I am certainly not radical enough. One can never be radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as reality itself.” Marcu was so sufficiently impressed by the great Russian revolutionary that he went on to write his first biography.”
“To try to be as radical as reality itself is a good motto for anyone wishing to accomplish anything of value in art or in politics.”
“Brecht, who was unswervingly radical in both spheres, however, maintained that the artistic comprehension of reality in all its “radicality” is not necessarily best achieved through traditional literary realism.”
“China Miéville would certainly agree. All of his numerous works are animated by revolutionary Marxism, and all diverge in one way or another — or in many ways — from classical realism.”
“His recent volume, The Last Days of New Paris (2016), is set in France, mainly in Paris, during Nazi occupation; but this occupation is quite different from the one you can read about in the history books.”
“In some ways, The Last Days of New Paris, as literary art, does not seem to me among the author’s strongest works. Miéville, in his previous books, has created an impressive gallery of strongly individuated characters, but here his powers of characterization are exercised less memorably than usual.”
“Also, toward the end of the 1950 narrative, the story acquires a few too many moving parts, so to speak. As occasionally happens in the Miéville oeuvre (for instance, in much of Kraken [2010] and, to a lesser degree, in parts of Embassytown [2011], in spite of that novel’s excellent quality), the author’s powers of narrative invention run a bit ahead of his powers of narrative structuration, and the reader may have unnecessary difficulty following the action.”
“language, which has always been a medium relatively unsuited to the description of complex visual shapes and patterns, is at a particular disadvantage when it comes to conveying the shockingly unusual images of Surrealism. Not even a writer who has mastered language as brilliantly as Miéville can completely mend this deficiency in his medium”
“Perhaps the greatest appeal of the volume as we have it is as a kind of allegory of the author’s longstanding relationship with Surrealism.”
“The Last Days of New Paris, however, is more a book about Surrealism than a Surrealist book.”
“The revolutionary struggle against Nazi oppression waged by Thibaut and his colleagues of the Main à Plume, assisted by Surrealist manifs, allegorizes a productive and mutually supportive relationship between radical art and radical politics.”
“The nature of the struggle makes clear, however, that this relationship is neither symmetrical nor untroubled. Least of all is it serenely inevitable. Art and politics are both transformative activities, but politics can seldom attain the degree of purity that is possible in art.”
“Surrealist art and anti-Nazi revolutionary communism both attempt to be as radical as reality; and, as Lenin would remind us, in both spheres the attempt is exceedingly difficult. Yet the attempt must be made, during an alternate World War II, and in our own present day. As the “I” of the “Afterword” puts it on the volume’s final page: “Perhaps some understanding of the nature of the manifs of New Paris, of the source and power of art and manifestations, may be of some help to us, in times to come.””
“Carl Freedman is the Russell B. Long Professor of English at Louisiana State University. His best-known book is Critical Theory and Science Fiction (2000); his most recent is Art and Idea in the Novels of China Miéville (2015).”