How to think like a human being

I've only read a few pages of one of Fanny Howe's books but I wanted to put this photo up because she's got such a gentle and sad face.

What I did want to talk about was Patricia Lockwood's devastating and acerbic critique of John Updike. Boy, does she bury him. 

Having only read (struggled through) a 100 pages of one of the Rabbit books I'm not, obviously, in any position to comment on P.L.'s brilliant take-down but a few sentences that made me think..

"Rabbit’s life, over hundreds and hundreds of pages, is a scene of sinister American superabundance, like a Walmart that sells both diapers and high-powered rifles; he glides among the people preaching the prosperity gospel of his own body. ‘What saints have to have is energy,’ .."

Okay, so what, you might ask. Another Great White Male hung out to dry. Ain't that a good thing? I think it probably is. I don't particularly see why I should have to listen to some old fogey tell me what it means to be a human being- whether white, male, great or otherwise. Sure, you can talk all you want about 'literary merit' but if the man is an arsehole and writes like an arsehole then I haven't got the time (I think I'll probably skip Handke too, on second thoughts).

Is this the destiny of most fiction? If someone writes about contemporary society then isn't it bound to come across as dated pretty soon? What sticks? Which is a slightly different question from: what sticks in your own mind? If 'Literature' is trumped as extending or deepening our moral sympathies then how does that work if you can't remember a blimmin' word of it?!

But the first question is what I'm interested in right now: are books just a higher form of entertainment and distraction in late capitalism? Do they provide us with a false sense of being educated, sensible, part of a class that can supposedly see beyond the ordinary, can read between the lines and is not, therefore, subject to the same worldly pressures and prejudices of the plebs?

What if behind all the high falutin' words literature and academia are a bit of a con and not very deep at all? What if they're something that helps reinforce the illusion that we're somehow 'civilised' even though, in our daily lives, we can't speak or think like a human being? What if, perish the thought, we're at heart sophisticated barbarians?