The question I wished someone had asked Michaels was: Why is literature that describes class structures and institutions (the way The Wire does) preferable to literature concerns itself with the inner lives of individuals and what it feels like to feel feelings? Why is that first kind of literature any less likely to congratulate its audience or confirm their biases than something like The Wire, which, um, as @fiatluxemburg has argued, it actually does a lot and wouldn’t work at all if it didn’t….
There are people who think fiction and art in general should not be “about” anything. Where were they last night?
This is a naive question, but: why can’t you write fiction that concerns itself with the intersection of class structures/institutions and the inner lives of individuals who feel feelings? Or rather, accepting that individual-based literature is basically a post-Enlightenment bourgeois thing, and institution literature would presumably be a post-that thing, — still, why isn’t anybody doing it? Or are they?
