Scatterbrain: a letter from Pantomime Kingdom
Royal banality of literature; the King’s health, dystopian silver linings
Commotion at the Royal Society of Literature
I don’t know if you have been following recent developments — and if you haven’t, I apologise for introducing them to you — but significant events are unfolding at the Royal Society of Literature in the UK. It appears a new front in the Culture Wars has emerged, centred on Somerset House on the Strand. The warring parties are those who seek to diversify and renovate the institution, and those who resist these moves, claiming that the current leadership is lowering the RSL’s standards, in its attempt to include new fellows.
This pearl-clutching has made me roll my eyes back so hard that I now suffer from a terrible migraine. As a result of this, I feel unable to complete this week’s essay, which dealt with more pressing concerns, and that I will have to postpone until next week — my apologies to my readers for this too. However, I couldn’t overlook the chance to express my view that this mêlée reflects broader issues within British literary culture as a whole.
That there are rancid forces irked with a potentially more diverse RSL should surprise no one — conservatism is deeply ingrained in it from its birth.1 But that people who pay lip service to “decolonisation”, “speaking truth to power”, “anti-imperialism”, and assorted ideals, would accept being involved with an organisation that has royalty for patrons, that proudly displays the term “Royal” in its name, that — along with other seemingly harmless bodies — contributes to the normalisation of hereditary power in the UK, is baffling to me. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me either, since it is common in this island for liberals of any demographic to bow down to unelected rulers, and accept the little trinkets these throw at them every now and then. It is hard to come across folk with the ideological coherence of late Benjamin Zephaniah, who rejected an OBE in 2003, since he understood accepting the shiny token would be incompatible with a life lived fighting the legacy of British imperialism.
I guess those who end up entering the Club through a window and not the front door, do it under the illusion that they can change the Club from within. I find this excuse unconvincing and to be sincere, hypocritical. If you object just to the composition of the Club, and not its structure, then you are aligned with power, no matter what emancipatory discourse you ventriloquise. Needless to say that diversity can be put to work towards reactionary ends — look at the current British cabinet, if you need an example.
And by the way, literature doesn’t need a royal warrant of appointment in order to flourish. It shouldn’t be necessary to say it, but in Pantomime Kingdom this isn’t a redundant observation.
Royal prostate
Speaking of the normalisation of hereditary power and pantomimes…