The Literary Critic

  THE LITERARY CRITIC

Due to certain feedback, designating Iowa Senator Brad Zaun as our senatorial literary critic requires an explanation.  Senator Zaun publicly denigrated a published work by Maia Kobabe.  The book is titled GENDER QUEER and the Senator proclaimed it disgusting.

In attempting to analyze the Senator's literary analysis of the novel as "disgusting", one must keep in mind the Senator's frame of reference.  Frames of reference are often a beginning point for analysis and in the Senator's case, most appropriately.  In that the Senator has become one of the Iowa's Senate more notable literary interventionists, his views on what is acceptable and not acceptable in civil society should begin any commentary.

The Senator has not only approved, but, been a significant factor, in the past two years of legislative activity which includes book banning, restricting or eliminating diversity programs, regulating educational content,  correct bathroom protocol, etc.    These activities pretty well sum up the Senator's frame of reference.

To begin, Maia Kobabe is obviously a foreign name.  Now, to the Senator's mind a foreign name is one not derived from English, German, Scottish, Irish, Polish,  Italian languages. Other lesser known derivations of European languages will sneak in occasionally.  But clearly any name coming from the continent of Africa is foreign and the name Kobabe is certainly African of some sort.  Which sort is not important to our Senator.

Secondly, to our Senator's mind, gender issues are either the work of the devil or a communist plot.  And we all know his position on "queer".  The Senator has declared the book "disgusting".  This appears to be the extent of his literary criticism.  One would think that, as a literary critic, one could go into a little more detail and give us a basis for his opinion.  Of course, this would entail reading the novel - an exercise clearly beyond the Senator's capabilities.

We have a really good example here of judging a book without reading it which certainly saves time and effort.  The basis for the Senator's opinion is the title of the book and the name of the author.  Both are clearly un-American and un-Iowan which gives our literary critic license to dismiss the book as "disgusting"  viewing the title as disgusting and the author's name as extremely unorthodox. 

It really is a very good shorthand way of literary critique - - determining the quality of the work by the title and the name of the author.  I'm sure the Senator did not think this up on his own since this sort of analysis has been around as long as there have been books and once again is becoming a popular method of determining the value of a novel.

We can only hope that the Senator does not relax in his efforts of understanding our current literature.  It is important that we have people who will consider books as proper subjects of examination and critique and our Senator is setting such a good example that we need to applaud his efforts.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo