The Similar Artistic Appeal of Jordan Peterson and Ta-Nehisi Coates

“In a media environment where heady intellectuals spray the air with heady jargon, it is a joy just to have people who keep the spirit of human aspiration alive through art and creative representation.”

An unfailing point of confusion on the question of what makes for a great writer comes from the fact that there are two distinct moulds of writer: the polemicist who makes arguments to persuade—and the artist who gives voice to human feeling. Of course, there is much overlap between the two, as one naturally bleeds into the other; but it is fairly straightforward to distinguish between the op-ed columnist who renders logic to express a social or political perspective and the novelist or poet who tells a story through the articulation of a particular experience. But then there are instances when a writer cannot be neatly placed in either category, with their ideas pouring into their art and their art pouring into their ideas (James Baldwin, for instance, comes to mind). Sometimes it is difficult to satisfy our need for crisp boundaries and clear definitions. The challenge in grasping the social impact of such figures is to clarify the line between the specific arguments they make and the broad sweeping sentiments to which they speak, despite how blurred that line might become. Indeed, because of how blurred that line has become.

The Water Dancer

A recent example of this confusion comes in response to the fallout from former Atlantic correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates’ first novel: The Water Dancer. Coates is a journalist turned political advocate, turned comic book writer, now turned novelist. The quintessential anti-racist writer, whose memoir Between The World And Me became a worldwide best seller and national book award winner, left the proverbial spotlight as a public intellectual in the wake of Donald Trump’s election in order to pursue more creative endeavors, which culminated in the release of The Water Dancer. Though despite the fawning praise Coates has received for most of his career from progressive pundits, the release of the book was met with much gnashing of teeth from certain corners of the cultural Left. In a Vox article written in review of the book, Constance Grady writes:

“Ta-Nehisi Coates is not quite there yet. He doesn’t have the kind of command over the novel as a medium that will let him meld disparate genres together; he doesn’t seem to care about his characters as people rather than as devices he can use to convey ideas; he doesn’t really understand how to keep a plot moving.. What Coates can do—and what he does better than nearly anyone—is build an argument that resounds with clarity and moral urgency, and craft a sentence beautiful enough to take your breath away. It will be incredible to see what he can do with those tools a few books from now.”