Amber Husain at The Believer:
Does banishing convention from the schemas with which we formulate our manners and moods allow us, as DeWitt’s fictions seem to suggest, to transcend systemic bullshit? In recounting to Lorentzen the frustrations of her literary career, DeWitt compared the irrationality of editors to that of Plato’s Thrasymachus, Callicles, and Gorgias, “sophists who sulk whenever Socrates frustrates their conventional arguments.” If conventions are by their nature arbitrary, and reason is by nature orderly, one might be forgiven for thinking it follows that convention is an enemy of reason. And if reason constitutes our sole path to veracity, one might be forgiven for thinking it follows that convention is an enemy of truth. Occasionally I do wonder if my lust for the convention of financial security invalidates and renders irrational my equally convention-based claims that my work is “all very exciting.” If I have followed the convention of rising through the ranks of employment, a convenience in exchange for which my mind must descend into bullshit, does this render me unavoidably irrational? Does it make me an enemy of truth?
more here.