An Apology for Mocking Birdsin D. M. Thomas’ Swallow

Arguing mainly for the socio-ideological importance of art, some critics from the School of Social Responsibility (Shelley, Gardner, Bakhtin, and Horkheimer) note that writers are a group of influential people who should be responsible for what they create in their literary practices. Many characters in contemporary discourses, however, represent a persona who hardly worries about the possible consequences of his/her writing and defies the traditional image of a responsible writer. Replenishing the brand-new value for the postmodernist writer who refuses to believe in transcendental truths and interlocking social and ideological systems, these characters seem to support the notion that the social responsibility of literature is nothing but an illusion and fake intellectuality. In fact, an increasing number of contemporary theorists (Federman, Gass, Derrida, and Barthes) have struggled to save what some people might call art for art’s sake by defending the kind of art that seems to stay away from the socio-ideological function and didactic/rational responsibility. Used to such literary terms as antinovels, metafiction, surfiction, or postmodern imitation, a plenty of contemporary writers like D. M. Thomas tend to wave away the burden of truth and reality, releasing themselves from the cage of conventional morals and ethics.