|
The
Warren Adler E-Sheet 41
In
this issue:
Fiction
is Dying. Yet Again?
 There
is a strange disconnect going on in the world
of fiction writing and publishing. Less and
less fiction is being published by adult trade
publishers and magazines and more and more
wannabe fiction writers are flooding creative
writing courses in colleges, universities and
boutique schools offering such courses.
Most aspire to become novel writers, whether
in the numerous areas of genre writing or
uncategorized mainstream fiction.
The death knell for the novel has had a long
and resounding peal. Mostly the knell, while
loud, has never really penetrated the literary
sound barrier. But lately the knell has become
a persistent clang, enhanced by the current
commercial success of non-fiction which has
prompted reverberations throughout the
publishing world.
Adding tinder to the fire was the recent
pronouncement in the New York Times by
the eminent Nobel Prize winner V. S Naipaul
who opined that non-fiction is better suited
to capturing the complexities of the modern
world. The interviewer called it a "profound
observation." With due respect, I call it
hogwash.
The
long interview in the Book Review offered
odd outbursts such as "If you spend your life
just writing fiction you are going to falsify
your material." Frankly, I still don't know
what he meant. He also said that "the novel's
time was over." Coming from such an eminence,
such an idea has legs.
You can also see it in the decision of the new
editor of The Paris Review
Philip Gourevitch to publish more
non-fiction (see
interview) and the venerable Atlantic
Monthly deciding to ghettoize its fiction
into a single issue. I read their first single
issue attempt. In my opinion it unwittingly
helped further the argument that fiction
offerings should indeed be shrunk. To be kind,
I thought the published stories were
"forgettable."
Even
Ian McEwan, a fine novelist, offered yet
another take on the idea of fiction's demise.
Last spring he said on the Charlie Rose show,
"For awhile after 9/11 I did find I it
wearisome to confront invented characters." I
hope he's gotten over his lapse.
The Naipaul interview by Rachel Donadio
was paired with
her essay that offered her take on the
issue with such pronouncements as "it's safe
to say that no novels have yet engaged with
the post September 11th era in any meaningful
way," embellishing the point further with "to
date, no work of fiction has perfectly
captured the historical moment the way certain
novels captured the Gilded Age, or the Weimar
Republic or the Cold War." Safe to say? Has
she read all these contemporary works of
fiction or is she merely aping the mainstream
publishing and literary establishment who are
the alleged gatekeepers of what is safe or
unsafe to single out for adoration?
She concludes by assuring us "that the most
compelling creative energies seem directed at
non-fiction."
Of course, I have no intention of denigrating
non-fiction. In publishing terms this means
such categories as diet books, cookbooks,
how-to books, business books, technical books,
confessional books, health and psychology
books, and on and on. Nor can anyone deny the
influence, for good or evil, of the published
non-fiction of Karl Marx, Thomas Paine, Adolph
Hitler and numerous others.
But in the context of contemporary
best-seller, mass market non-fiction, I assume
what she means are those interminable memoirs
by media-proclaimed celebrities, scandal
mongering books cataloguing sexual
peccadilloes and flavor of the week political
books by journalists and assorted gurus whose
extended blogs have temporary currency in this
harsh political climate. After all, it's a
free country and any odd bit of information,
accurate or inaccurate, helpful or
destructive, illuminating or titillating, is
fair game for commerce along with any rant
that fits well with one's political
preferences and other assorted biases.
Pandering to public taste, however transitory,
is what makes cash registers ring and
publishers are no exception.
The Times headline of the Donadio piece
"Truth is Stronger than Fiction" pretty well
defines what the publishing establishment
believes is non-fiction. Truth, indeed. Could
it be that Naipaul, whose wonderful fiction
narratives in which his invented characters
interact in their desperate and all-consuming
search for the meaning of life are, therefore,
dealing in untruths?
Pardon my parochialism, but to me creative
writing is in a class by itself. It has always
meant the novel, the short story, the play,
the artful unfolding in narrative form of the
human experience in all its ramifications.
These narrative creations have defined the
soul of mankind since time immemorial and
provided unparalleled insight into the human
condition. The arc of life itself from birth
to death, and perhaps beyond, is, in itself, a
story. We are all characters in an ever
unfolding story and fiction, in a mysterious
way, synthesizes and explores who and what we
are.
Few things have had more impact on our lives
than our "fictions," from Homer, through the
writers of tales that we call the Bible,
through Shakespeare, and the genius of
thousands of storytellers like Proust, Balzac,
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Joyce, Trollope,
Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and countless
others (I cannot resist naming a few of my
favorites).
When Donadio carps about the fact that no
novel, meaning no novel that she has read or
heard about, has perfectly captured our
historical moment, has it occurred to her that
the gateway to novel publishing is now in
control of the bean counters, whose limited
vision and obeisance to the powerful
commercial Gods will, for a time, cripple but
not kill, works of invention and imagination,
meaning fiction.
The avalanche of people burning to be
practitioners of the art of fiction will, with
the advent of the new technologies, one day
get their works to readers eager to find their
wisdom, insight and enjoyment outside the box
of the traditional suppliers of such fare.
They may not make best seller lists, which
glorifies popularity as the crowning
achievement of literary worth, but they will
at the very least have a chance to win the
grand prize, meaning a life changing shot at
contemporary influence and perhaps a
contribution to the collective wisdom of
mankind. I know this sounds a bit schmaltzy,
but it makes the point about the value of
fiction in creating a moral compass for the
benefit of the human race.
Oh yes, one last thought about Mr. Naipaul's
pronouncement. It is ironic that his requiem
for fiction would probably not merit any
further discussion if his efforts in the
fiction realm hadn't brought him renown,
respect and popularity.
E-Sheets
1 to
40
For
your convenience, we now offer an online
archive of Warren Adler E-Sheets. See the
E-Sheet
archives now.
Until
next time, happy reading, and we hope to hear
from you in our interactive
book chats.
Warren
Adler
If
you like this E-Sheet, use the following form
to subscribe for monthly distribution.
Visit
Warren
Adler's homepage now! |
