There are fourteen days until election day. Two weeks. Early voting has begun in a number of states, but Tuesday, November 5th, is when elections are scheduled to be held. Everyone knows who’s running—it’s been a crazy political year, Biden dropping out, Harris jumping in, the now common misinformation and disinformation rampant on social media, cable, the papers. We know what’s at stake. Or we think we do, depending on what and who we choose to listen to, what and who we choose to believe, and the issues that are important to us, even if we focus on one issue to the exclusion of the million others facing this country and the world.
As writers, we look at the world through the lens of fiction (and nonfiction). But this is a blog about writing novels, so the craft of fiction is predominantly what we have (and will) talk about on NovelMasterClass. Today I want to talk about fiction that lasts, in particular fiction that makes, or attempts to make a political statement—whether about governments and types of political systems (Democracies, Authoritarianism, Monarchies, Totalitarianisms, Communism, hybrids etc.), social politics (racism, abortion, LGBT issues, guns, euthanasia, etc.), and other political subject matter deemed and understood to be “political.” As German novelist and social critic Thoman Mann said, “Everything is politics.”
Now, I don’t want to go on a polemic about any specific form of government. I have my preference and opinions about all forms of politics and political subjects, and certain politicians, both contemporary ones and those of the past. But like most of us, I think, I’m choosing the lesser of the evils out there, though I don’t personally believe the candidates are even close (If given the opportunity to vote for one candidate a hundred times, I’d vote for the same one every time if the two candidates were the same ones we have right now.
For me, there is no perfect form of government. No perfect form of social constructs that perfectly address anything, much less entire fields of study, disciplines, or whatever label you want to put on the various organizations involved in the political system(s) of this country. My focus is, rather, the fiction that’s created, the words—the books, the poems, the nonfiction, but especially the fiction—created as a direct address to the times of strife and discord and dissension that, during certain decades, alters the status quo, for better or for worse (though I find artists’ works normally thrive during “bad times” and times of revolution, unless said artists become targets of the brutality, the injustice, the jailings, and the murders meant to quiet them. That said, plenty of artists have proven their courage especially during these times, for such prosecution of the freedom to express the chaos around them only drives their production more).
It is this type of literature that I find fascinating, because the words behind the fiction are driven by a desire to comment, to bring awareness to—to, at best, document and explicate the feelings and concerns and fears of society at large so as to highlight and make the world aware of what’s going on and who is causing it. No author reaches their goals when it comes to writing the perfect book, for the writer’s goals are lofty ones. This is the case with any fiction—every author I know who has a published novel wishes they could go back and edit this or that. They find fault with every book they’ve written, especially the ones that have made it into print. But I digress. Over centuries, novelists and writers have been murdered, have been executed for the words they produced that were critical of the leaders of their time. Many of these books have survived. Some are read today because they have become classics, or because the lessons learned from them are universal ones we hope, having read them and introduced them into the canon, force us to question the actions being taken today. They serve as warnings; “The past is never dead, it’s not even past,” as William Faulkner famously wrote in Requiem for a Nun, and it’s a quote and truism that applies particularly well to politics, for in politics we see, time and again, the same mistakes made reported from the past not once or twice but over and again, as if on purpose (hint, much of it is on purpose). From a politician’s perspective, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
Everything is Politics
--Thomas Mann
Salman Rushdie, who I met ever so briefly in 2005 or 2006 in Seattle during his book tour for Shalimar the Clown, was attacked in 2022 by a man I will leave unnamed. Rushdie almost died; as we know, a fatwa calling for his death was issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, in 1988 because of his novel, The Satanic Verses. This was not the first attempt on Rushdie’s life. Isaac Babel, claimed to be the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry, and who got on Stalin’s bad side by not adhering to Stalin’s “Socialist Realism,” was arrested by the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), declared a nonperson, and shot dead, his body dropped like trash into a communal grave. Babel is best known for Red Cavalry, a collection of stories published in the 1920s that opened Russian eyes to the dark reality of war, antisemitism, and other issues, as well as another collection titled Odessa Stories.
The past is never dead, it’s not even past.
--William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
Not a novelist, but a poet, playwright, and theater director, Frederico Garcia Lorca, who was born in a city where I later lived and have come to love, Granada, Spain, was murdered by Spanish nationalists for his homosexuality and liberal views. Lorca, whose “Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías” or “Lament for a Bullfighter,” has two of my favorite lines ever: “A las cinco de la tarde. Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde,” which, in translation, basically means “At five in the afternoon. It was exactly five in the afternoon.” The poem is about the goring and death of Lorca’s friend; bullfights, during early spring and fall, start around 5 in the afternoon due to the shorter days. The sentence has a finality to it that translates very well thematically to the poem.
Of course, there are plenty of novels and other writing from times of war and tumult, as well as historical novels and novels about social justice issues that didn’t include the murders or imprisonment of its authors. George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, James Jones’s From Here to Eternity, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alex Haley’s Roots, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, Lai Wen’s Tiananmen Square, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Larry Beinhart’s Wag the Dog, Jessica Anthony’s Enter the Aardvark, Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tibor Fischer’s Under the Frog, Mikhail Iossel’s Love Like Water, Love Like Fire and Notes from Cyberground: Trumpland and My Old Soviet Feeling, Josip Novakovich’s Salvation and Other Disasters and Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust, and countless others.*
Right now, there are novelists and writers out there documenting in fiction the crazy times we’re living in and have been living in for some years now. I know I have spent many, many months working on a number of novels addressing not only the outrageous political and social insanity we’ve been thrust into willingly or not, and I hope some of the work that’s been making its way into the public realm will stand the test of time. It’s what I shoot for when I write novels, however much I know I’ll fail at what I’m attempting. But for me and many other writers out there, it’s just like writing: something that we can’t not do. As human beings, we feel psychologically the subtle and not-so-subtle damage being inflicted upon the peoples and societies whose influence and control the leaders of said people and societies are powerless to defend against. As artists, we feel the same helplessness and defeat and pain of the rest of our societies, but I submit it is not only our passion for writing but our duty to try to write and chronicle in fiction (and nonfiction) the why and how of the ills that befall us all, and to do it in ways that perhaps don’t guarantee they’ll be kept in print, for that’s a matter completely out of our control, but that make an impact, that stand out, that at least have a better chance of surviving because we, as writers, strive for more than just entertaining our audiences if we’re lucky enough to have them. I’m not bashing or criticizing commercial fiction that deals with important subject matter—far from it. However writers can educate the masses about what’s going on in the world is in and of itself a noble thing to do. I suppose I’m just hopeful that the writers who do choose to be social issue writers or protest writers or writers bringing to light the insidious nature of those in power who choose to take advantage of their power and influence to subjugate their constituents for the benefit of the few over the many strive to do so via literature that people remember long after they read the last lines of the authors’ works.
Though we be writers, we’re also citizens of this planet, of the societies in which we live and under the control of the governments we vote in or that we potentially, unfortunately, find ourselves ruled by.
For me, Political Fiction and the Novels That Stand the Test of Time that open our eyes to the things that affect us and the people we love and care about, that broaden our understanding of the systems and social issues that rule the planet should be (again, and this is just my opinion), if possible, written as literary steak as opposed to literary cotton candy, as something substantial as opposed to fleeting and transitory and without heft. As artists, our art should be what we want it to be, irrespective of what others think it should be. I get that; do what you want. But just as I feel the calling to be a writer, I feel the calling to be a particular type of writer, i.e., the type of writer whose books will hopefully be read in ten, twenty, a hundred years from now, because I put the effort in to say something of worth. Though we be writers, we’re also citizens of this planet, of the societies in which we live and under the control of the governments we vote in or that we potentially, unfortunately, find ourselves ruled by. I am lucky to live in a country where we have a First Amendment. Where we have freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, of assembly, and the freedom to petition the government for redress of our grievances. And I think, in these dark times that seem to only be growing darker, it is our duty, our responsibility, before it’s too late, to continue in the great tradition of those political and social chroniclers who came before us, some of whom paid for their protest with their lives in order to get the word out to the world so the past could influence a better future for the men and women and children who came after them. I know I feel it’s my obligation to do so, and I will strive to create that literature as best I can, even if I fail time and again. That I can sit here and write this without fear of reprisal is enough motivation for me to do what I must do. And I hope, for our sake, that you might, in your own way, believe the cause worthy enough to spend at least some of your time writing so we may continue to keep the gates of our freedoms open for now and the years to come.
Cully Perlman is a novelist, short story writer, blogger, and Substantive Editor. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com and Cullyperlman@gmail.com
*I do not make any money from any of the links to any of the books posted on this blog, though I do know some of the authors listed.
Timely. And I agree!