Once upon a time, I published two novels and a bunch of short stories. I don't write fiction anymore. And I don't read it much either. In fact, reading novels doesn't interest me at all these days. For a while I wondered about it. Why had something that was once a passion become so uninteresting? I once read that Philip Roth never read fiction, even as he was writing it. He read non-fiction exclusively. I found that puzzling because for me there was always a direct relationship between writing fiction and reading it. When I read a novel that I loved it inspired me to want to write one. So what happened to my desire to produce fiction? Part of it was almost certainly the result of how my second novel was received. I'll just say that if it had been more enthusiastic I would have probably felt that I had readers to whom I 'owed' my work. On the other hand, a 'real' writer doesn't think about whether they have an audience or not - they write because they 'have to'. And I think that's sort of true. Writers have to write. Artists have to make art. When I wrote my first novel I didn't really stop to wonder if anyone would want to read it. I hoped it would be worthy of readers. But I didn't really count on it. I just wrote. For my own reasons. So now that I've stopped, I figure I must have done that for my own reasons as well.
One thought was that I stopped writing fiction at around the same time as donald trump was coming down the golden escalator. Coincidence? There is no doubt that over the past 5 years I've done more writing to express my thoughts about the trump presidency than about any other subject. At the core of my concern with trump - my family and friends called it an 'obsession' - was his lies. It's true that politicians have always danced around the truth. In fact that's part of what makes them politicians, the high wire act of finessing the truth to please all of their constituencies without offending others. But I can't think of another public figure who has used lies as a bludgeon the way trump has. He made no bones about lying boldly, unapologetically, and transparently, without any apparent regard for obvious facts, logic, or truth. It was almost fanciful to watch him. Someone so completely untethered to reality, like a gravity-defying Cirque de Soleil performer, only in trump's case he's an obese, malignant narcissist whose awe-inspiring skill is self-delusion to the point of audacity, leaving jaws dropped because we can't get our minds around whether or not he actually believes the words spewing from his mouth. Trump was a true marvel. Someone worth talking about. Impressive in a manner Churchill might have described as a snake oil salesman, wrapped in a con artist, inside a mob boss. A guy who repeated stuff like 'No one has done more for black Americans since Abraham Lincoln', shortly after praising torch-carrying neo-Nazis as 'very fine people'. Since becoming the most powerful person on the planet there was no telling what havoc he might wreak. It was like watching a car wreck in slow-mo, utterly compelling and impossible to turn away. So for four years I was enthralled, fixated. Until the trump show jumped the shark - which for me was the episode when he ordered his Attorney General and a coterie of uniformed military advisers to tear-gas peaceful protesters so that he could be photographed holding a bible in front of a burned out church near the White House. That was the moment he looked like the Fonz in a goofy motorcycle helmet, totally uncool, the orange glow of his aura tarnished for good.
So was it trump who killed it for me? A character so outlandish and disturbing, and a presidency so absurdly, one-dimensional and cartoonish as to be predicted in an episode of The Simpsons. Did the advent of the trump presidency so defy the powers of the imagination that it ruined the writing of fiction for me forever because I could never dream up such a creation? Or perhaps it was that trump's Orwellian mendacity had made truth a prized commodity not to be trifled with by fictionalizing, at least not until a modicum of fact-based reality had returned to public discourse. A part of me has genuinely worried about whether a return to informational normalcy was even possible. Whether, in the words of Kellyanne Conway, we have entered the era of 'alternative facts' and there was no going back. This would be an era when skilled, honest, reputable, truth-seeking journalists plying their trade are demonized as 'the enemy of the people' and opinionated loudmouth know-nothing cable TV blowhards are trusted by tens of millions of viewers as a legitimate source of information. An era when an American president publicly excuses the butchering and dismemberment of a journalist by a sadistic Arab tyrant. The pervasive social media spread of child-sex trafficking QAnon conspiracies promoted by trump and his cult-following acolytes has only served to deepen my worst fears about our 'alternative facts' times. It feels like we are treading daily on shifting ground. The game has no rules that anyone can agree on. Just as you don't play with matches at a gas station, the fumes of untruth have poisoned the atmosphere for anyone who once upon a time might have enjoyed writing (or reading) a good story.
Thank goodness for the pandemic: A strong dose of inconvenient reality that would not be denied, twisted or sold. These days I feel like I need something more certain to hold on to, something that can keep my head above the waves, like a life preserver. So I've been writing (reading) poetry instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment