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Politics and the Imagination: How to Get Away with Just about Anything (in Ten Not-So-Easy Lessons)

60 SARAH STONE Defining the Problem “I’m not interested in political fiction” seems at first like a completely baffling remark, not less so because it’s a stance adopted by large numbers of people. Not interested in the ways people use their power over each other? Not interested in the ways we can, fatally, succumb to greed or the wide devastation that greed can cause? Not interested in the heroic—and occasionally successful— figure who turns against life-as-usual to fight for justice, freedom, peace, the future? And yet, we can imagine why a reader, picking up and setting down new novels based on their flap copy, might set aside one novel about human rights workers in San Salvador and instead take home the book about four college friends—whose lives have gone in very different directions—on a road trip to their 20th reunion. Maybe a reader doesn’t want to be depressed, lectured, or made to feel helpless and stupid, but instead wishes to escape to Storyland, a delectable country of gossip, cat-fighting, self-revelation, sex, wit, and really good meals. Almost any one of us may find ourselves feeling like E. M. Forster’s man on the golf course: “. . . I like a story to be a story, mind, and my wife’s the same.” Forster “destest[ed] and fear[ed]” that reader, but I think we could be a little more sympathetic than Forster to those who might only be willing to take on aesthetic and moral/intellectual challenges when there’s something in it for them. In political fiction, world events and societal conditions have a direct effect on the dramatic action and the characters’ lives. The historical circumstances Politics and the Imagination How to Get Away with Just about Anything (in Ten Not-So-Easy Lessons)






















“Politics and the Imagination: How to Get Away With Anything in Ten Not-So-Easy Lessons,” copyright © Sarah Stone, first serial rights copyright. Association of Writers & Writing Programs, first appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, February/March  CH016.qxd 7/15/09 7:40 AM Page 60 POLITICS AND THE IMAGINATION 61 are more than just background noise (“During the Vietnam War, four college friends—whose lives have gone in very different directions . . .”). The characters may or may not be active contributors to their fates: an Argentine revolutionary in prison for his actions is in a different position from a woman born into slavery. In each case, though, their political circumstances are central to their stories. And we as readers, if given half a chance, will want to understand how human beings behave in extremity. We want to know more about heroism, betrayal, self-betrayal, and the high costs of living in the world. Making political fiction delicious and fascinating is all about finding ways to evade the four horsemen of political writing: didacticism, self-righteousness, demonization of the other side, and subjection of plot/characters/language to the attempt to make a point. General rules don’t seem particularly helpful (i.e., “Rule #: Create vivid, living characters”—Hey, great idea! Why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?). Instead, here are a few examples of methods used by writers who’ve gotten away with writing recklessly political fiction. Some of these writers get shelved under “Classics”; others use the techniques and approaches of post-modernism. What do they get away with? Making political speeches. Tackling the unthinkable head on. Wrestling with subjects bigger than any writer can legitimately handle. Writing about war, slavery, racism, oppression, class struggles, political prisoners, environmental degradation, and evisceration and making us want to read it. A Few Basic and Not-So-Basic Strategies and Literary High-Wire Acts 1. Creating memorably anti-heroic, living, compromised, vulnerable characters in lieu of cartoon “heroes” Not letting them have the last word, not letting them inspire others to action. Catching them in compromising circumstances. Displaying great ideals juxtaposed with human flaws, as with Astrov, the drunken, visionary doctor in Uncle Vanya: This is the map of the district as it is now. There are still bits of green here and there but only in small patches. The elks, the swans, and the capercaillies have disappeared. There’s no trace left of the old settlements and farms and hermitages and water mills. It is, as a matter of fact, a picture of gradual and unmistakable degeneration, which, I suppose, will be complete in another ten or fifteen years. . . . [coldly] I can see...