By Blair H.
Books these days are products of the society in
which they're written, just as all books have
been since books started getting written. The
thing I notice increasingly about books of our
time is how they value the domestic and
domestic values as the highest good. By
the domestic, I'm referring to the values that
place the family, the home, and their harmony as
the highest good.
Let me give you an example. A contemporary novel
might follow a troubled family with truly toxic
relationships. Maybe one sibling has a terrible
influence on another; he lies, manipulates,
withholds love in exchange for money or support,
etc. Maybe he does this relentlessly, and we
learn throughout the story that this character is
unlikely to change. And yet... by the
end of the story, we're almost certain to see the
main character still trying to make peace with
this character, even indulging his behavior yet
again, in some way tolerating the abuse for the
sake of family. Whether this is
successful or not, this is going to be portrayed
as the desirable outcome in a contemporary novel.
Have you seen this trend?
And how many recent novels have you read that
show our hero breaking away from his family and
cutting ties, and showing this as a liberating
choice? I'm sure there are stories out there,
but they're few and far between. The clarion
call of family as good has stamped out the
possibility of other voices, other stories. In
some ways, the values I'm seeing in many
contemporary stories take the family=good
thesis as whole-heartedly as do the novels of the
1950's and earlier. We're seeing a backlash
against the devil-may-care abandonment or
liberation of the sixties and seventies.
There's something a little disheartening when
writers feel afraid to show the rupture of a
family as a good thing because it might make
their characters less relatable. Is it now true
in life as well as in fiction that it is better
to tolerate abuse or endure agony than to break
apart a family? We see this message hammered
home in television and movies; this message has
thoroughly invaded books as well. I saw this
when watching the film Lincoln this
weekend; it was a fascinating and well-made
movie, but in places it seemed to imply that
Lincoln was a great figure and deserving of awe
not for all his great ideas, but because he was a
kind and loving father (according to the movie).
Is there no more room for the truly
transgressive novel, the one that puts
liberation or disharmony at the heart of things?
That's the question I'm struggling to answer in
my own novel, but it's something you can be
thinking about as well. Do you assume family to
be a constant and unquestionable good in your
writing? Do parents or siblings getting along
seem to be most important, or the way that you
show someone as a "good" or "bad" person? Maybe
it's time to be a little more transgressive, and
to show that there just might be an alternative.
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