Goodfellas and Third Rails: The Conflict Between an Author’s Self-Interest and Freedom
By Barry Knister | July 16, 2015 |
Our guest today is Barry Knister who returned to fiction writing after a career of college teaching. His first novel, a gritty thriller titled The Dating Service had been published by Berkley. More recently, he has self-published two novels in a suspense series, The Anything Goes Girl, and the just-released Deep North. He has also published Just Bill, a short novel for adults about dogs and owners living on a Florida golf course.
Barry served as the past secretary of Detroit Working Writers, one of the country’s oldest writing organizations. For two years, he was also the director of the Cranbrook Summer Writers Conference. More recently, he wrote “Let me get this straight,” a weekly column on language for the Naples (Florida) Daily News. He lives in Michigan with his wife Barbara where they serve as staff for their Aussie/Sheltie rescue, Skyler.
Barry enjoys corresponding with writers and invites you to contact him through his website.
Goodfellas and Third Rails: The Conflict Between an Author’s Self-Interest and Freedom
Like other top sites for writers, Writer Unboxed offers inspiration, as well as advice on the Dos and Don’ts of craft and trade. Unlike most other sites, though, WU also lightens the load and amuses—thank you, Tom Bentley, Keith Cronin, Bill Ferris, et al. With few exceptions, the posts at WU are useful to both made writers, and to those working toward becoming made.
I’m using “made” in the Mafia sense. To be a made man in the mob is to be formally accepted into a crime family (“goodfellas” and “wiseguys” also refer to fully fledged gangsters). To achieve made status usually requires the wannabe gangster to carry out a contract killing.
If someone gets whacked for just annoying an unmade gangster (the way so many annoy Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas and Casino), that doesn’t count toward becoming a made man. Murders and maimings that aren’t contracted by higher-ups are viewed as simple fits of pique, and aren’t related to “business.” Case in point? The man living across the street from me. He has a compulsive need to use his leaf blower after dark, a blower powered by an F-16 jet engine. So often at such times I’ve wished Joe Pesci could be with me here on my patio, sharing a glass of wine after dinner…
Sorry, I lost the thread.
How does any of this apply to third rails, and to a conflict between becoming a made writer, and literary freedom?
The third rail is the electrified power rail that runs between subway tracks. Step on it, and you stop being a problem to anyone outside the Sanitation Department. But what are the third rails to be avoided by anyone who wants to be a made writer?
Two are politics, and writing outside your gender.
Yes, you can write about politics—but only if you safely cast your novel in the (preferably dystopian) future, or the past. Or in a galaxy far, far away. If the Mother of Dragons frees slaves (Game of Thrones), or a snowy-haired sadist president played by Donald Sutherland forces spunky teenagers to hunt down and kill each other (The Hunger Games)—fine. You can do that.
Except we’re all political, because what the word refers to is the give-and-take in human relationships. Office politics, sexual politics, family and neighborhood politics—everything we do can be thought of in political terms. Why, then, in a Western democracy should it be professionally dangerous for adult writers to create stories that take up actual political questions, to develop politically motivated characters who live in our own time and place?
True, works of literary fiction sometimes focus on contemporary politics (T.C. Boyle and Philip Roth come to mind). But I’m talking about what most of us at WU concern ourselves with as writers: genre fiction. Why should it be so dangerous for us to introduce politics into our plots and characterizations?
Conventional wisdom argues that our country is too divided politically. Write about actual, real-world political questions, and writers of either sex risk alienating readers who don’t share their point of view. From a dollars-and-cents perspective, goes the argument, it’s imprudent to risk testing that third rail.
But in seeking to make it—to be made—something important gets lost when writers censor themselves by treating political questions as taboo. Aren’t novels supposed to be challenging? Is genre fiction only about killing time and villains? Isn’t it humiliating to stifle a sincerely held political conviction or opinion, out of fear of losing some sales?
If you think about it, genre writers are exactly the ones who stand the greatest chance of stimulating and advancing public discussion on issues of the day. That’s because genre fiction, not the high-priced spread of literary fiction is what’s being read by the great majority of people who still read.
[pullquote]The practical writer will answer that compromise happens in all walks of life. She will say writers must pick their battles wisely, and that pulling one’s punches on political questions—or better yet, avoiding politics altogether—is just common sense.[/pullquote]The practical writer will answer that compromise happens in all walks of life. She will say writers must pick their battles wisely, and that pulling one’s punches on political questions—or better yet, avoiding politics altogether—is just common sense.
As for writing outside your gender, that, too, we’re told, is another third rail for writers. Something like ninety percent of readers of both sexes stick with books written by writers of their own gender.
Yes, you can write for the opposite sex. But for men, is it best to stick with two- or three-handkerchief subjects the way Nicholas Sparks does? For women, is it a good idea to make everyone of either sex in your story equally repellent (Gillian Flynn)? Do that, and you can probably get away with not writing specifically for members of your own sex.
Or: you can mask your gender by using your initials instead of your name.
I confess to having done this. The central character in my just-released suspense novel Deep North is Brenda Contay, a woman journalist. Before the first book in the series came out (The Anything Goes Girl), I bowed to the voices of reason, and cloaked myself in gender anonymity with my initials (they still figure in my website address, it’s too hard to change).
But at some point, the idea of intentionally trying to hoodwink readers into thinking I was a female writer began to seem ridiculous. I asked my cover designer to change my books. Barry Knister was writing my novels, not B.W. Knister, and I wanted that known.
As for writing for only male or female readers, that, too, now strikes me as a form of timidity, of hiding from imagination. In my case, I live with women young and not-so-young. Most of my colleagues and bosses over the years have been women. With all this life experience, am I actually going to limit myself to writing stories drenched in testosterone for only half the reading population? Correction: for just thirty percent, since women buy seventy percent or more of all fiction.
How crazy is that? No, I won’t do it.
So: in the name of truth and beauty, I invite you to consider risking your status as a made writer, or your chance of becoming one. To do this, you will need to forget about political and gender third rails, and write what you actually think matters.
If you are apolitical, that’s a different matter: no one should expect you to reinvent yourself as a sign-waving zealot. But writers read, and they pay attention. I am not easily persuaded that very many of them are unaware of or uninterested in the political issues of our time. If this has any application to you, at least consider the price that’s paid, in intellectual and spiritual terms, when writers bow to conventional wisdom.
Let me borrow—okay, steal—from what others at Writer Unboxed have urged in a different context: find your bliss by facing what you fear. Write what actually matters to you, and dare to use your own name. In other words, make a contract with yourself, and be your own made writer.
Now it’s your turn: What are the third rails you avoid? How do you overcome fear to write about what matters to you?
After a career in college teaching, Barry Knister returned to fiction writing. For several years, he served as secretary for Detroit Working Writers, and for two years he directed the Cranbrook Summer Writers Conference. He is the author of the Brenda Contay mystery/suspense series. Just Bill , a short novel about dogs and their owners living on a golf course in Naples, Florida will soon be joined by another novel set in the same fictional golf community. Now and then, Barry also gives in to a whimsical impulse, and writes short posts for several Medium publications. He and his wife Barbara live in Pleasant Ridge, a suburb just north of Detroit. Barry looks forward to hearing from you, either through Facebook , his website , or bwknister@sbcglobal.net . Insult comedians are welcome.
Without that third rail, the train goes nowhere. It is not there to maim or kill innocent bystanders. It’s there to provide power.
Sure, it’s dangerous. So? Use it correctly, and don’t actually touch it with your bare hands while grounded.
With only initials, I wouldn’t be myself, so I understand what you mean about claiming your own identity, and letting the feathers fly where they may. Life is too short.
I’m not interested in writing about politics, so I’ll leave that to the people with the ideas. But I am most definitely going to write male and female characters, because there has to be SOME payback for being forced to live in a world with about half of each. My solution: write both. In the same story. That’s what multiple third pov is for, and it allows you to pick the best characters to tell a story.
“ninety percent of readers of both sexes stick with books written by writers of their own gender” is a bit of a surprise – I would have thought it was that high, as I read everything.
And as for your final question, I have finally learned to use fear to tell me where I need to dig deeper. The fear is of not doing something justice, not an indicator that I shouldn’t write that topic.
The neighbor with the leaf blower? I empathize. I have one. He is indefatigable. And it doesn’t matter if it’s dark and snow lies over the land: those little spiked gumballs from the sweetgum tree MUST be blown over the icy crust.
Alicia–
I read your comments as faithfully as I do the posts at Writer Unboxed, so I am especially pleased today. As usual, you’ve brought “value added” to the post: as you rightly say, third rails aren’t weapons, they’re sources of power. I can’t improve on that. By its nature, touchy, risky, taboo subject matter is loaded with energy. But we are both talking about true risk, not the shock-value-for-its-own-sake variety.
As for including characters of both sexes in novels, the real challenge is to treat those characters as much as possible as persons, not just as instruments of the plot.
About neighbors with leaf blowers: I must acknowledge that almost all these people are men. No doubt, the obsession has to do with the phallus, E.D., and who knows what else.
Thank you again.
I MEANT to write that I would NOT have thought it was 90% gender distributed reading. Does that apply mostly to genre writing?
Characters are people. I love when the comments go from saying something about the story and plot, to sounding as if the reader cares about the characters.
Now I know who to commiserate with re leaf blowers. Other people just don’t understand.
Alicia–
I can’t answer your question. The statistic was for “fiction,” without any distributive breakdown.
As for commiserating about leaf blowers, please, I will gladly commiserate with you about anything else, but AVOIDING giving conscious attention to this issue is my goal.
Excellent, thought-provoking post, Barry. And it’s great to see one of WU’s most prolific and thoughtful commenters getting his own byline.
I’ve danced on that third rail, but not out of bravery. Instead, it was naiveté on my part. I knew I wanted to write for women, because from my observations on my weekly airplane flights, more women were reading novels than men. Plus, I was not good at writing “guy fiction,” as several unpublished short stories and aborted novel attempts had proven to me. But it never occurred to me that writing for a female audience would create any marketing issues, because I’m agnostic to things like author gender: it wouldn’t occur to me to care whether a book was written by a man or a woman. In hindsight I realize that few people share that agnosticism.
In the end, my debut novel was bought by a publishing house who wanted it for their women’s fiction imprint, which put me in a catalog whose authors were 99% female. The possibilities of using a female pen name – or your gender-hiding initials-only solution – were briefly discussed, but as the child of two journalists, I wanted my own byline, dammit. And so we moved forward, publishing a novel for women by a not-so-feminine author.
The reaction was interesting to see. Women seemed to like it. Men avoided it for the most part. The guys who actually read it seemed to like the book, but when praising the book they often tended to include the rather back-handed observation that they were surprised that they liked it. Um, thanks, guys.
Some women did not like it. Rather, they did not like the idea of it. This was brought home vividly when I attended a Women’s Fiction conference affiliated with the Romance Writers of America’s big annual conference. I sat in a well-lit room small enough for the speakers to see everybody in the audience – speakers who knew the people in the room were all writers of women’s fiction – and listened as a successful female author announced that only women could write women’s fiction. Um, thanks, lady.
But if this business teaches you anything, it’s to develop a thick skin. You need to believe in your own work deeply enough that you cannot be dissuaded by others. This level of belief and self-confidence isn’t easy to establish, but you’ll get lots of practice at dealing with nay-sayers and other obstacles, and with practice, anything gets easier.
Thanks for calling on us to go ahead and approach that third rail. Hell, think of it as a balance beam. You may fall off a few times, but with practice, you’ll be able to stay on top of it.
Beautifully written post, Barry. Written like a made guy, indeed.
I’m sure I was in that small room with you, Keith, but I don’t remember that comment. (And if I’m the one who made it? Permission granted to withdraw all chocolate support for a year.)
You’ve touched on one of my nerves with the “women’s fiction” genre with this statement:
I’ve experienced the same scenario, many times. Um, thank you, limiting and confusing women’s fiction label.
I’ve found myself caring less what people think about what I write, and you’ve tapped into the reason for that with the above outtake, Barry. My first book was written to be pleasing to women and was also pleasing to some men who didn’t mind women on the cover. My second book was written with a very different mindset, a grittier voice; if the first book was a pillow-top mattress, the second was a sleeping bag under a bridge. My third book will be different still. I don’t ever want to box myself–not to appeal to a particular gender or intellect or publisher. For me, doing that is timidity and hiding from imagination.
Not caring about that third rail has become empowering to me. Give me the stories that jolt electric. I want to read them. I want to write them.
Fear not, Therese – it wasn’t you. :)
Thank God, because I really don’t want to have to live without chocolate for a year.
Thanks for the great post Barry.
I try to determine who my target audience is, but other than that, the chips will fall where they fall. Fiction is “made up,” so why can’t a man write women’s fiction? I wrote a novel about a homosexual man, and I’m a heterosexual woman. But as long as you can put yourself into your character’s skin, why not?
I guess the question is whether you are capable of “being” someone else on the page.
So sorry – a link pasted into my comment that shouldn’t have. Please disregard.
Kirsche–
As you say, every writer does well to think in terms of a target audience, as well as an ideal reader. But if you’re like me, that’s hard to do. I want what I write to appeal to any reader who shares my respect for the written word, who enjoys the work of writers who respect language. And let’s just face it: lots of readers do not care very much about such matters. But I hope that respect is evident in what I publish–not a fussy or effete preoccupation with “style,” but a strong wish to get things right.
Keith–
Thank you for your kind words, and for a reflective comment that requires giving the most valuable thing any of us has–time.
There’s so much worthy of reply here, but I especially, and personally identify with how you characterize yourself: “I was not good at writing ‘guy’ fiction.” My first and only commercially published novel was guy fiction, and it did well, especially in PXs, government stores on army bases. But I didn’t want to go on writing such stories–it would have been a lie, because that’s not my world. In fact, Deep North takes Guy Stuff (a fishing trip), and sends a party of women into the wilderness instead of a Hemingwayesque party of men.
“You need to believe in your own work deeply enough that you cannot be dissuaded by others.”
There it is, so easy to say, but by no means easy to do. Every writer must listen to what s/he reads, and what others have to say, to learn. But every writer will also face moments of choice: does that writer have the self-knowledge needed to know when to hold ’em, and when to fold ’em?
Wonderful comment.
Thanks, Barry. I just pre-ordered Deep North, and am looking forward to reading your girls-doing-guy-stuff story!
Music to my ears, Keith. And if you don’t like Deep North, I will absolutely give YOU your money back. Note: this is not a universal policy.
Greetings from the other coast of the Mighty Mitten, Barry. Great to see you here as a contributor! Although I’d say you’ve already long been a thoughtful WU contributor in the sense that the conversation in the comments has always been one of the primary attributes of this site and community. And this post is every bit as well-written and thought-provoking as I would’ve expected.
I suppose I’ve been lucky, in that my mentors have always encouraged me to delve even deeper into the political intricacies of the world I’ve created for my stories. And religion as well (another potential third rail). But maybe that is because I write historical epic fantasy, as you point out. Tolkien famously discussed how he disliked allegory and much preferred history, “with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers.” I suppose I’ve always been one of those readers who found applicability in historical fantasy. Perhaps it’s the freedom you allude to here. I still see so much of today’s politics in current fantasy. I see strike drones in Robin Hobb’s hero’s use of The Skill, and radical Islamic Terrorists in her Outisland Raiders. Just as I see atomic missiles in Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons, and Trump’s Mexican border fence in The Wall of Westeros. So I suppose it’s no surprise I was drawn to write in the genre.
As for the question of writing for both genders, I find myself agreeing with Keith – I ended up writing stories that seem to appeal to female readers out of naiveté rather than bravery. I only realized it once I began seeking feedback from beta-readers. It’s probably because my wife has always been my Ideal Reader. In those moments as I work, where I imagine a reader being moved to laughter or sadness, it’s always her. I suppose I should be concerned about the marketplace. But, since I still aspire to become a made writer, I have to strive to get there in the only way I know how. Which is to focus on my passion and to dig even deeper for my own truths. Anything beyond writing the best stories I can will have to sort itself out afterward.
Thanks for starting my day with a thoughtful examination and a wonderful reminder of why I do this, and what’s important about it.
Vaughn–Like posts, comments are revealing of the writer. I read your posts and comments, and I am certain you know very clearly why you do what you do as a writer ( I also clicked the link to see your writing room, and I am very envious).
My comment on masking or filtering a political message in fantasy/science fiction is made by someone who is more or less ignorant of those genres. Someone immersed in a genre that includes Game of Thrones is much more likely to see what you do–a symbolic or allegorical meaning in dragons that speaks to our own politics and time. What I see is–a beautiful blond lounging on a hillside with her pet, which is not anything like the pet I lounge with.
“Write what you actually think matters.” I’ve been holding on to words like this for the past few years as I navigate the tension of writing what I burn to write and writing what I think publishers want. Betsy Lerner’s book, The Forest for the Trees, has been of great encouragement to me in this, as have the books and posts of Donald Maass. I happily add you to the list, Barry.
Some of my favorite words from Lerner I love sharing with other writers:
“If you dream of having your work stay alive beyond your tenure on earth, if you hope to see it beside the unforgettable voices that are part of our literary diaspora, then you must be fearless in every aspect of your writing. . . . give up the vain hope that people will like your work. People like vanilla ice cream. Hope that they love your work or hate it. That they find it exquisite or revolting . . . Throw off the shackles of approval. . . . if your book causes a commotion, even the negative kind, you will have made a platform for yourself, something very few writers ever attain. . . . You cannot censor yourself; successful writing never comes through half measures.”
—Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees
Erin– Thank for your comment. And thank you for the quote from Betsy Lerner. So much attention is paid to negotiating the commercial minefield that actually taking pride in what we write seems to have been shunted aside, like an abandoned box car. I don’t like it, and apparently neither do you. I have no aspirations to having my work “stay alive beyond your [my] tenure on earth.” My aspiration is be able to live at peace with myself regarding the choices I’ve made as a writer.
Indeed. BTW, I’m also a Michigander, currently residing in the capital city but with a deep love for Detroit, from which all of my family hails.
Erin–
It’s great to see signs that Detroit still has a pulse. My only regret is that I won’t live long enough to see what comes of it.
Great to see you here, Barry. A position which was long-overdue. (I would have said that even if you hadn’t implied your arsenal contains a mob reprisal. ;) )
Fiction is the perfect place to pursue political discussion. (Look at the success of shows like Newsroom and West Wing, for instance.) It’s platform where that can get tricky, IMHO.
The first novel I wrote tackled gay rights in Arizona. I didn’t set out to write a political novel–in fact, it’s a rom-com–but edgy subjects often lead to sales, so that would have been neat. One day, right? Though the subject is not nearly as outre as it once might have been.
Jan–Thank you, I am always glad to be here, especially today. And take it easy, kid. I got no mob affiliations.
I’m sure you’re right about platform. I’m so out of it tech-wise that I don’t think about that much. But anyone who has a serious online presence will face especially hard choices. Such people work for years to develop a following. Is it reasonable to expect them to jeopardize it for a political opinion? As I say, a hard choice.
About your first novel: re-issue it as a novel about Mexican gay rights in Arizona, then jump back and see what happens.
My daddy worked on the railroad and I’ve always known about the third rail. Like I was born knowing there was a third rail and I needed to be very careful about jumping over it. I’d stand on the station platform and look down at all those steel bands cutting me off from the other side. And I’d plan that route so as to avoid that third rail. But I’d get confused counting and I wasn’t sure if that rail was the third rail or the second or the first next to the other rail. But the thing was, I knew my trouble wasn’t going to be because I stepped on the third rail. It would be because I knew I’d most likely trip and fall off a platform and it would be my skull that would hit the rail. And not even the third one at that. So knowing there was a third rail out there amongst all the other tracks wasn’t going to save me. So I’d step back as a train came into the station and that warm breeze touches my face and the pneumatic oil smell it gives off reminds me always of my daddy saying goodbye as he hung nimbly to the handrail, waving as he passed through the station on the way to Selkirk. I didn’t hop that train. My dad would call my mom from the city and tell her what time his freight train would be coming through the station. And she’s gather us all up in the Rambler station wagon and go down the hills into the city down to the river. He wanted to see us so there we’d be all lined up waiting for his train. Waving. So. Where am I? Oh, right. Yeah, it’s never the third rail that gets you, even though it’s what everybody warns you about.
Thea– My grand daddy was a railroad man, in Canada, but his train left the station before I could know him. Your story brings back my sense of loss about that. The warm breeze and the “pneumatic oil smell” deepens the effect, as good details always do. Thanks.
My daddy was a freight brakeman for the New York Central. Pretty much NYC up the Hudson River to Albany then west to Buffalo. And even to this day train smell makes me tear up a bit because it reminds me of him.
Thea–
My grandfather was a station master in the tiniest of towns, in Ontario. I know about him only through anecdotes. He smoked a pipe (and died of mouth cancer), and train conductors would step off to load their own pipes from his crock of tobacco. I’m sure we would have had something to say to each other.
Hello Barry
I appreciate and applaud your bringing up for discussion areas writers avoid. Personally, with all that goes on in the news, I often wonder why certain topics receive little or no “air time” by writers. If not as a main plot line, then at least in a sub plot role. Perhaps fiction writers believe current events are better handled by nonfiction writers, but if a topic captures a wide audience, and, most importantly, it matters to the writer, it seems worthy of book time, and what better means than through one’s fiction writing.
The books that have endured took on the events of their time. How do you overcome fear to write about what matters to you? Start writing, and don’t look back.
Vincent–thanks for your comment. There are third-rail topics of a personal nature for each of us, as well as public or political topics. I’m talking in my piece about the latter. I suspect the relentless media pressure to gain eyeballs by hyping political topics is part of the reason why so many writers don’t develop political novels. We hear the catch phrases and see the same images over and over. But as you say, for anyone who is moved by the issues of our time, the only thing for it is to meet the demands of conscience by writing, and to not look back. That, really, is the only way to counter so much unimaginative media repetition.
Here’s one that makes me grind my teeth: writing with a fake name because said fake name fears retribution for sins against the .01% estate. Put up or shut up, IMO. There’s PC and there’s gutless. Write it, own it, that’s my motto.
morgynstarz–IMO, you are dead on. Not “rent to own,” but write to own, and make it something you are proud of. Thank you.
Just an FYI about “fake” names. In many cases writers are virtually forced to take on a new name due to publishing contracts, new series, etc. It doesn’t mean they don’t take ownership of what they write.
But but God invented nom de plumes for a reason!
Hi Berry,
Greetings from another native Michigander. I’ve read your thoughtful comments on this site for a long time, and it’s great to see you writing posts as well.
I think you’re making a good point here. I write romance, where the norm is for women to write from duel perspectives, both men’s and women’s. Writing well? Not always, but it doesn’t seem to be a flashpoint of any kind. However, a man writing from a woman’s perspective contains far more potential for backlash.
But how about race? The main character in my recently released book is half Mexican. Now that the book out in the world, I have the chance to market the book as “multicultural romance,” but I find myself a little uncomfortable going in that direction. An online Latina book club is reading my book, and I admit I’m nervous–what will their reaction be?
It’s funny–if I had written a Regency-era romance, I wouldn’t be asking myself this question, despite that fact that I have much less in common with an 19th century noblewoman than I do an Latina Michigander. But since race is another of our country’s flashpoints, I find myself a bit nervous.
Hope to hear from you again!
/Rebecca
Rebecca–I am talking the talk, but you have walked the walk in your new novel–by trusting the imagination, and ignoring conventional wisdom. At some point (I associate it with an essay written by the Nigerian Nobel Prizewinner Chinua Achebe), it became politically correct to assert that only members of the group–in terms of race, ethnicity, sex, etc–were qualified to write about subjects related to that group. To me, such a view is foolish, and I hope the Latina book club reading your work thinks so, too.
HI, Barry:
Well, there’s just to much to say. As a writer who has been described as “too male” and whose Edgar-nominated novel got slammed with, “I don’t need David Corbett shoving his politics down my throat,” I can relate to both third rails, and have perhaps been gripping both a bit too arduously.
I think Erin’s quote from Betsy Lerner and Keith’s admonition to develop a thick skin are both keenly on-point. I dedicate an entire chapter in THE ART OF CHARACTER to politics, because I find it astonishing how infrequently characters express a political point of view. I agree with Vaughn that the issue very much resembles religion. Politics and religion go to the heart of what we believe is the right way to live — how can that be anything but crucial to our understanding of our characters?
That said, I think most writers avoid the issue due to an understanding that Henry James was right when he described politics as, “the systematic organization of hatreds.” And a writer has to love his characters, not hate them. The temptation is often too great to turn one’s political adversaries into cartoons.
The Buddhist nun Pema Chodron addresses this in her writing:
“We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who’s right and who’s wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don’t like about our associates or our society… It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others….”
A good writer doesn’t blame (or judge) his characters. he loves/justifies them. And sometimes I think writers (wisely, in some cases) skirt politics to avoid this trap, which is all too easy to fall into. (Other writers, such as Brad Thor, openly ridicule their political adversaries in their fiction and get lionized by their ideological kin.)
As an antidote to blaming and similar missteps, I often recommend reading George Lakoff’s MORAL POLITICS: HOW LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES THINK.” This provides a larger, moral, thematic underpinning to the beliefs we often consider leftist or rightist, and it grounds political inclinations in distinct conceptualizations of the world and others. That provides a good tool for embodying a character’s politics in a larger belief system than can be portrayed through behavior, rather than simply labelled.
Another great source is the Moral Foundations website: https://www.moralfoundations.org/ where they discuss five core moral concepts that guide a society’s values, political narratives, and public institutions.
Like I said — too much to say. Apologies for bloviating.
Great post. Wonderful to see you here.
David–
Too much to say right back at you, and where to begin?
I doubt many writers avoid political subjects because of a caution from Henry James, but what you quote him as saying seems about right. As for avoiding such topics because we must love our characters, I wonder. I am not a cultural relativist: I don’t for instance think that female genital mutilation is just something I should accept as legitimate to people in societies different from my own. BUT if I were to write about that topic, I would charge myself with understanding, i.e., loving my characters, however much I might be appalled. I hope I would take special pains to avoid cartoon characterization, as I hope is true generally in my writing.
I too am a George Lakoff fan. His work will help me when I try to finish a WIP, in which a couple are at odds over just this divide–liberal vs conservative.
And: you never bloviate. You just know a lot, and are good enough to share it with others.
I meant Henry Adams. Oops.
I’m not sure genital mutilation results from a political inclination, but I take your point. Still, is it really so terrible to put yourself in the mindset of someone who not only does such things, but believes they are not just justifiable, but right? It forces us to understand the monster is human — which isn’t such a bad thing to remember. The same is true of our political opponents. It may make us crazy, but seeing the world from our adversaries’ point of view can be pretty doggone enlightening. And if we refuse to do this, what are we holding onto and can’t let go of?
I think that’s why we’re artists, not politicians. We feel the need to ground ourselves in the universal humanity of our stories — not point fingers of blame to make ourselves feel superior.
Also, thank you for kindly saying I don’t bloviate. Too bad the same can’t be said for mistyping.
“Something like ninety percent of readers of both sexes stick with books written by writers of their own gender.”
Really? To quote Johnny, “I did not know that.” I never choose a book based on the gender of the writer and I guess I assumed everyone else was the same. Or did I? Given that some twenty years ago I gave my writer-self initials instead of a first name, I did anticipate a dangerous third rail but either from naiveté or brash confidence, I didn’t let it influence my choice of characters or milieu.
My hero is a male trucker, a Canadian male trucker, no less. I don’t know if you would consider it political, but recently on Facebook one aspiring novelist (who I don’t know) wailed, “Why is writing about a trucker taboo?” (Her friend answered by referring her to my series.) Interesting that I couldn’t convince any female agents to even consider my first novel, while male agents were much more encouraging. I thought I’d score points for the unique setting for a mystery series, or at least for originality. Eventually I self-published, and I’m happy with that.
I give my graphics guy free rein in cover design because I respect his artistic talent and marketing smarts, and he puts a big rig on every cover. I guess it’s no wonder that, in spite of my photo at the back of the book, many reviewers – male and female alike – refer to the author as a “he”. I take that as a compliment. I’ve cleared the third rail on the gender track.
Thanks for posting, Barry.
p.s. Thea, were you referring to Selkirk, Manitoba? My dad started his medical career as the M.D. for Canadian National Railways in Winnipeg, where I was born.
Ruth–thanks a lot for your comment. You don’t choose books by the gender of the authors, and my guess is that’s true of most people who visit Writer Unboxed. I will even risk a charge of class warfare by suggesting that WU and its readers are more discerning and “grown up” than is generally true of both readers and writers.
I don’t know whether you should take “he” as a compliment, but it should be very satisfying to know how thoroughly you’ve gotten things right about truckers and trucking.
Ruth Donald, it was Selkirk, NY which is just below Albany NY
I write cozy mystery, the lighter side of the crime fiction world. But I had no trouble making political statements about wolves — a highly charged topic here in NW Montana — in my latest book, or about homelessness in Seattle in the previous book, for two reasons. Every book — light or gritty — needs to be *about* something, and sometimes those themes are overtly political. And I realized at Don Maass’s Breakout Novel Intensive a couple of years ago that our characters’ opinions bring them alive and make them stand out on the page. No diatribes or preaching, of course, and characters with opposing views make for great conflict. But characters not willing to take a stand when an issue confronts them is are not going to be strong enough to carry a book — not one worth asking readers to give us their time to read.
Leslie–what you say here makes good sense to me. Especially about how character is revealed through opinion. In fact, in my view, everything must be seen in terms of character–what she sees (as distinct from what she doesn’t), and how she sees it; who she meets, what objects she lives with, clothes–all of it serves the intelligent, observant reader as information related to character. And those are the readers we’re writing for, are they not?
You wrote abut wolves in Montana? That took some guts.
Have you heard of a little known book by some guy named Seuss who wrote about speaking for the trees?
Hmm, no guts in the writer, no guts in the story?
The book with the wolf biologist has only been out 10 days, but no one’s criticized the handling of the wolf issue so far. And if they do — hey, just spell my name right!
Maybe someone should have advised James Patterson, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz that they would have sold more books if only they had used their initials instead of their first names.
augustina29–
Point taken–you got me. Once you become a household name, you can call yourself anything you want. But even though I don’t care about a writer’s gender, that has nothing to do with why I don’t read Patterson or Koontz. King is a different matter, and that will still be true, even if he changes his name to Stephanie.
Barry, you are a household name at my place. King does write under another name, but it is not Stephanie.
Barry, I can only forgive you for saying I walk funny because yours are consistently among the most considered (and often the most provocative) of the comments here.
I wouldn’t insert politics into my stories (even if I am a proud-though-skulking pinko dog) unless the characters and story situations could use that “organization of hatreds” (thanks David) in a way that’s integral and that serves the story. But I’d never deliberately avoid political wrangles if it counts.
I really want to avoid straw man/straw woman targets in my work, which is why I’m now uneasy that a central female character in my novel might smack of a flat victim with a daddy complex. (Of course, since I’ve never been black and never been a homeless old Vietnam vet like one of my other characters, I worry about authenticity there too. At least I am old, so I share some of his pain.)
On male/female slant and readership, I’d guess that all six of my readers are evenly split by gender (which doesn’t mean they are fighting). And I’d be one of those who buck that 90 percent figure: I read novels by female writers all the time. Reading Louise Erdrich’s The Round House at this moment, read Wide Sargasso Sea last month. Heck, I’d read a novel by a dog if the characterization was tight.
Anyway, great to see you at the top of the page this time; hope there are repeats.
Tom–I was hoping to see you today. Or any day for that matter–but you know what I mean.
It would be foolish to pressure anyone to “get political” as a writer. But sidestepping political questions for, ahem, fiscal reasons is the question.
“I really want to avoid straw man/straw woman targets in my work.” To me, that term equates with someone else’s reference to cartoon characters. Some writers create such characters to serve the interests of plot. Some do it out of ignorance, or laziness. But if you know what you’re doing, you know it’s a diminishment, something unworthy.
That having been said, it’s also true that some people, for reasons of pathology, feel forced to simplify themselves until they can only be described as exhibiting a “complex.”
Thanks a lot.
Barry,
The first thing that came to mind was Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone. I read it as a teen and remember how I kept flipping it shut to look at the cover, I just couldn’t believe how well he was voicing a teenage girl. And the topics! It was my first experience juxtaposing an author to their writing.
But I believe this surprise is actually a well-meaning compliment to an author’s skill. I was surprised because I was so impressed; I was an actual fifteen year old girl and I had trouble understanding myself. As I read through the book , I remember shaking my head a lot and thinking, “Damn, that’s a good writer.”
Its been so many years, but that book, the surprise of a writer being that good, had a lasting impact on me. I can honestly say I will never forget that experience.
Celeste–
Your experience makes my point in the best possible way. Not only was the writer a male whose book had real meaning for a female, he was an adult whose work spoke perfectly to a young person. That’s what’s called the imagination at work. Thanks a lot for sharing your memory.