Impotent Fiction: Why Do They Write That Stuff?
Back when I still had a touching faith in the discernment of the New York Times Book Review, I’d read Edna O’Brien and Anna Quindlen and Margaret Drabble, and I wasn’t sure I ought to be questioning the taste of my betters, but was slowly growing doubtful of the form.
Lots and lots of anguishing, in the finest tender prose.
Even in Mrs. Caliban, an almost entirely enthralling novella first published in 1982, the unhappy protagonist with a unique companion tossed right into her lap in the beginning ended up sad and alone at the end.
All these books seemed the obverse of what the guys were writing. “And I’m the one he did it to!” they shriek, weakly.
I got tired of reading apparently quasi-autobiographical stories with all the blood drained from them and presented as literary marvels.
Now, as a writer, I can’t understand why anyone would forswear the power of fiction to let you do any damn thing you want in the world you own.
It was a great feeling when I ran over the first bad guy I built for myself. A decade ago, and I can still feel those bones crunching.
Killing’s even better. I enjoy it tremendously, but please don’t think me wanton. It’s just in the service of my own favorite literary form: “My problem and how I solved it.”
My response is that if it's on the NYT Best Seller list, it's probably trash. lol
Same kind of thing happening in popular fiction as what happened with TV... Jerry Springer-ism. A lowering of life and of thought and of talent and of creativity and of depth... etc.
But my dear, I don't think you realize the gift you have-- I'm not trying to fawn over you or suck up or anything like that, because that's not what I do. But honestly, your writing is superb. It's a GIFT, you have it, and you give it to us. Thank you.
I started to have a nagging feeling 20 years or so that the purpose of popular art and fiction wasn't to hypnotize or numb us but to crush our spirit and drive us to despair, and to find cynical pleasure in competing with each other for who was the more jaded vampire that could withstand, say, child pornography or gang rape with a bemused smile.