I have never been able to write harmless fiction. My characters, their backgrounds, and their motivations keep drifting outside the lines. And by "harmless," I don't mean just harmless cozies with cupcake-baking divorcees trading quips with hunky police chiefs over the latest corpse. I also mean harmless noir: PIs in Humphrey Bogart hats slouching in out of the mean streets and trading quips with femmes fatales with "legs out to here" and four-inch stiletto heels. ("Out to here," if you want an exact measurement, is twice the length of an average Ashkenazic Jewish woman's legs, ie my kind of legs.)
In today's publishing, there are a lot of rules based not on literary values but on the marketplace, as the industry tries to predict the unpredictable and control the uncontrollable. The underlying rip current is fear, determined by neither art nor business but by the chaotic politics of the moment. How far outside the lines am I allowed to color? As far as I want? Or only up to a limit defined by others?
In recent years I've become interested in writing from a Jewish perspective in my fiction. But anti-Semitism is on the rise globally. Jews are not getting a clear message that we're included under the sheltering umbrella of "diversity." So can I tell as many stories as I want, or just a token number? When will I be told that it's enough?
I've recently become interested in writing about trans people. I'd like to see trans characters integrated into crime fiction the way they are in speculative fiction. I have had one such story published, but I was disappointed when the editor allowed my preferred title to be vetoed by a low-level staff member who was trans. My 62-year-old nonbinary nibling (formerly my niece) commented: "I loved your title. The word police are mostly under forty."
How careful am I supposed to be with titles from now on? Will I be free to inform the development of all the characters I write with the full measure of my empathy and imagination? Does the publishing industry realize that the younger generation doesn't know anything? I remember trying to tell a young woman that the derogatory term "boujee" came from the word "bourgeois," for middle class. "No it doesn't," she said. "It's just itself." I didn't argue. People believe what they want to believe.
At this point in my life, I'm happy writing short stories. If I ever wrote another novel, it might be about two lifelong friends, a Jewish girl with Communist parents and a Black girl from Harlem with roots in what she calls a "good family" in the South, who first meet in the early1950s. But I have no incentive to write it. I wonder why not?
It's a weird time. But then... I wrote a story years ago, that I still think is very good, about someone who molests a child while on vacation in a foreign country and spends most of the story convincing himself that it never happened. The classic, "I DON'T DO THINGS LIKE THAT!" He does get caught at the end. But so far, I've never found any place that will take it. Some things are just too damn dark.
ReplyDeleteEve, you had a story in my Me Too anthology, so you'll probably remember my child molestation story. My impetus for creating that anthology was realizing a had what I thought was a great story and knowing I wouldn't be able to place it.
ReplyDeleteYes, I do remember. I think that's always been the trouble with markets, the limits are tight, and getting tighter today.
ReplyDeleteYep, and I can't even try to write a story that starts, "A crook, a sheriff, and the schoolmarm who taught them to spell antidisestablishmentarianism forty years ago walk into a bar."
ReplyDeletewhat a great writing prompt!
DeleteYou're welcome to it, Leone. :) I can hardly ever write to prompts.
DeleteThis issue comes up a lot in my "dark" fiction. I am writing crime stories. That means there are criminals -- despicable people -- in it, and despicable people sometimes say and do despicable things. I guess I can handle an occasional reader being offended, but when the editor says no because the villain is a racist, I'm confused.
ReplyDeleteRobert
What is crime fiction coming to if our bad guys can't be bad?
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned the other day, a Jewish physician I highly regard is fearing unchecked antisemitism and racism. She and her husband are liquidating assets, fearing they'll have to leave Florida and possibly the US.
ReplyDeleteThe 'word police' (a massive umbrella that should include police, prosecutor, judge, and hangman) has been growing out of control for years. We hear about the readers' side, the eleven Moms for Liber-something who ban books, about 600 to date. Florida regulations state it takes only ONE person to complain to remove a book across the state, so 11 'Moms' have wielded huge censorship clubs. Only one of the complainants has provenly read any of the books; the rest say they would never read such trash. Logic has no place here and naturally writers are on the defensive with great works of literature collapsing under #hashtag this or that. I'm glad you have bravely delved into this, Liz.
Thanks, Leigh. I can understand leaving Florida, but I know a couple of people who have left the US because they're so freaked out by the political climate, and it seems to me they haven't done enough due diligence on what it means to be an expatriate. I don't know of any country in the world that's a safe haven, a just society, and a paradise in 2023.
ReplyDeleteWell, Liz, the conservatives think the 2023 paradise is Hungary, but that's because they've never been there, just heard Fox News praise it to the skies. No, there is no earthly paradise - but some states are surely better than others.
DeleteAnyplace can be paradise if you have unlimited money, but the people I know who are fleeing the US because they feel critical of one side or another or the whole divisive mess don't fall into that category. Even if it feels like Germany in 1933 all over again, there's no country on earth that's saying, "Give us your tired, your poor..." or your elderly radicals who don't speak the language. And yes, I know our immigration story was complicated too.
ReplyDeleteTrue - if we could only win the lottery...
DeleteOddly enough, Germany might be one of the safer places... for now.
ReplyDeleteThere was an old Jewish joke my parents used to tell of which the punch line (one of the few sentences my mother knew in Yiddish) was, "But is it good for the Jews?" I understand it a whole lot better than I did 70 years ago.
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