Gold Under Ice -- Gold trading during the Civil War
Alexander Nazaryan, wrote an article in Salon.com, that underscored Mr. Engdahl’s comment by saying, in effect, “He’s right.”
Nazaryan wrote that American writers are “too insular and self-involved,” too “interior.” Nazaryan blames the mantra of writing teachers over the last three decades or so to “write what you know.” In his view, this caution (or rule) makes American writers avoid the imagination, what he calls the “great leap of faith.”
For my part, I think there’s some truth in the idea that American writers are too “inward.” I also think the literary establishment is too timid to venture beyond well traveled opinions of what is good fiction.
However, the blanket indictment that novelists only write about their own psyches is denied daily by the vibrant activity among genre writers, whose works find an audience. I enjoy writing about Montana during the Civil War era because that way I can get beyond myself, to the “not me.” Of course, Nazaryan also complains that too many American writers are stuck in the 19th or 20th centuries instead of writing “new fiction.”
Perhaps. For my part, I’m trying to make sense of this enormous and complex nation I was born in, which may be at a crossroads as important as the Civil War, with some of the same issues still alive. With current events and controversies in mind, I write about a time when these same controversies stirred the nation to war with itself. History in historical fiction becomes a metaphor for the present.
Besides, it’s exciting to turn my thinking over to the right side of the brain, where imagination lives, and let ‘er rip. The characters surprise me with their comments and conversations and above all, with their decisions. None of these are strictly mine.
That’s part of what’s so much fun about writing fiction. I get in touch with the “not me.”
At the recent Montana Festival of the Book, with the concurrent Western Literature Association conference, I met writers and scholars of the Western, both traditional Westerns and the writers of historical and contemporary fiction set west of the Mississippi.
Nazaryan is, of course, as contemptuous of Western writers as he is of the inwardness of current literary fiction, if not more so.
Both Engdahl and Nazaryan are missing the point here.
The American literary scene is vibrant, experimental, contentious, fragmented, and above all, wildly alive. Those of us in the thick of it may well consider the whole Nobel thing to be irrelevant. We’re too engaged, too caught up in the tidal wave of publishing change to concern ourselves with the sneers of the pretentious.
Only one small point in the European argument could be construed as relevant. A lot of writers, especially in memoir, have been self-absorbed in the last few decades. Dare I say feminist literature has wallowed in the slough of Self for way too long. It’s refreshing to see us coming out of that and celebrating the expanse and adventure of western American women’s stories or triumph and success.
In your article, the freedom and joy of getting in touch with the ‘not me’ was such fun for me when I dived into the lives of my characters in Paradise Ridge. I took a brazen leap of Faith into three Great Basin cultures, buckaroo, Basque, and Shoshone, none of which am I deeply involved. All the while, I was scared someone would surely sue me for writing about “Their Culture.” Perhaps, that’s a problem we need to deal with in our country in respects to artists and writers: the proprietary nature of others’ cultures. It seems no matter how respectfully you think you’re portraying a culture, someone will always take offense. This keeps writers inward. Or it may be one reason why writers disguise their characters under a vampire’s cape. For that, I’m truly thrilled that the Western genre is still very much alive and moving forward, regardless of which century the story is set. It’s like breaking the ball and chain.
Yes, Sue, you’re right!
I don’t read memoirs much because the ones I tried seemed to whine: “My husband and I split up, aren’t men dreadful?” Sorry, I don’t think so. I’ve known too many good men, as well as some not-so-good, but I can say the same about women, so my conclusion is that we’re all just people.
You point out that it’s scary to write about other cultures. I agree. I knew Ruth Beebe Hill, author of Hanta Yo (1979), who was viciously attacked for writing her book because she was a white woman writing about Lakota culture from 1750 – 1834. Knowing her at that time, and seeing what she was going through, made me shy about writing about Indian cultures. (I use the older term because Indian people have told me they prefer it to the more PC term.) Yet Tony Hillerman was well regarded by the Navajo, and my own nonfiction book, Brother Crow, Sister Corn: Traditional American Indian Gardening (1997), received a favorable review in The Navajo Times.
Besides that, you may have hit on something which could explain the rising interest in the Western genre, whether traditional Western, historical fiction set in the West, or contemporary Western.
Thanks for writing, Sue.
Carol
One of the novelists on a panel last week, Jonathan Evison, said that he set out to write a big, ambitious American novel when he wrote WEST OF HERE. It was then turned down by a European publisher as “too American.”
I agree that many of the fiction books I see reviewed in the NY Times strike me as three parts navel gazing, and I’m pretty tired of memoirs. But that has more to say about the timidity of the publishing establishment than the storm of creativity you can find going on elsewhere. A prize for literature as it’s come to be narrowly understood is, as you say, irrelevant.
Unbelievable, Ron. A novel of the caliber of West of Here is rejected as being “too American”? Now which side of the pond is “insular and ignorant”?
You and I attended the same concurrent conferences, the Western Literature Association and Montana Festival of the Book, in Missoula, MT.
I agree completely that the publishing industry is timid and, I might add, myopic. For some years I thought I was the only one who noticed, but a couple of years ago I read Michael Hyatt’s blog post in which he discussed the “guild.” (Mr. Hyatt is the Chairman of Thomas Nelson, Inc., the world’s seventh largest publishing house, and the oldest publisher in the U. S., having been founded in 1798. It is a Christian publisher.)
The guild, Mr. Hyatt wrote, is a group of like-minded, inward-looking people in publishing, academia, and writing, who control what the reading public gets to read.
Rather, they used to control American literature. Now, as the indie publishing movement gains strength and speed, the readers have access to books they really want to read, instead of what members of the guild think is “good for us.”
As far as I’m concerned, all the dynamite has gone out of the Nobel Prize. Those Europeans have been trying to tell us what to do for too long. America is the last hope of a world on life support. It will take all the creativity of the most enterprising nation on earth to save the day.
Dig deep writers. The answers are within you. Don’t be swayed by an empty promise of a meaningless award. We are Americans. We have something important to say.
I couldn’t agree more, John! (And that’s a great figure of speech you started your comment with, besides.)
So true that the answers lie within writers ourselves. We do have important things to say, especially those of us who write about the West: its settlement, its difficulties, its democratic spirit.
Write on!