How novelists deal with the present

Be it as a coping mechanism, a source of inspiration and empathy, or an artistic impulse that can’t be denied, fiction about the present time can serve a valuable purpose. (Photo by Sam Lion via Pexels)

These are strange times, my dear, the influential Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou wrote in 1979. Those words still ring true, given the unfolding impact of climate change, authoritarianism, and sectarian conflicts. How should novelists address current times, and how soon is too soon to write fiction about them?

Salman Rushdie, for one, has spoken about how writing “up against the moment” is “excitingly dangerous”. This was in the context of The Golden House, his 2017 novel in which a Trump-like character, a “victorious green-haired cartoon king”, prepares to occupy the White House. Certainly, the inclusion of contemporary events can give a novel a topical sheen but equally, it can make it seem dated.

Others prefer to wait and watch. Tolstoy’s War and Peace, set during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, was published about half a century after those events. Then, there’s the Zhou Enlai approach: in an apocryphal tale from 1972, when the Chinese Premier was asked about the influence of the French Revolution, he is supposed to have replied: “Too early to tell.”

Sometimes, the present can be too overwhelming for writers of fiction to process. In 1961, Philip Roth wrote that the American writer had his hands full in trying to understand and describe much of his country’s reality. “It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one's own meagre imagination.” Reality is outdoing our talents, he went on, and “the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist”. Little did he know what was lying in wait.

For the writer who decides to dive into the zeitgeist, one challenge is to make the reader viscerally aware of individual circumstances without being overly ideological. A recent notable example is Anjum Hasan’s History’s Angel, about the predicament of a section of Muslims in north India today – though even here, to paraphrase Roth, the actuality is outdoing the narrative.

Some find that a better approach is to come at the material obliquely, with parables and overarching metaphors. Look at Orwell’s influential Animal Farm, which critiqued the cult of Stalin, or Camus’s The Plague, widely considered to be an allegory of the Nazi occupation of France.

Satire is often a part of such work, and in some cases it is dominant. Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, to mention just one, took aim at the “bright young things” of 1920s London, a generation seen as shallow, flippant, and devoted to partygoing. Most such satires owe a debt to Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal, both of which were published a few years apart.

Turning to history for potent parallels is another tactic. Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, which dramatized the 1692 Salem witch trials, was an allegory for 1950s McCarthyism during which the United States government went after people accused of being communist. Audiences understand all too well, wrote Christopher Bigsby about the play, “that the breaking of charity is no less a truth of their own lives than it is an account of historical processes”.

While some look backwards, others look forwards with SF and fantasy. On the burning issue of climate change, for example, there is Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future and earlier, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Arguably, works like these communicate the ramifications of global warming better than realistic, present-day approaches.

Similarly, dystopian narratives can be forceful reminders of current attitudes. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is evidently a commentary on the dangers of religious extremism and the importance of women's rights. And Naomi Alderman’s The Power inverts current notions of oppression, power, and gender hierarchy.

Sometimes, rushing to write realistically about contemporary events can create work that seems undigested. Take the many Covid-19 short stories and novels on the shelves, for instance. A similar situation arose with novels of 9/11 and its aftermath, from Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to John Updike’s awful Terrorist.

Writer Valeria Luiselli, who edited a recent volume of prizewinning stories that contained some pandemic fiction, offers a different perspective. She says it makes sense to think of such work as a type of “literary archaeology”. In her view, the first novels written during the pandemic “are a kind of primary-source archive that later might be built on”.

Be it as a coping mechanism, a source of inspiration and empathy, or an artistic impulse that can’t be denied, fiction about the present time can serve a valuable purpose. The best of them, in the words of Guy Davenport, articulate forces to make them intelligible. The question of whether it is too soon or not becomes inconsequential if the work stands the test of time.