I personally deal with this by trying to widen my historical perspective and time horizons. I can’t not write about “politics”, but I can write about it in such a way that it’s not too immediate and mind killing. This practice wouldn’t make it less significant, just less claustrophobic.
Noooo don't write a metaphorical story revealing the emotional underpinnings of political devotion, I'm at work (maybe I've totally misinterpreted this but that's what I got out of it). Anyway, I think you got at a truth that one-to-one contemporary works generally miss completely. I loved it!
Love the story. My own next post is going to be about exposition, and I really like this expository mode you’ve developed.
Regarding the political, I’ve found that after years of agonizing over the political, I’ve landed on the idea that it took up too much of my own thinking. What a waste of my mind and its capacity to think about spiritual and scientific and philosophical and aesthetic and somatic things. And I’ve landed on the ethos that the antidote is just doing something else in my own writing, freeing the mind to wander broadly. Just my two cents!
Love your story about demons, and don't worry about being perceived as having TDS. We all know you're a great writer. If you want to write a story relevant to "the current political situation," then write away.
Great story and I like that it's so "tell not show" giving a bit of 19th C feel. Is protagonist named for Mary Shelley maybe? I think I'd have dropped the narrator from para 1 (or maybe returned to her/him at end). How does narrator know what happened in Heaven anyway? (Unless they're an angel I guess.)
Ha, I’ve just started reading Fosse this past week. 150 pages in. It of course depends on how you define “political,” but I would argue it is political and has quite a bit to say.
People go to "the bad part of town" all the time and always have, for fun and otherwise. Taking here the bad part of town to be plutocratic DC, Wall Street, the FBI, the CIA, military conquest, prisons, the Trump regime, the Biden regime, etc. Popular art is flooded with this stuff - stories of and against the police state and the plutarchy.
People don't go a lot of places "just for fun" - and doing simply one thing of anything would get tiring and worse, so no one really does that either. That said, there are a lot of nonfiction workers who push the bounds of writing only about the "regime" - one regime or another - and make a living on it, with serious or slight effects one way or another.
So "can fiction writers repress their knowledge of 'the current political situation'?" Fiction writers do all kinds of things, and go in all kinds of directions, or can. Depends what your situation, aptitude, and intention is. Generally, all writers can and do repress all kinds of things. But must they? It depends, but not necessarily, no.
A lot of fiction writers eagerly and often wade into waging "soft power" for the good or the bad, directly or indirectly. A lot do not or claim not to. The culture of writing in America is highly politicized, and highly establishmentarian, and it is often denied that it is.
Systematically, that's how it is. There is individual variation, of course.
I quite enjoyed this demon story. There's a lot in there about the ways that Christians have approached the topic of good and evil, that people in fact must encounter evil to really become good, and that makes evil necessary... but my thoughts are not fully collected here. I will, though, predict that something like this story, in novel-length form, is going to be a breakout literary hit in the next decade. We've just had too many years of monster Romantasy (especially if we trace it back to Twilight) dominating commercially. Some Romantasy fan with literary chops is going to come along, pull in interesting parts of the genre and subvert the uninteresting ones, and make something good out of it.
Very good. Punchy, succinct, loved the twists, nice appeal to the intellect, great balance of predictable and not predictable, and somehow strangely familiar
Lately, I find myself mostly drawn to writing allegories. I’ll take an analogous situation that is obviously the sort of thing that tends to happen, and let it be something that just happens to be happening right now. Like, I recently wrote an essay on Carlyle’s French Revolution drawing attention to how even after an insurrection at Versailles, in which the king (the legitimate sovereign) almost lost his life, the revolutionaries still continued to believe that they were loyal subjects of a legitimate and ancient monarchy. Certain kinds of citizens were able to cling to this consoling idea, almost until the execution of the royal family.
I think allegories are useful because they make it possible to process what is going on indirectly, with less pain and less of a feeling of personal involvement. I find this processing helpful. And since they are not exclusively about what is happening now, allegories can have other sorts of value when we don’t want to think of it.
Good writing, fantastic beginning and hook. Got me in very quickly and a fresh take on demons throughout. Biting cultural takes as expected.
Like most of my writing, the ending felt a little rushed and shoehorned. But that's just my two cents.
I personally deal with this by trying to widen my historical perspective and time horizons. I can’t not write about “politics”, but I can write about it in such a way that it’s not too immediate and mind killing. This practice wouldn’t make it less significant, just less claustrophobic.
This is somewhat connected to the other Ethan’s point about using allegory.
Noooo don't write a metaphorical story revealing the emotional underpinnings of political devotion, I'm at work (maybe I've totally misinterpreted this but that's what I got out of it). Anyway, I think you got at a truth that one-to-one contemporary works generally miss completely. I loved it!
Set the timeframe of the fiction pre-Trump!
Love the story. My own next post is going to be about exposition, and I really like this expository mode you’ve developed.
Regarding the political, I’ve found that after years of agonizing over the political, I’ve landed on the idea that it took up too much of my own thinking. What a waste of my mind and its capacity to think about spiritual and scientific and philosophical and aesthetic and somatic things. And I’ve landed on the ethos that the antidote is just doing something else in my own writing, freeing the mind to wander broadly. Just my two cents!
Love your story about demons, and don't worry about being perceived as having TDS. We all know you're a great writer. If you want to write a story relevant to "the current political situation," then write away.
This was a fun read. I listened on the media player and it made me giggle.
I LOVE THIS STORY
I LOVE THIS STORY
I LOVE THIS STORY
Great story and I like that it's so "tell not show" giving a bit of 19th C feel. Is protagonist named for Mary Shelley maybe? I think I'd have dropped the narrator from para 1 (or maybe returned to her/him at end). How does narrator know what happened in Heaven anyway? (Unless they're an angel I guess.)
Ha, I’ve just started reading Fosse this past week. 150 pages in. It of course depends on how you define “political,” but I would argue it is political and has quite a bit to say.
People go to "the bad part of town" all the time and always have, for fun and otherwise. Taking here the bad part of town to be plutocratic DC, Wall Street, the FBI, the CIA, military conquest, prisons, the Trump regime, the Biden regime, etc. Popular art is flooded with this stuff - stories of and against the police state and the plutarchy.
People don't go a lot of places "just for fun" - and doing simply one thing of anything would get tiring and worse, so no one really does that either. That said, there are a lot of nonfiction workers who push the bounds of writing only about the "regime" - one regime or another - and make a living on it, with serious or slight effects one way or another.
So "can fiction writers repress their knowledge of 'the current political situation'?" Fiction writers do all kinds of things, and go in all kinds of directions, or can. Depends what your situation, aptitude, and intention is. Generally, all writers can and do repress all kinds of things. But must they? It depends, but not necessarily, no.
A lot of fiction writers eagerly and often wade into waging "soft power" for the good or the bad, directly or indirectly. A lot do not or claim not to. The culture of writing in America is highly politicized, and highly establishmentarian, and it is often denied that it is.
Systematically, that's how it is. There is individual variation, of course.
Great story! I am also now in love with Valac. In this universe we’ll definitely be reunited in heaven.
I quite enjoyed this demon story. There's a lot in there about the ways that Christians have approached the topic of good and evil, that people in fact must encounter evil to really become good, and that makes evil necessary... but my thoughts are not fully collected here. I will, though, predict that something like this story, in novel-length form, is going to be a breakout literary hit in the next decade. We've just had too many years of monster Romantasy (especially if we trace it back to Twilight) dominating commercially. Some Romantasy fan with literary chops is going to come along, pull in interesting parts of the genre and subvert the uninteresting ones, and make something good out of it.
That was great.
Very good. Punchy, succinct, loved the twists, nice appeal to the intellect, great balance of predictable and not predictable, and somehow strangely familiar
Lately, I find myself mostly drawn to writing allegories. I’ll take an analogous situation that is obviously the sort of thing that tends to happen, and let it be something that just happens to be happening right now. Like, I recently wrote an essay on Carlyle’s French Revolution drawing attention to how even after an insurrection at Versailles, in which the king (the legitimate sovereign) almost lost his life, the revolutionaries still continued to believe that they were loyal subjects of a legitimate and ancient monarchy. Certain kinds of citizens were able to cling to this consoling idea, almost until the execution of the royal family.
I think allegories are useful because they make it possible to process what is going on indirectly, with less pain and less of a feeling of personal involvement. I find this processing helpful. And since they are not exclusively about what is happening now, allegories can have other sorts of value when we don’t want to think of it.