What to write

  Now that I’ve gotten back into the novel writing business, I’m intrigued by what the rest of the country is writing. We live in really strange times in America. The divide between Red and Blue grows ever wider, we have a resurgence of evangelical Christianity, we are deep in the grip of a terrible recession (still), the gap between the super rich and the rest grows wider every day, and young people, even ones with very good educations, find it difficult to find jobs. I would think that in such times, novelists would be screaming injustice at the top of their lungs, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Of the current top ten New York Times best sellers, seven have to do with some sort of murder, one is a nostalgic love story (I think), one about a terrorist plot, and one about lawyers. These would have fit in nicely in the boom times before the great collapse of 2007.

  Is no one mad? Is no one upset that everything has gone to hell in a hand basket? Where is the Grapes of Wrath for our generation, or The Jungle? We seem to have relegated comments on current events to the non-fiction world of journalists who want to write large. Don’t get me wrong, some of these books are very good - for instance, Reckless Endangerment is a wonderful look on how the housing industry fell apart due to greed and corruption - but extended news articles, even when they are first rate, can never match the power of a good novel in depicting the times.

Poetry, I would think, is express some rage, but, sadly, poetry reaches a very limited audience these days.

  If you thumb through the books Amazon or Barnes and Noble advertise in emails or on their sites, what you see is a long list of vampires, fantasy, and troubled relationships. There is no anger in any of the works being sold.

  Now, you can blame that on the publishers, or the public. The publishers, obviously, print what will sell and once one vampire novel hits the big time, a flood will follow. And murder seems always to do well. If as many people in reality were murdered as are shown on TV or depicted in books, the population would be about the size it was a hundred years ago. Are the buying public looking only for escape? Have we all become subway readers, who only want to fill a boring commute with mind dulling murder mysteries?

  I can’t fault writers who are trying to make their livings, and hopefully their fortunes, tapping out drivel for the masses. But I can fault serious writers who want to write something worth remembering. I’m talking of serious American writers. They seem to want to use their fiction to rid their minds of their bad relationships or dysfunctional families.

  Oddly enough, with the birth of self-publishing on the web, an angry, serious writer has an easy way to present his work to the world. But even here we find endless murder mysteries, vampires, and sex.

  Anyone who reads this and also reads the novels I’ve published on the web will think I’m the biggest hypocrite in existence, because my first book is a crime novel and my second is about a family. But both of these were written years ago, before the American myth went south.

  My most current work, written late last year, deals with the problem of the divide between the one percent and the ninety-nine. I’ve sent that to a traditional magazine. When and if it gets rejected I’ll put it up on the web. The book I’m working on now is about the effect of automation on a small town factory as well as the separation of the owners from the workers. In fact, it’s working on this book at has made me look in disgust at what is being written by my fellow writers.

  I’m now and old man. I’ve lived through the absolute peak times of the American experience. I’ve seen the American Dream come true over and over again. What I see happening to my country now hurts and frightens me. We are becoming a oligarchy and no one seems to mind. 'Special Interests’ own our government and yet we seem to think the problems facing us today are the debt, abortion, gay marriage, and gun rights. Are we mad?

  It takes many things to change a trend on a national level. Perhaps a bevy of angry novelists may seem a small thing, but it’s at least something.