The Land of Unintended Consequences
A few years ago Jonathan Franzen bemoaned the demise of the social novel, citing the novel’s inability to spread the news, to compete with events unprecedented in scale and speed. On the face of it, the odds against fiction as harbingers of developments are long indeed. Within the past month the NYT has written that we live in a non-fiction moment, craving facts, memoirs, reality over works of imagination. The trend away from fiction is not a trend at all, but the unintended consequences of factors more economic than intellectual. There is an inverse relationship between the good news of productivity increases and a sense of well being among the populace. Financial writers thrill to the metric expressed by productivity and its kissing cousin, labor unit costs. Productivity rises, unit costs fall, creating a low interest rate environment, low inflation, fat bonuses on Wall Street.
For the average person, though, things feel differently. Productivity means working ten or twelve hours for the same pay that used to require eight hours. Households incomes are up, but that fact conceals the reality that it takes two people earning paychecks instead of one. Core inflation discounts the cost of fuel, the household budget does not. Filling the gas tank is one thing, heating your home is going to take investment grade compromises as winter sets in.
Where does fiction fit in the daily lives of people with less time for leisure? Escapism? I’m not sure about that. Remember the first rule of body surfing? Let the wave carry you…don’t thrash, don’t kick. Maybe fiction should turn into the wave, fight the current, kick a little more. Maybe that’s what Franzen worried about in his pre-Oprah days. It seems counterintuitve, but there is more to be learned from a good novel than any textbook or how to. Facts and figures are cold comfort. A great novel is messy, imprecise, slow, preachy, funny, exasperating, exhilirating, blunt, vague, bitter, and twisted. That’s no day at the beach.