Conservatives Don't Get Fiction!
That's the claim of Reason's Brian Doherty, in an entertaining but ultimately unsuccessful piece up now at The American Conservative. His closing lines:
Conservatism is no longer about a subtle and coherent understanding of the human soul, but about running the modern state and winning influence for that purpose. Governance ought to require a great deal of refined moral imagination. But those most obsessed with gaining power are least likely to have a sense of humane width or even to understand its importance. That’s the sort of irony about which any number of nuanced and enriching works of literature could be written.
Three of those four sentences, at least, are ringing with truth. But in an irony he does not detect, Doherty reduces all of fiction to two essential types -- quasi-medieval, Burkean, Kirkean fiction of the past, and hypermodern, Randian, Heinleinean fiction of the future. Yes, it's hoary homilies and traditional yarns (boo) versus sex in space for freedom (yay!). Er, wait -- no, that's not it. Where's Walker Percy? Tom Wolfe? Marilynne Robinson? Where are the grim anti-futurists like J.G. Ballard? Does anyone really believe that there's nothing that frustrates Doherty's categories in Chuck Palahniuk? Or Hunter S. Thompson? Or Thomas Pynchon? By defining cons and libertoids so narrowly, Doherty misses the mark.
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May '10
Re: Conservatives Don't Get Fiction!
Excellent point. Tom Wolfe is amazingly realistic, highlighting the absurdities of elites with subtly and nuance.
May '10
Re: Conservatives Don't Get Fiction!
I think conservatives can claim as their own any work of fiction that contains a realistic depiction of life. Any fictional account that relies on cause and effect to move the plot forward, that acknowledges personal and societal consequences for certain actions, and includes elements beyond man's control (nature, chance, deity) subscribes to an inherently conservative worldview. I happen to be reading Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove which provides innumerable examples of these conservative attributes, though the author himself could be a leftist for all I know.
A common theme of "liberal" fiction is a search for purpose with the conclusion that none exists and that effects exist without causes (my impression of Thomas Pynchon mentioned above).
Jun '10
Re: Conservatives Don't Get Fiction!
Thomas Pynchon, should be assigned reading in law school as an example of a clear writing style. Why just last week I was wandering through town in a chi-squared distribution sort of way looking to get laid, and this buzz bomb comes floating in from parts unknown. So I bagan to think, maybe, I should buy a lotto ticket, given the statistical probabilities looked to be aligning into a favourable pattern.
Re: Conservatives Don't Get Fiction!
Hilarious Pynchon ribbing, but Mason & Dixon is his actual masterpiece, a towering work of humane wisdom, humor, and perhaps even grace.