Fascism in my prose…
“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”—Tom Clancy.
Said in another way, a novel should hold up a mirror to the real world, showing its negatives as well as its positives. Fascism is still part of our reality, maybe more so now than ever before. Shouldn’t it be considered in our fiction?
I know many readers, especially those who read mystery and thriller novels, don’t like to see politics or political violence in fiction beyond the good-vs.-bad trivial plots. They just want the simple “Perils of Pauline”-like stories about stereotypical villains being defeated by stereotypical two-dimensional, superhuman-like good gals and good guys. Some people mature beyond Marvel Comics-like characters, but many don’t. Writers pandering to the latter readers include famous names like Baldacci, Child, Connelly, and Patterson here in the US as well as James, Penny, and Rankin in the UK and other Commonwealth countries. The last is a tradition that started with Holmes vs. Moriarty, and it has been embraced by every major book publisher of mystery and thriller fiction since then.
Those famous authors and many less famous ones willingly accept those publishers’ constraints; I don’t. If politics and political violence aren’t in a mystery/thriller novel, it’s really nothing more than a fantasy akin to a Harry Potter book! Such books are divorced from reality and violate Clancy’s dictum as well as my version of it. Politics and political violence are a part of real human experience. To avoid them is to write pablum divorced from reality (in contrast to politicians who utter it).
That’s why I include them in my fiction. And I won’t parse my words by using soft, euphemistic terms like autocracy or totalitarianism in place of fascism. You cannot sugarcoat or make light of the evil fascism has caused in the world and continues to cause. There are few themes as important as this one. It makes dystopian books like Darkness at Noon and 1984 and post-apocalyptic ones like Ape and Essence and Not This August famous classics. (Haven’t read them? Shame on you!)
Thanks to greedy authors like Baldacci et al and their money-grubbing publishers, we seem to have lost that realism in fiction as they pander to the masses by writing and publishing unrealistic pablum. I’ve done my best to break the chains of that constraint. I will not pander to readers’ preferences for unrealistic fiction. Among many reasons for being a self-published author, perhaps that’s the most important one.
Like any background material for a novel, one has to do their homework to handle properly the politics and political violence associated with fascism. I have endeavored to do this. (I read a lot more nonfiction than fiction if the measure is reading time spent, and I’m a voracious reader.) One has to get it right, especially when they include real-world figures. (They also make the fiction more relevant!)
Do I make a big deal of this in my prose? Themes are secondary to plot in my stories as I weave them in and around the plot in a seamless fashion. They hopefully enhance the plot as they make it more realistic and more human. Fascism and its consequences are no exceptions. Yes, it’s evil, but we have to deal with it if the human race is to survive. What better goal for the good gals and guys of my novels to achieve than to do their small part to assure fascism’s defeat in our world?
There are plenty of stories to be found in the politics and political violence of our past, present, and future. The battles of real life shouldn’t be ignored in our fiction. If readers don’t like to read about them, maybe they’re part of the problem?
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Celtic Chronicles. Esther’s many adventures in fighting for justice for innocent victims end with this ninth novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. The book starts with Esther and Bastiann at an archaeological dig in Scotland where a young student is murdered. It becomes more complex as ex-Russian and ex-Chinese oligarchs appear on the scene, as well as the arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin, the Russian ex-pat bent on revenge against Putin and his cronies. The 21st-century versions of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot + Police Scotland detectives + MI5 agents = entertaining adventures for all armchair sleuths and fans of spy fiction. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Amazon). Same for previous novels in the series. except for Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, complete novels that are free PDF downloads available at my website (see my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
