Today’s the birthday, per The Writer’s Almanac, of an author named Gary Soto. I haven’t read anything by him, but the Almanac provided an interesting quotation. This is the whole thing, including the question which prompted it, from a 2007 interview with papertigers.org:
Are there issues which you think are particularly relevant to young adults and which you try and get across in your writing?
In my writing I don’t even think about issues. In fact, I think that fiction which sets out purposely to exploit a particular contemporary issue is not a good enough reason to exist. If I read a review that says something like “a timely issue handled with sensitivity,” I would know to avoid it. The book will be awful, yet awarded with prizes!
(He got himself into a little bit of grammatical tangle there in that second sentence, but the point is plain enough.)
What’s the dividing line between exploiting an issue and, well, I don’t know — maybe springing from one? Don DeLillo’s Falling Man could not have been written — possibly at all — if the 9/11/01 World Trade Center attack had not played out a certain way: it depends on 9/11. Does it exploit it? Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner doesn’t just take place in a generic Afghanistan; it takes place in an Afghanistan familiar to us because of current events. What about, uh, well, The Grapes of Wrath (at the time it was published, anyhow)?
Or maybe I’m focusing too much on events rather than issues. Looking through Amazon’s current list of “blockbuster spring fiction,” for example, #8 is Jodi Picoult’s Sing You Home. Some review excerpts:
Popular author Picoult tackles the controversial topic of gay rights in her latest powerful tale. When music therapist Zoe Baxter’s latest pregnancy ends in a stillbirth, her husband Max decides he can’t handle any more heartbreak and leaves her. As she picks up the pieces of her life, Zoe is surprised to find herself falling for a school counselor who happens to be a woman.
(Booklist)
Picoult treats all sides of this complex morality tale with honesty and dignity, which is what readers have come to expect from her.
(St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
I guess those would be red flags for Mr. Soto. But what about you? Do you read “issue fiction”? For myself, sure, I don’t exactly seek out fiction which is flat-out didactic or argumentative in nature. But I don’t think it would put me off, either.
(Btw, note that I’m not trying to refute Mr. Soto or challenge his taste in fiction, just curious. )
cynth says
I’ve read a lot of Picoult and she deals with “topics” that are perhaps a little too close to home (school shootings, genetically altered children) for some. I read her because I love her style of writing, not because of the topics. But I always feel more informed after reading them. Certain biographies could be considered “issue” books as well, couldn’t they? Have I just opened a can of -er-well-topics??
Nance says
I intend to read issue fiction–I really mean to–, but I can’t want to. People recommend it, I put it on my list, and it never makes it to the checkout.
The closest I’ve come in recent memory is Ian McEwan’s Solar, which (never thought I’d say this of McEwan) is boring the crap out of me. I got about a quarter of the way in and stalled. It’s not really about the most narcissistic man in the world and it’s not really a sarcastic expose of the development of solar scaling, either…although those are the premises. I guess, when you’re as gifted as McEwan, you put it all out there and only some of it is great.
I do read non-fiction continually. I guess that’s where I go when I want to ponder issues in the external world. For that ever-entrancing internal world, I like my fiction to be timeless.
marta says
I enjoyed Picoult’s Salem Falls. That said, I don’t pick up any book because of the issue. I’m not sure I even know why I pick up one and not another. If I suspect the issue is the only reason for the book–I won’t bother. If I want information and a lecture, well, you know, there are books for that.
If the story is compelling, whatever the issue, then I’ll read it. The issue shouldn’t dictate the story. The story should dictate the issue. I’ve got a rough draft of a novel that would probably be considered an issue novel, but the issue came up after I started writing and I realized what mistake the sisters were going to make and I realized a second later what that would mean should the story see the light of day.
But what story doesn’t have an issue? Yesterday my class was discussing Little Red Riding Hood, and in light of recent events here in Texas involving am 11 year old girl and a group of young men, I think Red Riding Hood has an issue in it. In the LRRH story we read in-class, clearly Little Red Riding Hood is to blame for her trouble since she had temerity to go about in that flashy red.
But that isn’t the point exactly.
I think an story that stays with you, that matters, that last, is an issue story. Look at Shakespeare–kill the King!
Froog says
I suppose the main problem with “issue fiction” that Gary Soto and others disparage is…. well, heavy-handedness, I suppose we could say.
All fiction is about ‘issues’ – sources of drama and conflict that confront the characters with tough moral choices, situations that have a universal relevance and resonance with the reader. ‘Issues’ like gender and race relations and social class have always been prominent in fiction. Is To Kill A Mockingbird compromised by its focus on Southern racism (and its use of other ‘issues’ like mental disability, single parenthood, domestic violence, and the inadequacies of the criminal justice system)? Of course not.
Most of us, I suppose, don’t like fiction to be too obviously didactic or polemical, to come off as overtly preachy (although I’m open to anything, if it’s done well). More particularly, while I might tolerate an author occasionally addressing the reader on a topic in his own voice, I don’t like the author’s views to emerge from the writing obtrusively. As Elmore Leonard says in that great piece you linked to the other day, JES, a writer should aim to be as invisible as possible. And we tend to prefer an ‘objective’ presentation of these topics; we want to look at a situation from a variety of angles – because, for one thing, the characters don’t experience moral stress if their choices are all clearcut. Even with issues like racial bigotry, where there should be no doubt as to the ‘correct’ attitude, we still like this multiple perspective.
Also, I think we usually want fiction to represent the broad muddle of human existence, to address a variety of ‘issues’. Books that have too narrow a focus – ‘single issue’ stories – may prove unsatisfying.
I suspect it’s become particularly common in American YA fiction for novels to have such a narrow focus – teen pregnancy, suicide, high school shootings – and that perhaps is the main target of Gary Soto’s complaint.
Moreover, it may seem gimmicky – or too cynically ‘commercial’ – to base a book around a contemporary hot topic. Will stories concerned with the gay marriage or euthanasia debates have lasting appeal for future generations? Perhaps not. And (whatever the merits of the story) I don’t think The Kite Runner would have found a market in America – certainly not the mass market – before 2002.
Timeless issues, good; currently newsworthy issues, not so much. Presenting the dilemma, good; telling us the ‘answer’, not.
Froog says
On a related note, what I like about the best science fiction (and tend to find unsatisfying about fantasy) is the way it is able to examine contemporary issues from a challenging new perspective by imagining the impact of one major change in society or technology – what would happen if we changed one thing about the world we know?
What would happen if we could all live to be 200 years old? What would happen if we could read each other’s minds? What would happen if machines were self-aware? What would happen if we could digitally record our memories?
John says
cynth: Yeah, I think almost all biographies are issue-oriented… because just about anyone worthy of a biography is notable because of some issue. (Even if it’s just the most recent issue of People, ha.)
Good distinction there — between your reasons for reading a particular book, and what other things you might get from it. (It’s not the reason people now read Stephen King, but it’s easy to believe that in a couple centuries he might be read for what he can teach about pop culture, retail brands, etc.) Imagine Book A (whatever book it is) being taken up as a selection of a general- or literary-interest book club; and then imagine the same Book A being presented by a counselor to his/her client or patient. Book A might then be regarded as an “issue book” only by the latter audience.
John says
Nance: as I just mentioned in my comment to cynth, above, I think some fiction can’t help causing “collateral damage” — triggering thought about issues, even when the issues aren’t the point. Books whose action takes place in non-USA locations often do that to me. (I suspect that people living in those countries have the same response to novels in American settings.)
In the last year, I read one novel which took place mostly in latter-day Turkey, and one novel in latter-day China. In both cases it was hard for me to focus on the story, because I was so caught up in the issue of my own ignorance. :)
John says
marta: well, yeah — pretty much all stories deal with or are based on issues, to some extent. Let’s say you’ve got a story (not you specifically!) with a certain plot, and a certain arc for the development of some character, X. Let’s sayyou the author makes character X gay, or Native American, or whatever… even though X doesn’t have to deal with problems like discrimination and hate. Does that make the story an “issue story”?
I can see it both ways. On the one hand, the book might be viewed as about the issue of how much we’re all the same — that it doesn’t matter that X is orange, or Estonian, or…, because this story could happen to anybody. On the other hand, it could annoy me that a character who might have been anyone was arbitrarily cast with someone with very specific “built-in” characteristics.
As you know, my WIP features characters who are, for the most part, elderly. Does this make it an “issue” novel about the sadnesses and frustrations of age in general? or of age, as specifically treated in the culture of late 20th-century USA? Could it feature the same action, with a gang of kids? Would it be better, or worse, if I’d made one of the characters an elderly black man, or a Chinese or Turkish woman?
John says
Froog: yes, heavy-handedness. Exactly. There’s a difference between showing characters and events, and requiring a particular response in order to appreciate them : Raise your eyebrows here. Cry. Shudder when you read this character’s next remark. And so on. Especially when the writer apparently has ulterior motives for pushing a particular response (as in propaganda, or, as you say, when dealing with the trendy topic of the moment).
Science fiction done right works as you describe it. It’s not immune to abuse, of course. You might almost say that writers of bad SF start out with the answers to those what-if questions already in hand, and work backwards to retrofit the plot and character types to match the foregone conclusion.
I’m not sure if this proves or refutes the point, but when I was a kid, among my favorite SF author was A.E. Van Vogt, for his “Weapon Shops of Isher” stories. Only much later, when looking back on it, did I think, You know, I’m not really sure those stories communicated a message I’d care to be associated with. And for all that, among my guilty literary pleasures is my infatuation with the Repairman Jack crime/horror/suspense/action novels. (For a blog post from a former version of me, dealing with both Van Vogt and Repairman Jack, see this old thing.)