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. )