Let Fiction Be Whatever it Wants to Be
In his wonderful book of writing advice, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders tackles the age-old question: What is Fiction for? Unlike other authors who might be overly prescriptive or grandiose about answering this question, Saunders is suspicious of the demand, believing high expectations may just result in stifling it.
There’s a certain way of talking about stories that treats them as a kind of salvation, the answer to every problem; they are “what we live by,” and so on. And, to an extent, as you can see by this book, I agree. But I also believe, especially as I get older, that we should keep our expectations humble. We shouldn’t overestimate or unduly glorify what fiction does. And actually, we should be wary of insisting that it do anything in particular. The critic Dave Hickey has written about this, the notion that saying what art should do might enable a reactionary establishment to start saying what it must do, and then to begin silencing those artists whose works aren’t doing that. In other words, whenever we get up on the soapbox and sing fiction’s praises, explaining how good it is for everyone, we’re actually limiting its freedom to be...whatever it wants to be (perverse, contrary, frivolous, objectionable, useless, too difficult for any but a few to read, and so on).
The humility Saunders speaks of is reminiscent of Chekhov’s opinion that an artist should be an impartial witness to his story and characters. As Saunders said of Chekhov (and could perhaps be said of Saunders’ himself), “If he has a program, it’s being wary of having a program.”
