Republicans In Fiction

Earlier this year, Ben Nugent wondered in N+1 why there aren't more novels written by Republicans. Now, via Andrew, comes a good explanation for why there aren't more novels about Republicans:

... the cast of characters in what is arguably the worst administration since Nixon's strikes me as devoid of literary interest. Practically the only enduring contribution of this crew to America's writers is its patented brand of cant ... But behind the words lurk people who have, for seven years, refused to grant room for ambiguity, complexity, and doubt - preconditions for the moral universe in which modern literature is possible. Instead, we get a stilted reduction whose protagonists, depending on who's reading, are either simply Good, or simply Wicked. We get Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint. We get "Stuff Happens" and "Guantanamo" - bracing theatrical experiences, but not dramas per se. A mark of the current administration's moral failure, and perhaps of its artistic triumph, is that it has sterilized many of the avenues for protest against itself. It brings out the worst in us, and has, by its relentless aestheticization of every aspect of American life, made the aesthetic feel insufficient. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps some artist or press secretary somewhere is even now working up a giant masterwork that illuminates W as a tragic hero caught on the horns of history. Somehow, though, I'm not convinced such a work would ring true. Anyway, I'm not holding my breath.

So wait ... it's the Bushies' fault that all the anti-Bush agitprop of the last six years has been such artistic rubbish? Because the Administration has "made the aesthetic feel insufficient" and "sterilized many of the avenues for protest against itself"? Because its members are "devoid of literary interest?" I'm happy to blame the current Administration for all sorts of sins, but this is just pathetic. If Soviet Communism didn't make "the aesthetic feel insufficient" for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, then I don't want to hear a peep from the poor delicate darlings who think they're too traumatized by the Bush years to write anything that's any good.

Moreover, you don't have to view our current President as a "tragic hero caught on the horns of history" to think that there might be some good drama to be found inside this White House - in, say, the ruin of Paul Wolfowitz's idealistic dreams; or the tangled, rivalrous interplay of Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice; or the peculiar family dynamic between Dubya and his father; or the President's strange, semi-spousal relationships with inner-circle women like Karen Hughes and Harriet Miers ... and that's just to take the first few examples that spring to mind. No, the fact that none of our artists have managed to make something out of this Administration tells us way more about the artists than the Bushies. It suggests that there aren't any interesting Republicans in our fiction not because Republicans aren't interesting, but because our intelligentsia's political prejudices blind them to the possibility that a Republican might be, well, a complicated human being rather than just the sum of every liberal's fears.

Comments

I can imagine the existence of a good story. I can't imagine writing it, because I can't imagine having any success at all getting into Bush, Cheney's, Gonzales's, Rice's or Rumsfeld's head. They don't seem personally tormented or f*cked up; they just seem utterly devoid of empathy and unaware or indifferent to the consequences of their actions on other people's lives. Careless people, whose "tragic flaw" seems to be an unlimited capacity for buying their own bullsh*t. People who honestly see no contradiction between "compassionate conservatism" and the Texas death penalty mill; between waterboarding and rendition and speeches about their unshakeable commitment to human dignity; between dedicating the World Bank to the fight against corruption and sweetheart deals for their girlfriend, and on and on.

I suppose it's possible to write a good novel with Tom and Daisy Buchanan as the protagonists, but even if I could write novels I don't see how I'd write that one....I don't get them. Maybe that's because of my political prejudices; maybe that's because there's not much to get.

Now, there's plenty of good things to be written about the Bush years. Some of it has already been written. Not surprisingly, this close in time to it, the best stuff that *directly* engages with the administration is journalism and satire; novels and plays or movies are more successful when they're more oblique. But stories about living under the Bush administration are very different things from stories about individual members of the administration.

Posted by Katherine | May 2, 2007 5:33 PM

What an odd post. You conservatives really are perpetual victims. Now you're the victims of "the intelligentsia" who are ignoring you by not putting you in their novels? Have you uncovered a conspiracy preventing "conservative artists" from writing? Send Regnery to the Creative Writing 101 classes at Liberty and Regent Universities and I'm sure you'll find a gold mine. Roy Edroso is right, you people have no idea of the difference between art and propaganda.

Posted by alwsdad | May 2, 2007 6:16 PM

Ah, the Soviet analogy. Though less hackneyed than the World War II analogy we were hung up on a few years back, this one strikes me as equally invidious, in the following way (perhaps under-explained in my original post) (for which, apologies):

On the foreign policy front, which everyone seems to agree will define this presidency the way Watergate did Nixon's, Bush & Co have--in my view--made decisions based more on aesthetics than on ethics. It would take a long essay to argue this convincingly; it will come as no surprise to you that I happen to be writing such an essay.

In the meantime, though, consider: with the dissolution of the ethical reasons offered for our adventure in Iraq--the mushroom gun in the form of a smoking cloud; the several strategic rationales for another toehold in the Middle East; and finally our moral obligation (ethically impracticable) to bring freedom and happiness to the Iraqi people--we are left with the Cheney argument: that if we don't execute on the mission in Iraq, or forestall the realization that it's an impossible mission, the terrorists will think we're sissies.

Behind whatever dubious strategic nuances you'll no doubt want to restore to the above reduction, the desire not to appear a sissy is not ethical, but aesthetic. This desire, at least as much as fear of another September Eleventh, has always been at the root of our collective wish to invade Iraq. Despite recent reports and old protestations to the contrary, many, many Americans have always known that Iraq was connected only aesthetically--via skintone, language, culture--to the perpetrators of the Eleventh. Which is why the left is so ill-served by its recent insistence that it was deceived about Iraq. At least two out of every five Americans were as undeceived in early 2003 as they are now.

But the aesthetics of an invasion were so compelling! We were hurt, we felt vulnerable, we wanted to be the kind of country that didn't look or feel vulnerable. We wanted to kick something, hard, "courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue," and Afghanistan, which had the benefit of an actual, tactical (which is to say, ethical) connection to the Eleventh, didn't offer the illusion of resistance we craved. We wanted to go "on offense." We wanted bad guys "dead or alive." Bad guys bad enough to make us look good. We wanted tough talk, and we got it, as we've got it periodically throughout the 20th century. But this time without the careful, sometimes anguished discussions that have traditionally gone on behind the scenes. (Unless you've got access to some intelligence I don't.)

When I hear self-satisfied analogies about Stalin or Hitler or Vietnam, I think: aesthetics. It strikes me as ethically problematic to use any of the foregoing as the vehicle of a metaphor; one should at least be aware of the implications. When I hear the President talk of a collective duty and destiny that basically devolves on the shoulders of our men and women in uniform, I hear: aesthetics. As far as I can tell, "supporting the troops" calls for a bumper sticker, maybe a ribbon. It certainly doesn't call for a draft, or a tax hike. Anyone can do it! Nancy Pelosi supports the troops by favoring a withdrawal date; the President supports them by opposing it.

Similarly, there's the discourse of patriotism. Sitting here at my laptop, in my comfortable home, I should feel proud, strong, patriotic, I am told. By blogging, by shopping, by watching HBO, I'm telling the terrorists they can't tell me how to live. But really, why should it matter how I feel, or how I perceive terrorists perceiving me vis-a-vis them?

This infinite regress is the relenteless aestheticization to which I referred. Stalin cloaked his reprehensible policies--even the CCCP's graphic design choices--in moral signifiers: duty, destiny, and so forth. Solzhenitsyn could respond by saying, no. Our duty is to human life, our destiny is the freedom of the soul; totalitarianism respects neither. He could, in essence, rebut Stalinism. Whereas dissidents under the Bush regime end up arguing, "Well, do we really care if the terrorists think we're sissies?" Again, an aesthetic question. It is difficult to rebut the ethic of a regime that can't be bothered to settle on one. Not to say that the purpose of art is rebuttal. But at the very least, we're now in the realm of a work of art that, unlike The Gulag Archipelago, either ratifies or shrugs its shoulders about the political order under which it's written. Can any work of literature about a politician really do that? Do we have any examples? We do not.

(And remember, please, Mr. Douthat, that in my post I was talking about "presidential fiction." Plenty of fiction "that's good" has been written during the Bush years (I'd be happy to point out some examples if you really think the "poor delicate darlings" are hopelessly blocked); just not (in my limited purview, and here we seem to agree) about the Administration.)

Secondly, and probably a lot more convincingly: tragedy, since Aristotle, has required at least one moment of Recognition. In the twentieth century, so has comedy. The reason artists keep returning to Nixon--who is ideologically no more simpatico with the "intelligentsia" than Bush--is that they find contradictions in his character, breaches through which recognition can steal in. This crew (with the possible exceptions of Powell and Wolfowitz) not only keep failing to achieve Recognition, but seem incapable of it. They believe, indeed, that "character" is precisely the lack of contradictions. What is left is the spectacle of ruined dreams, interplays, dynamics, and strange relationships among characters who can't see these things themselves. Dramatic irony, failing to resolve itself into transformations of character, devolves into easy sarcasm. Tragedy gets crowded out by satire. Strict satire, in its didacticism, lacks the autonomy great art requires. I think this is what Katherine was saying. If you want to bet that by, say, 2037, someone will have written a great novel about this administration, I'm happy to take your money. And don't blame the artists... History shows that, if the material's there, they'll take it. Nixon, Kennedy, Lincoln, Stalin, Napoleon, whomever.

Posted by Garth Risk Hallberg | May 2, 2007 7:26 PM

There will be plenty of fiction written about this administration when Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Gonzales etc. release their memoirs.

Posted by Woody Bombay | May 2, 2007 8:32 PM

I for one am looking forward to a Karen Hughes-Harriet Miers movie. God knows Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson could use the work.

Posted by tgb | May 2, 2007 9:35 PM

My own published works of fiction do contain coded endorsements of Republican foreign policy. My protagonists aren't particularly similar to Pres. Bush et al. I do think it would have been difficult to get my stuff published if the endorsements were any less coded.

Posted by Pseudonymous | May 2, 2007 9:59 PM

Or maybe no one's done any great art about the Bush administration because it's not even over yet.

There's still no great 9/11 novel, and at most one or two decent works of music about it. That's because artists tend to view the repercussions of important things as, well, sort of important. As a pundit, Ross, trained to act like what happened yesterday is the most important thing in history, I can see where you might forget that. Perhaps you should stop pestering artists and let them do their job. Art, unlike blogging, is hard. Sometimes you have to be silent for years before you produce something, instead of an hour or two.

Pundits, and particularly ones who work in an electronic medium, have the attention span of kittens. It's worth remembering that there are a few things that blessedly don't work that way.

Posted by The Muses | May 2, 2007 11:31 PM

Isn't Bush's self-proclaimed claim to fame the fact that he isn't that complicated? Why, then, would there be anything worth writing about? "Simple-minded stubborn man has simplistic view of the world," sounds like a theme that's been touched on before.

Heck, back in 2004, Bush was simply the leader who, it was clear, was surrounded by flattering coutiers who were unwilling to tell him the truth. My high school english teacher spent half the year reminding us how those themes keep recurring. There's no literary ground to be broken, here.

Posted by Tyro | May 3, 2007 10:12 AM

I know I'm gonna sound like my dad, but I can't help myself:

Hey Douhat, are your arms broken?

Posted by supertroy | May 3, 2007 11:00 AM

It suggests that there aren't any interesting Republicans in our fiction not because Republicans aren't interesting, but because our intelligentsia's political prejudices blind them to the possibility that a Republican might be, well, a complicated human being rather than just the sum of every liberal's fears.

Jesus, Douthat. Republicans controlled Congress and the White House for 4 years and will have controlled the White House for 8 (not to mention solid representation on the SC). TV networks, radio networks, publishing companies, newspapers all exist to provide solace to Republicans and conservatives. And although every month, Republican pundits churn out books by the truck load, with nary a novel among them, Mel Gibson may yet produce the Great American Conservative Movie, or Jonah Goldberg the Great American Conservative Novel (it could happen!), and you have a sweet gig with The Atlantic. And still no one understands you! Possibly, if your own political prejudices weren't merely the sum of your fear and contempt, you'd hear how silly you sound.

Posted by Flavor Flavius Julianus | May 3, 2007 3:53 PM

Two nominations: Doonesbury's thread about BD's lost leg and after; and "Children of Men." These aren't the only stellar works of recent years, but they engage our present anguish directly, and inventively. I'd be happy if I cd even *imagine* myself hoping for a novel doing anything remotely comparable.

Posted by helmling | May 3, 2007 7:18 PM

Russ:
Answer, volume one--could anything top the fantastic fictions written every day in conservative blogs and by conservative writers? Y'all got the franchise on manufacturing alternate realities; leave the rest of us out of it.

Answer, volume two--do you write for The Atlantic, or type for them? If it's the former, hey, the field's open. I mean, you have a nice perch to promote your opus. Probably an agent would take your call. What else do you want? Get to work.

Posted by KC45s | May 3, 2007 11:12 PM

Check out this NY Review of Books article: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19292

It's about 9/11 art by way of Aeschylus' "The Persians" and makes me strongly disagree with the author of the linked piece. There's all the ingredients of a great drama in the Bush administration.

"You could write a real tragedy, a Greek tragedy, about September 11 and what it has led to—a story with a true Aristotelian arc, a drama with a beginning that leads organically to a middle that leads organically, reasonably, to its inexorable end. This tragedy could, for instance, be about the seemingly inevitable way in which even the greatest empires can be thrown into confusion by a small number of enemies whose ideological fervor makes them unafraid of death. Or it could be about a specific empire, one whose contemptuous refusal to take its enemies seriously has made it deeply vulnerable. Or it could say something about a foolish and unseasoned autocrat whose desire to outshine his more accomplished father has an unfortunate effect on his policymaking, with the result that he ends up seeming even more foolish and unseasoned in comparison to his father. Or it could be about the seemingly irreducible strangeness of the West to the East, and vice versa. Or it could even be a kind of black farce (a genre not strange to Greek tragedy) about the injustices of autocracy—about a ruler so inept that he brings his country to ruin and yet never suffers, personally, for his errors. You could write such a tragedy today and to some people, at least, it might have a larger meaning. But then, someone has already written such a play; it's called Persians."

Posted by Zack | May 4, 2007 1:00 AM

Although it is not by a Republican, nor an American, Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail is often considered to be the best conservative novel ever written. Chilton Williamson, former book review editor of National Review, in his Conservative Bookshelf considers Camp of the Saints to be one of the greatest conservative novels.

Posted by David | May 4, 2007 9:38 AM

"Nixon in China" wasn't produced for almost 25 after the events. I wonder if opera will similarly prove to be the artform with the scope to capture these times. The stage is perhaps the perfect place for these souless men to argue for our sympathy. It it far too soon for an artist to take measure of the true meaning of the last 6 years, unless the only goal is to cash in.

Posted by Chasm | May 8, 2007 8:04 PM

> "or the President's strange, semi-spousal relationships with inner-circle women like Karen Hughes and Harriet Miers"

To add to that: Didn't Condi Rice once make a Freudian slip of sorts and refer to Dubya as her "husband"? I know it sounds like an urban myth, but I read it in a piece on the "work wife" phenomenon - probably in Slate, and certainly not by Dahlia Lithwick, ie it was a reliable source.

Posted by Rod Blaine | January 17, 2008 4:18 PM