Post-Katrina Fiction

Over at the Guardian blog, Jane Ciabatti writes about post-Katrina fiction:

But what of novels? "Non-fiction came quickly, but fiction takes longer, as we've seen from 9/11," says Susan Larson, books editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "What are the narrative strategies for dealing with cataclysmic change in a landscape and culture? How do you maintain any kind of creative energy when you've lost your home?"

Two years on, however, the fiction writers are stepping up. James Lee Burke, who knows his way around catastrophe, addresses the disaster with a short story collection, Jesus Out to Sea. Although the disaster suits Burke's sensibilities, at first he resisted writing about Katrina, finding it "too depressing", until an Esquire editor asked specifically for a Katrina story.

I wonder if we're beginning to peg fiction too much to current events. First there was post-9/11 fiction, now there's post-Katrina fiction (and, probably soon, Iraq War II fiction and Bush II fiction). I don't doubt the need for writers to try their hand at making sense of major events, but it strikes me as a little strange to start forming fiction subgenres around disasters and such. It also strikes me as a little troubling the way fiction is being increasingly marketed around events (usually tragedies), as if novels and story collections were some kind of literary op-eds. (Note the Esquire editor asking specifically for Katrina-based fiction, no doubt in order to sell more magazines.)

Of course, there's also the point that much of the best fiction on any given historical moment comes decades afterward. Perhaps we shouldn't be goading our authors by implying that they should be fictionalizing major current events. Maybe we should just let them write.

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Comments

[it2blog]

I think writers should find sensible issues that are real events. Since most of the public rely on what is written in the newspapers for current events and the like, writers also must write reliable information for the good of their beneficiaries and the whole.

[Tony Christini]

For what it’s worth - the good and the bad, and the in-between - an incomplete list of Iraq War fiction:

IRAQ WAR NOVELS:
Hocus Potus - Malcolm MacPherson
The Sirens of Baghdad - Yasmina Khadra
Last One In - Nicholas Kulish
Homefront - Tony Christini
Still the Monkey - Alivia C. Tagliaferri
The Scorpion’s Gate - Richard A. Clarke

IRAQ WAR PLAYS:
The Wolf - Sean Huze
1984 - Tim Robbins
Peace Mom - Dario Fo
Stuff Happens - David Hare

IRAQ WAR FICTION FILMS AND VIDEO:
Lions for Lambs
Over There
Valley of the Wolves Iraq
The Tiger and the Snow
Stop-Loss
The Situation
G.I. Jesus
24
Home of the Brave
Grace is Gone
Valley of Elah
Rendition
Redacted
Homecoming
Embedded
Jarhead

Links to all these here: http://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/2007/08/11/iraq-war-fiction/

[Kit Stolz]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with an editor asking for a post-Katrina story from a writer known for his understanding of Louisiana, nor with the writer setting out to produce one, if he has something to say about it. Why not? We talk about what just happened in public life, and what matters to us, but we're not supposed to write about it?

Shakespeare would beg to differ.

[Leo Tolstoy]

I was going to write a story about the Napoleonic Wars, but your post has convinced me that it would be best not to do so.

[Scott]

Kit,

I think if a writer has something to say about a topic, he or she will write about it without provocation from an editor.

As for Shakespeare, he wrote about events hundreds of years in the past, and I think to characterize his plays as "post-Caesar" fiction or "post-War of the Roses fiction" is to do him a great disservice. Borrowing source material from historical events for a work of fiction isn't the same as what we're seeing with the waves of post-X fiction.

Leo,

I figured that since you wrote War and Peace, you probably know that it was written decades after the Napoleonic Wars and is certainly much, much more than post-Napoleonic Wars fiction. But I'm sure you know all that.

[Kit Stolz]

Editors can be helpful to writers; I doubt Burke was offended by the suggestion.

As for Shakespeare, he like many writers often wrote about the past to comment about his present, as in the history plays. Of course, being Shakespeare, he wrote on many levels at once, but as Wikipedia says (I would link if I could) "his history plays are often regarded as Tudor propaganda."