What's the Role of Fiction In a World Gone Completely Berserk?

Let's take a measured step back and check out the off-the-charts Insanity Quotient in just one recent episode of the nightly news.

• A morbidly obese white entertainer with a palpable terror of black men seeks partial ownership of thirty-five virile, ultra-powerful black men who loathe him.
• Amid epic battles over the future of America, the entire nation stops dead in its tracks to follow a made-for-cable melodrama -- which unfolds like a mystic parable we cannot understand -- about a six-year-old boy supposedly swept up into the sky inside a tinfoil flying saucer that's powered by "helium and a million volts," according to his father, who then phones the local TV station before the police, while the six-year-old -- who, by the way, is also a self-filming scatological white rapper -- either hides in a playhouse to elude his angry folks, or, possibly, colludes with them in a hoax with no apparent meaning.
• The TV networks celebrate, with colored zigzag graphs and the ritual chanting of Magick Numbers, as the stock market surges past a completely arbitrary number on steroid-like injections of capital from bailed-out banks -- money essentially stolen from the American taxpayer, who will see virtually no profit at all from the Magic Numbers, no joy from the colored zigzags, and will, in fact, only be crushed deeper into misery by the whole damn thing.
• In a country whose President is a man of mixed race, a Louisiana Justice of the Peace refuses to marry an inter-racial couple because it would make life impossible for their children;
• And then -- because it's time to downshift into a commercial break! -- we get the ritual "Human Interest Story" (a phrase that always seems kind of strange; who else but humans would really care?) -- which, tonight, is one of those now-familiar bits of Security-Camera Surrealism, in which a wild deer somewhere in the Northwest leaps through the window of a Burger King, hooves clattering on the Coke-slick floor and trampling on discarded french-fry wrappers, as dazed employees in Burger King drag stare at the creature in idle wonderment.

All this before the first station-break ... and we haven't even mentioned Glenn Beck yet!

How is the writer of fiction -- no matter how daring or wildly conceived -- how is the craziest novelist or screenwriter supposed to compete with the local news nowadays?

I'm certainly not the first person to pose this question, but it seems more and more of a brain-teaser as we head deeper into the 21st century.

For one thing, everyone's playing to the camera now. The obese entertainer, the Wall Street three-card-monte dealers, the strange dad with his sadly mundane dreams of a reality show -- man, they're such crappy actors! In the language of the actual craft of acting, they're always "indicating" instead of behaving. It's a daunting challenge to write about these people as if they were solid individuals -- without depicting this second self they all carry around, as if constantly checking their own profiles in the mirror.

For another thing ... well ... Chuck Grassley.

Chuck Grassley!

Chuck Grassley is actually a brilliant piece of performance art conceived and enacted by a post-Andy Kauffman, dope-smoking bohemian playwright from NYU.

Come on ... It's not that much more unlikely than the rest of the evening news, is it?

For me, more than ever, the writers who best catch the peculiarly American, corn-fed surrealism that pours out from our TV screens are the great absurdists like Terry Southern, Joseph Heller and Bruce Jay Friedman, who've nailed greed and shame as well as anyone. Mark Twain is still, as they say, "right on time;" so are the bold comedians -- Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Bob and Ray. The power of their crazy vision outlives them. You can go back to the work of these writers and comics today, and in many cases, it's like they're providing a running commentary for the CBS Evening News.

But is there a budding surrealist out there today -- in high school, maybe, an un-noticed but sharp-eyed girl, or a skinny guy biding his time -- who'll bring a fresh eye and voice to the madness all around them, who'll be the Lenny Bruce and Mark Twain of their just-blooming generation?

If so: hurry, young writers, hurry. We need you.

Chuck Grassley doesn't seem to be going away.

 

 

Comments

[BlackJAC]

02:41 PM on 10/19/2009

Actually, all the real-world craziness would give fiction plausibility. Dale Brown, for example, includes snippets of real-world news reports to ground whatever whacked-out adventure he's concocted this time around. I can also point to real-world stuff that backs up some of the craziness in INDEPENDENCE DAY.

[DCato]

10:38 AM on 10/19/2009

Ezra Pound said that literature is "news that stays news". The writer (if he or she is to be of any worth) is not competing with today's news; the writer is competing with tomorrow's news. Consider: when we want to think about our modern surveillance culture we look to '1984'; when we want to think about cloning and developments in biology we turn to 'Frankenstein'; when we want to think about behavioral modification through drugs or genetics we turn to 'Brave New World. A dozen other examples could be cited. It is the writers of yesterday who speak clearest to today. The writers of today should be looking to speak clearly to tomorrow. That requires a consciousness of what is going on about us, a consciousness of the modern trivialities of pop culture and society - but, at the same time, a supreme indifference to them, a standing apart.

[rsaillant1]

07:11 AM on 10/19/2009

er, uh....generating?

[rsaillant1]

07:09 AM on 10/19/2009

The current cast of "entertainers' delivering their take on the news is generasting a handy
list of charcter tags.

Soon we'll all be familiar with references such as; "Going Beck," "Pulling a Rush,"
"Wacky as Dobbs," "Slimey as Bill'o," and "as Pompous as a Hannity."

Better yet, I await the day we all reference, "Gone Like a Fox."

[josephXY]

05:10 PM on 10/18/2009

For one, Neill Postman can be mentioned again. His "Amusing Ourselves to Death" (1985) is
certainly something to catch up on. Tragically it failed in it's warning and became more of a
genuine prophecy instead. Here his foreword to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMZejVltDDs

What is going to have a considerable influence on the media and ad world in the near future
is their declining revenue. Advertising for Christmas turned into a disaster last year and that's going
to be the experience again this year. For many reasons. Businesses can not afford such
excessive ad expenses anymore, many consumers have real money problems, and the whole lot
of them fed up. Advertising just doesn't work anymore like it did in the past.
More lay-offs are coming. A look into that, an example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/sep/08/rupert-murdoch-news-corporation

The industry data should not be ignored. That is now more interesting than ever.

[jayburd]

03:53 PM on 10/18/2009

No list of deceased forward-thinking comics is complete without George Carlin.

Among the living I would add Eddie Izzard...

[SBlackmun]

09:44 PM on 10/17/2009

Great essay! Thanks!

[SBlackmun]

09:42 PM on 10/17/2009

You might like the most recent fiction of Margaret Atwood, who is either a pre-apocalyptic or a post-apocalyptic tragicomic or comitragic novelist of either the past or the present or the future Try "The Year of the Flood" and its earlier companion "Oryx and Crake." Imagine a comic version of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," and you will get a whiff of "The Year of the Flood."

[sensate]

08:11 PM on 10/17/2009

The writers of 'War Inc' took a shot at it but came a little short of the high bar set by 'Dr Strangelove'.

[John Eskow]

08:29 PM on 10/17/2009

You're right--Dr Strangelove is the movie equivalent of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak--i.e. unlikely to be approached. You might like In the Loop, though, a recent British political comedy with James Gandolfini that's smart and amusing.

[BlackJAC]

02:33 PM on 10/19/2009

It was also a little dry, given how they chose to film it in documentary style. Comedy needs to be heightened to really work.

[MeetJohnDoe]

06:35 PM on 10/17/2009

You're right! They *do* indicate!

Ha.

The real has been overtaken and replaced by the surreal?

Send in the magical realists.

Ones with the mystical powers to make a bittersweet tale of chaos and pain come out alright in the end.

[IowaGirl]

02:49 PM on 10/17/2009

Thank you for this. As a resident of Chuck Grassley's state, I have always considered him absurd and surreal myself. It never occurred to me that a talented (and no doubt tortured) actor was playing him as a role. Unfortunately, such are his talents that he's convinced enough Iowans to vote for this absurdity year after year.

He (the actor) must worry about continuing on with the bumpkin aspects of the role, many years after Grassley has resided in D.C. and hobnobbed with the fancy lobbyists on K Street, etc. On the other hand, the adage "give the people what they want" must kick in.

It's the role of a lifetime, and yes, tough on fiction writers everywhere to best it.

[John Eskow]

03:01 PM on 10/17/2009

Hilarious note. Thanks.

[Citizen54]

02:08 PM on 10/17/2009

Why do you think it's a "young" writer?

[John Eskow]

02:41 PM on 10/17/2009

Very fair question. I think of it as the kind of Herculean challenge that might require the wild energy of youth, but I guess we can tap that energy at any age.

[LMarley]

05:56 PM on 10/17/2009

I think you're right. We need a young writer. I'm a writer myself, but it's going to be someone with a unique and brand-new approach to do any of this justice.