October 25 2009

If you examine the history of any of the social or political upheavals that have taken place during the past few centuries, the chances are very good that you will find that a writer was involved.

Martin Luther's The Ninety-Five Theses ignited the Protestant Reformation. The bible of the American Revolution was Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense. Voltaire's essays stirred up the French intellectuals and helped to launch the French Revolution. Harriet Beecher Stowe's book Uncle Tom's Cabin hardened attitudes in the Northern United States toward slavery and paved the way for the American Civil War. When Marx and Engels co-wrote The Communist Manifesto, we all know how that turned out. Charles Darwin's book The Origin Of The Species was so upsetting to Western thought that many religious people still want to see it banned.

Revolutionaries are always happy to use writers in support of their cause. As soon as the revolution has been won, the new dictator will make sure that the writers who supported him will be among the first to be sent to the firing squads. Why? Because the same characteristics that made writers useful to him also makes them dangerous. By nature, writers tend to be sceptics, dissidents and malcontents. They ask embarrassing questions about why some laws are so ridiculous or why the wealthy have so much while the rest of us go hungry. These are questions that the rich and powerful would prefer go unasked.

Of course, not all writers turn out serious works about science, religion or politics. Many of them just want to entertain readers with escapist stories that have no serious themes. Right? Well, don't trust those fiction writers either. They're such sneaky devils. Just when you've settled back for some mindless fun, you find that the author has slipped in some disturbing ideas. If anyone doubts this, then he probably thinks that The Grapes Of Wrath is simply about farmers moving to California or that Animal Farm is just a funny story about pigs.

You don't need to dig very deeply into just about any science fiction story to find social criticism lurking underneath. Also, for people who write about the future, science fiction writers are darkly suspicious of technological change.

Even detective thrillers aren't safe. Just when you're shlapping some dame in the kisher with your .45, you find that the author has made a statement about police corruption or prison reform.

What about westerns? Surely it's all very simple out there on the lone prairie. Just the good guys in the white hats against the bad guys in the black hats. No deep themes there. Hold on, Stranger. Many of the best westerns were really about something else. Shane and The Wild Bunch lamented the destruction of the open range by the coming of “progress” in the forms of railroads and barbed wire. High Noon was an allegory about McArthyism.

Jeesh! What about comedy writing? There can't be any serious ideas there. Are you kidding? Joseph Heller's Catch 22 might be the funniest novel written during the Twentieth Century. Yet this book's view of the American military is so subversive that dispatches from Al Qaeda look conservative by comparison.

Personally, I'm sceptical about the existence of Heaven. However, I'm sure of one thing. If Heaven does exist, God won't let any writers come in. He knows that the troublemaking wretches would soon be writing about how the place could be improved. Or even that it should be put under better management.

What do you think?

George

PS: Visit my web page at www.checkmatefiction.com for some free short stories.