Amanda Craig recently rebuked her fellow novelists for evading the contemporary scene and setting their novels in the past. We should be more like the Victorians, she said, and have the courage to write about our own times. If the novel is to be relevant to readers, it should address today’s issues. Why, she asked, is Hilary Mantel publishing a novel about Henry VIII’s henchman, Thomas Cromwell, rather than . . . Well, I don’t recall if she actually suggested an alternative subject, but her point is clear. Writing historical novels is an evasion of the novelist’s duty.
Of course Hilary Mantel has written novels set in the here and now, and very good ones. If she chooses to diversify and write one set in the 16th century, that’s her business, and I should be surprised if her readers don’t approve. Nevertheless Amanda Craig’s charge is worth considering, even if her assertion seemed just a bit sweeping.
Comic novels, one should say, are almost always contemporary, because the foibles of one’s own time are matter for the comic spirit. This has always been the case, from Fielding and Austen, by way of Waugh and Powell, to Amis, father and son. Likewise novels of domestic life tend to be set in or near the immediate present.
It’s when you are dealing with a public theme that difficulties arise. Set such a novel in the first decade of this century, and you are quite likely to end up with journalism, fictional journalism certainly, good journalism perhaps, but a work that is subject to the fate of almost all journalism, which is to be out of date very soon. In the last couple of years I have read half a dozen novels in which the events of 9/11 play a part, and none has been convincing. This is not due to lack of talent on the author’s part; it’s simply because 9/11 is too close in time to enable us to see it in perspective. It hasn’t settled in the imagination; it hasn’t yet been digested.
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.