WHO CAN WRITE WHAT

Wherever the story takes you.

Should Shakespeare have been allowed to write Othello? Should Alexander Dumas have been allowed to write The Three Musketeers? Should William Styron have been allowed to write Sophie’s Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner? These are absurd questions. Anybody can write whatever they want, and let the public decide. Yet we are living in absurd times, where self-appointed gatekeepers have declared war on the imagination.

It’s the writer’s job to imagine every point of view. If you can do that, you will be a better writer. There are many writers who limit their points of view to what they think the woke will tolerate. This is self-censorship, similar to the Comics Code Authority. If you write repellent stereotypes, you’re unlikely to attract an audience beyond a small circle of the like-minded. A writer must be fearless and let the story lead him where it will. Robert Parker and Joe Lansdale both write thrillers featuring believable black protagonists. In Parker’s case, it was Spenser’s sometime partner Hawk. In Lansdale’s case, it was Hap’s partner Leonard. Both books have been turned into television series with varying results. Both writers write with empathy and imagination.

Shakespeare understood this when he created Shylock, in Romeo & Juliet.

“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?”

This was heterodox in the sixteenth century, but because Shakespeare had already established himself as perhaps the most popular entertainer of his day, his audience accepted what he wrote and thought about it. Below are links to two articles. The first is Penguin’s proud declaration that they are instituting racial quotas on submissions. The second is a reaction to it.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/june/penguin-commitment-to-inclusivity.html

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/penguin-wants-its-authors-to-represent-all-uk-minorities-what-about-just-publishing-good-books-

The institution of racial quotas among publishers, and now among the Academy Awards, result from the same fallacy. The inability to see individuals. To judge each individual on his, her, or its merit. Instead they play the tribal identity game, to feel better among themselves and to curry favor among their peers and followers who value tribal identity over the individual. The United States was founded on the primacy of the individual, the notion that we are born with inalienable rights. That our rights to not come from government. We are seeing an unprecedented assault on the rights of the individual, and it has made us poorer and more stupid. The individual is responsible for his, her, or its success and happiness. Members of the tribe are not responsible. They are victims, encouraging self-pity, truculence, and a you-owe-me mentality.

All writers have heard, “write what you know.” That’s true, up to a point. The point where the imagination takes over. Edgar Rice Burroughs never went to Africa. Ray Bradbury never went to Mars. Marc Olden did not live in the nineteenth century. Olden’s book Poe Must Die is a masterpiece of the imagination. Olden is the best writer of martial arts fiction I know. Write wherever your imagination takes you.