The political activist and the poet have always marched to different drummers. As an editor, my loyalties lie with the freedom of the individual imagination, the fruits of which have done very little harm in the real world. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of political action. Until the politically correct can actually produce a better world in fact rather than in theory, I for one am not willing to grant them control—or even veto power—over the realm of imaginative literature.
–Michael Denneny, Editing Fiction: The Question of “Political Correctness”1
There is a myth perpetuated in the literary world that, regardless of who you are and what you write, you will be given fair consideration by literary agents and editors. If there is merit to your work and an audience for your ideas, someone will be willing to champion it. This is the fragile thread of hope we as writers all cling to when we begin sending our work out into the world to be considered for publication.
However, fair treatment at the hands of the publishing community is far from guaranteed. It is not even promised. The good faith of agents and editors reviewing our work on its artistic merits, its originality, its contribution to the broader cultural conversation, or simply its entertainment value, is no longer foremost—or even essential—in their consideration. Rather, what has become the guiding principle in the selection of texts for publication (after filtering for name recognition, credentials, status, and connections, of course) are the literary community’s ever-narrowing ideological values and beliefs.
The statement quoted above, published in 1993, today seems quaint, almost naïve. The savagery behind the recent purges of heretical ideas and those who hold them has been shocking to those of us who agree with Mr. Denneny’s sentiment. It has left us skeptical of those who have appointed themselves the gatekeepers of knowledge and art into whose hands we are supposed to entrust our ideas, our creativity, our selves. And why should we trust these individuals not only with our most precious creations but with our reputations? What have they done to earn or deserve our sacred trust?
I for one am not willing to grant them control—or even veto power—over the realm of imaginative literature.
Yet, now we’ve granted them both, and with poisonous consequences for diversity of thought and freedom of expression. This death begins long before social media assassins ever wrap their venomous tentacles around the work.
Every individual is entitled to their personal views, however mainstream or unpopular they may be. But just because we can express something, it doesn’t mean every venue or occasion is automatically appropriate for its expression. For the sake of argument, let’s set aside the traditionally offensive items that anyone not raised by wolves understands not to employ in public settings. Most of us were socialized with some basic sense of etiquette and decorum around what’s appropriate behavior at school and work, and around service professionals and authority figures (although these have shifted dramatically in recent years, and not necessarily for the better.)
Now, for comparison, read the Twitter feeds of literary agents. There are a handful of professionals who do not blast their personal political beliefs in their professional accounts. Or crusade social causes in the same place they promote their clients’ books. Or solicit prospective clients, queries, and future projects alongside propaganda. But, a majority do. The creative and the political make strange bedfellows, especially when mixed with business. And make no mistake, publishing is first and foremost a business.
How should an author approaching one of these activist agents interpret these posts? I suppose if their work is in line with the comments they read, they might take them as an endorsement. But what if an author, like myself, is quite moderate, apolitical, is ideologically at odds with critical theory and the postmodernist/Marxist underpinnings of the “social justice” agenda, and generally does not wish to engage in or be judged according to any faction’s politics? What if an author has written a challenging work with characters or themes that question or contradict the narratives espoused on the agents’ social media? What if the writer or themes of the work are—gasp!—conservative? Can the author still expect that agent to be a champion of her—or worse, his—work? Or will that agent’s personal animus overtake any professional responsibilities—dare I say, legal obligations—of nondiscrimination one might expect within other industries?
Broad—and I would argue bigoted and erroneous—assumptions have been made about who “readers” are and where their preferences and values lie. “Readers,” the industry seems to assume, are just like them: woke progressives. The rest of the population either does not read books or, if they do, should prefer different books from what they would otherwise choose for themselves. Their preferences are wrong. Clearly they are ignorant clods who need guidance from their intellectual and moral betters. Thank goodness the literati are here to save them—and society! To slap those poisoned tomes from their dirty, thuggish hands and replace them with instructive, edifying gospels so, with enough repetition, they might one day see the light. When necessary, “problematic” books are simply removed from circulation.
Insidiously, the will of the majority has been shunted aside in favor of narrowcasting to a decidedly select and elite readership, perhaps in hopes of gaining a few incidental converts who just desperately want something to read. Publishing has taken a defiant love-it-or-leave-it, “let them eat cake” attitude toward its new content, with predictably poor results. Consumer spending on recreation books have dramatically fallen off over the last decade. It turns out, telling your customers they’re dumb, deplorable people, their taste sucks, and if they don’t like the crap you’re selling they should go fuck themselves is a questionable business model. Book sales appear to be tanking. Coincidence?
Sadly, though, it works on some people. Today, we charitably call them activists because that’s how they view themselves. However, we used to have a different name for them.
“The snob doesn’t dare trust his own judgement, he desires only objects desired by others. That is why he is the slave of the fashionable.”
—Rene Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel2
Literary criticism has always tended toward the pretentious and the desire to signal both status and virtue, projecting “acceptable” taste and knowledge via reading “the right” books. However, this has taken an extreme form whereby activist agents and publishing houses are artificially selecting only these books for readers and killing their alternatives in the cradle, especially when it comes to fiction. Competing ideas, voices, perspectives, are all but exterminated. It is a literary eugenics program and ideological purge perpetrated at the highest levels of the industry.
As Mr. Denneney notes, the imagination does very little harm in the real world. The same cannot be said of political action. And despite all their certitude, the politically correct/woke can’t show us a shred of empirical evidence demonstrating tangible improvements their policies have created. Meanwhile, is literacy or any other standard of academic achievement in our society improving? Are young people more interested in books? Are adults? Yet it persists.
The desire of an entire elite class—a movement—to impose its social and political will onto members of the public through the direct manipulation of culture has become apparent. In the false name of combatting “oppression,” shutting down speech and silencing authors who don’t conform to this unsolicited cultural revolution is actual oppression. Writers should be on the warpath. Instead, they cave to it. In their desperation to be published, they attempt to appease it, self-censoring their work, mimicking the themes, adopting the language, parroting the party line, hiring “sensitivity readers.” All these efforts are in vain. Sooner or later, the drawbridge is raised again by those in the high tower, and the go-along-to-get-along author will be left in the cold by the next wave of purges.
Though tragically misguided, perhaps the publishing industry does this with the best of intentions. Perhaps they seek to defend their bottom line, believing this is truly where their market lies—the small but loyal base of overeducated minions who will blindly champion whatever artfully packaged bullshit they’re handed. Or maybe they’re just so far up their own asses they don’t even know there’s a sentient world beyond themselves and we’re not the least bit impressed by them or the utopia they’re hawking. But the end result is the same: They are selling a carefully crafted and controlled worldview by silencing any alternatives. There is a name for what they’re doing and what they are making. It is not art.
Gross, Gerald. Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (Books That Changed the World). Grove Atlantic, 1993.
Girard, Rene. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
This is not art.
Coincidentally, I received this article "Is It Worse to Ban a Book, or Never Publish It?" in a newsletter today. Thought it was worth sharing. Scroll down to "Cancellation Nation":
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/07/is-it-worse-to-ban-a-book-or-never-publish-it/670968/
Bravo! You should print this essay and send it off to literary agents as a kind of preemptive rejection letter without bothering to include the manuscript. What’s happening is very sad. I remember an instructor in a screenwriting class having us pick an abhorrent historical character to write a treatment about, only from their perspective, forcing us to see things through their eyes, excusing, as even villains do, the inexcusable. I’d argue that if you can’t do that, you can’t write compelling fiction. Milton somehow managed to add some depth to even Satan in “Paradise Lost.” About the only views dissenting from current orthodoxy that they’ll publish are those with huge built-in audiences that promise a profit they can’t turn down, starving the world of new and interesting voices. I just finished “The War on the West” by Douglas Murray (not my usual genre, but a topic that I feel an urgency to follow) and it was shocking to see so many of the disgusting scenes of illiberalism that we’ve lived through and tried to forget about collected in one text. I’m convinced that these “activists” are absolutely determined to destroy Western civilization. Oh, the irony though! Western culture is the only place these resentful hooligans could even hope to have a home. I’ve caught myself at times self-censoring, and my current mood is to say, “No, fuck it! If I believe it’s true, I’m going to say it.” It’s past time to call out at least the worst of these people as what they have chosen to be: racists, Marxists, and illiberal fools. Sharing this one! Thanks.