the blog post addresses (or at least raises) some good points about the role of fiction in making sense of contemporary tragedies and events.
the referenced article is here.
anyway, seems like good grist for the mill.
I wonder if we're beginning to peg fiction too much to current events. First there was post-9/11 fiction, now there's post-Katrina fiction (and, probably soon, Iraq War II fiction and Bush II fiction). I don't doubt the need for writers to try their hand at making sense of major events, but it strikes me as a little strange to start forming fiction subgenres around disasters and such. It also strikes me as a little troubling the way fiction is being increasingly marketed around events (usually tragedies), as if novels and story collections were some kind of literary op-eds. (Note the Esquire editor asking specifically for Katrina-based fiction, no doubt in order to sell more magazines.)
Of course, there's also the point that much of the best fiction on any given historical moment comes decades afterward. Perhaps we shouldn't be goading our authors by implying that they should be fictionalizing major current events. Maybe we should just let them write.
the referenced article is here.
anyway, seems like good grist for the mill.