OK, good people. I'm giving a talk on political novels/art. So questions:
Do you think political novel in general are bad, and if so, why?
What makes a novel political and another not?
Can art and politics be separated, and if so, should they be?
Hit me!
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At the risk of being facile: all novels are political novels we only tend to call them that when the seams show badly and then we call political novels bad
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For example, 'The Count of Monte Cristo' is the most savage attack on France's 1840s social, judicial and political system which I can think of. But is it a 'political novel'? No.
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Of course it is political. It's a great novel and all great novels are inherently political. What we think of as political novels, are usually those with overt messages, and those tend to be bad.
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I think there’s a difference between the act of writing and the subject matter. The act of writing is political (a call out into the wild) but not all writing is political in subject matter? Sometimes writing is both. It’s bad when it’s no longer art though.
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“No book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.” - George Orwell.
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Damn him.
I need to say the same thing in a 45 minute talk!
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Maybe. I usually wait a while and then turn them into essays
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I was asked to teach a grad seminar in contemporary US political novels a few years ago. Couldn’t really come to a fully satisfying definition. Some (like Howe) argue that it’s a novel that makes politics an explicit focus. But political effect can be found in almost any lit…
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What about time,place and genre? Not sure but realist fiction set in our time seem to take on more political lens. In response to all personal is political, Azar Nafisi wrote in Reading Lolita in Tehran that at the heart of political is the desire to protect the personal.
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