I mention this now because the April 12, 2016, New York Times "Bookends" column posed the question: "Which Subjects are Underrepresented in Contemporary Fiction?"
As usual, there were two respondents, but I'm only going to look at the answer given by one of them -- Ayana Mathis, a novelist and Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
"Writers are a bit flummoxed by joy. With few exceptions, we (I am no less guilty than anyone else) seem to have decided that despair, alienation and bleakness are the most meaningful, and interesting, descriptors of the human condition. In our ennui and end-of-days malaise, we have elevated suffering to the highest of virtues."
She could easily have thrown "transgressive behavior, and the more shocking the better" into that mix as well.
Not than I'm opposed to stories where characters behave badly. Indeed, to have an interesting plot line, one or more characters almost has to do something wrong -- on purpose or by mistake. How does everyone then deal with that? But when depravity becomes an end in itself -- "my book has more than yours" (and gets more sensational promotional "blurbs" as a result) -- matters start to get discouraging and, indeed, boring.
In the end, Mathis goes beyond my point.
"Joy, it must be remembered, is nothing like happiness, its milquetoast cousin. It is instead a vivid and extreme state of being, often arrived at in the aftermath of great pain," she said.
In other words, Mathis believes writers still need to present extreme situations if their work is to be seen as meritorious and I wouldn't go that far. But I have to admit it's a lot easier to write an unhappy ending than one where things come out alright (unless, of course, Hollywood is the client). Milquetoast is a distinct possibility and one I suspect Ms Mathis worries might be career ending.
While she and I are not on exactly the same wavelength when it comes to the issue at hand, I think readers will get the point.
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