FICTION ON HOLD
Writing fiction, these days, seems frivolous. The sweet stories of our imaginations, remnants of the innocence we lost on September 11, 2001, no longer reflect the world that we’ve come to know, a world witness to terror.
A gaping hole in the trim skyline of New York echoes in the emptiness of our screens and pages as we reflect on the tragedy. We’re too stunned to write, too appalled to play. This reticence doesn’t only afflict writers; all over, the industry of escapism has skidded to a halt: sporting events cancelled, songs with painful references pulled from radio stations’ playlists, grim movies replaced with news coverage, the fall television season postponed.
It’s as if fiction has become hostage to reality.
Surely laughter in the face of tragedy is insensitive? A smile--too soon? The parameters of our new world aren’t yet clear to many of us. What was already an occupation of second guessing has suddenly become even more muddy.
I examine my own manuscript, looking for the mundane error as well as the offensive: Does a scene set in New York (ironically, during the month of September) mention the now-missing Towers? And that horribly prescient scene of earthquake destruction--will descriptions of debris be enough to evoke painful memories in the mind of a New Yorker? I rethink an article I wrote before the tragedy: too flippant for today’s heartsore readers?
My own cynic’s heart is heavy, my eyes weary of the images. But the escape route of fiction is closed, temporarily at least. I find myself envying poets, with an already gray canvas to stain with their grief. And journalists, with their shocked, yet eager, audience. Their words ring out: precise, solemn, appropriate.
Fiction writers are tellers of tales, dreamers of visions--the invented world our only voice. The keyboard was never our soapbox. Still, we try, pouring out our grief in email, essays, and editorials.
Many eloquent and poignant words have already been written; mine cannot hope to compare. The adjectives and adverbs just don’t exist to convey the sheer incredibility of what is, after all, reality.
Fiction pales by comparison.
On that infamous day in September, it was our innocence that was pulverized, our spirits that were pierced. Happily-ever-after endings seem far from certain these days. Endings, on the other hand, are far too common, and far too abrupt.
I wonder if our stories will ever be the same?
Our lives, certainly, will never be.
–Kathy Flake
September 14, 2001