Where Are the Conservative Novelists? Think about the politics of today’s universities, and it is not surprising that creative-writing programs produce so few conservatives.
Toward the end of the question-and-answer period at a recent talk of mine at the local Barnes & Noble, an audience member stood up and asked, “Are readers of your novels ever surprised to discover you’re a conservative?”
The natural response is that there’s no inherent tension between conservative thought and literary expression — even if not everyone realizes it. For example, when playwright David Mamet came out as a conservative several years ago, veteran British theater critic Michael Billington wrote, “I am depressed to read that [he] has swung to the right. . . . What worries me is the effect on his talent of locking himself into a rigid ideological position.”
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In fact, although the image of the writer as rebel has been popular at least since the Romantic period, great writers through history often do not fit that mold. Think of, say, Sophocles and Dante, both of whom gave voice to timeless conservative values: reverence for tradition, skepticism about sudden or drastic change, and insistence on personal accountability.
Nor does the canon of American novelists tilt relentlessly leftward. Modern conservatives will find much that is congenial in writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Edith Wharton, John Dos Passos, Walker Percy, Saul Bellow, Flannery O’Connor, and John Updike.
On the other hand, conservatives are noticeably rare among our current crop of literary novelists. The two names that jump to mind are Tom Wolfe and Marilynne Robinson. Both have created fictions that show an abiding respect for entrenched moralities. Then, too, we have their nonfiction: Wolfe has written scathingly about the knee-jerk radicalism of Manhattan elites; Robinson, about the smug secularism of academics. Christopher Buckley is another possibility — though not the slam dunk the Buckley name would suggest. None of the three, it must be noted, is a spring chicken. (Neither am I; plus, I’m obscure.) The current ratio of left-of-center to right-of-center literary novelists, in short, looks at least as lopsided as the ratio of left-of-center to right-of-center faculty members at an average liberal-arts college.
Maybe that’s not altogether coincidental.
Before getting into that, however, let’s set aside conspiracy theorizing — you know, the idea that the publishing industry is consciously biased against conservatives. Editors and agents are driven, first and foremost, by the desire to sell books. Among those who write bankable bestsellers rather than literary fiction, even an arch-conservative like Tom Clancy has no trouble getting novels into print.
Since history suggests that conservative instincts do not thwart literary talent, and since the publishing industry doesn’t blackball conservatives, why should such an imbalance now exist?
Perhaps part of the explanation lies in the aforementioned ideological imbalance among university faculty. That suggestion might sound odd — if you still believe that literary success emerges strictly through individual effort. But the romantic image of the writer slaving away in solitude, wrestling his inspiration onto the page, is passé. Today’s literary novelist is much more likely to be the product of an academic writing program than to be a lonely visionary.
The statistics are startling: Granta’s list of “Best Young American Novelists” for 2007 (the last year it was compiled) named 21 authors. Fifteen of them had emerged from Master of Fine Arts programs; three more had been mentored in non-MFA creative-writing programs by famous writers on their college’s faculty. That leaves only three who didn’t come from programs specifically designed to produce fiction writers.
Writing since I was a child, in the late 60's, I left home with the goal of becoming a journalist and writer. The program at the Univ of Iowa was so uniformly top-to-bottom hard lefties, I was first shocked, then discouraged and moved on to more conventional pursuits.
I think you have to look further for the reasons- the publishers are largely staffed by leftists who are antagonistic to conservative ideas. If you want more conservative novelists, go to the fantasy and sci-fi
field, where they co-exist with the others. I'd recommend John Ringo,
Tom Kratman, Jerry Pournelle... for starts.
A thoughtful, unique, and important premise. Though I dare say you've only just scratched the surface here. One might flesh this theory out in the following ways:
(1) Your definition of "conservative" seems rooted primarily in cultural conservatism. However, I think we can expand the field of conservative writers somewhat if we recognize that some of the forerunners to modern conservatism were classical liberals. Prior to the 20th Century, many authors took aristocratic or monarchical systems to task from a "liberal" standpoint. But in a modern, more democratic West, the Left has flown off the handle. (Granted, a dominant voice of the Right has become libertarian, in the mode of Ayn Rand, for example.)
2. Relatedly, I think you place too much of the blame on academics. It's not that I would defend their approach, by any means! However, a true conservative author should not require a degree in fiction writing or even in English (or other literature). Conservatism must be as balanced as it is sophisticated. Other life experiences outside English class are more relevant, provided one at least acquires strong writing skills (which are more tied to grammar than to "creative writing"). One such source for many conservative-leaning writers is, of course, the Bible, which every decent writer pre-20th Century knew by heart.
3. Finally, you seem to implicitly acknowledge that conservative writing is less about the subject matter than it is about weaving conservatism throughout a piece. Yet you underestimate the effect this has on marketability of conservative literature. Frankly, I think conservative authors should expect a much slower go of it, since they're not able to employ "hooks" as much as Leftists, popularists, or even libertarians. I could go on at more length with this, but it's just a comment section after all....
There may be some influence by professors, but perhaps there is also a certain amount of self-selection by genre? By looking at literary novelists, you are automatically restricting yourself to a liberal cohort. If one adds in western, sf and fantasy, thriller/mystery writers, I'm sure the results will skew differently. Or are you implying that the rest of us, those outside the literarure category in the bookstore, are just a bunch of hacks unworthy of consideration?
I've been wondering when an article like this would rear its much needed head. As an inspiring writer who authors "Conservative" novels, I am in a wasteland. I have been told by numerous agents that no matter how good the tale, I will "never" be published. It's probably a good thing because, as I'm running for the Texas House in 2012, their (novels) existence would probably be used as fodder to harm me. As for MBA's: they are the death of literature. So much for life experience. This is a nation at war with genius. How sad it is to be alive at this twilight. But the future of the West is Texas. We will claim the mantle of culture and bury the sick remnants of the Northeast and the West Coast. Fall ito your respective oceans, ye murders of the human spirit!
Why are there few conservatives writing literary novels? Why are there few conservative actors and actresses in Hollywood and Broadway? Why are there few conservative singers and songwriters? Why are there few conservatives in the mainstream media? Why are there few conservatives in higher institutions of learning? Why are there few conservatives in any of the liberal arts fields?
Simplest answer: Conservatives ceded all of that ground to liberals and then proceeded to complain that all of those things are dominated by liberals.
Want to get conservatives more involved in those are areas? Have more conservatives go into those areas.
As I get older I find myself re-reading novelists from earlier eras. I'm a big fan of Saul Bellow, John Updike, and Peter De Vries. For the last few decades I wondered where the next generation of novelists will come from. Lord knows there's enough material out there. Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of Vanities is now 25 years old, and many New Yorkers would probably agree that his subject matter is dated, even if the characters are memorable.
Concerning the fire-wall that our Academic Left has constructed, new technology such as Amazon's Kindle will defeat the Left's effort. Good prose, a good plot, and good character development still matter. It may take a bit more marketing for a young novelist to get his book noticed using this medium; but, he doesn't have to find an agent, publisher, or save beaucoup bucks to self publish (John Grisham's first story was self published). This is already occurng n the music industry. My Space promotes more young talent than any agency.
In the distant past most novelists steered clear of the university. Many, like Dickens or Hemingway learned thier trade the hard way. Even Goethe (who got the entire novel writing business going with his novel "Werther") wrote his first book from a small cottage in just under 6 weeks. If I remember my German History correctly, Goethe was the first "Bestsellig Writer" in the business. And to think, he did it without an MFA grant.
What about Mark Helprin? He's a best-selling novelist and a conservative, and, besides teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for a spell, is unaffiliated with the MFA novelist-industrial complex.
Moreover, it seems odd for NRO to omit Mr. Helprin because he wrote an excellent article on this same subject five years ago for National Review ("Without Which Conservatism Is Stillborn"), though his essay extended the point to the arts generally, and not just novel writing.
I suppose my original comments were a bit too bombastic. But the points are fact. As someone who has been to a myriad of literary and publishing conferences, as well as friends with numerous professors, the general climate is that conservative views (as fiction) are not publishable. MBA programs have streamlined both writing content and writing style. True, few set out to write a particular novel, but one's enviroment inevitably works its way into the work itself.
So we are now in the age of the "Credentialed Novel" - how unfortuanate. It seems a cultural shift is needed. The present climate is the sum product of the intellectual monopoly that the Northeast has draped over the rest of the nation for over a hundred years. They remade our literary heritage in their own image, now they come to shape the future permanently.
Just what does an MFA have to do with writting talent? A quick look at the NY Times bestseller list shows the contents pretty ballanced. I see Liberal, Conservative, and pretty stupid in pretty much equal numbers, maybe leaning to Conservative. When was the last time Vince Flynn wasn't on it? Don't worry about the college English depts. They'll go out of business soon enough on their own.
It's hard to be worried about this. For one thing, it's been true for an awfully long time. The 2nd raters who make up the literary establishment have been lefties for ages now. In the 20's, they were dismayed by Eliot's "Anglo-Catholic, Royalist, Classicist" statement. I've been reading Waugh's essays lately; little seems to have changed. (His "Two Unquiet Lives" is particularly apt.)
So we'll have another generation of progressive Colley Cibbers & Tom Shadwells. So what? (Just more "reliques of the bum.") Those worth remembering will be off on their own, doing the real writing. Moby Dick, remember, was little read in Melville's time.
MFA programs may mean money for their products, but they will also mean mediocrity. I'm not worried.
The publishing world is in a free fall right now because of the ebook revolution going on. Thanks to DTP by Amazon and PubIt by B&N (as well as others), authors can publish ON THEIR OWN and get up to 70% royalties. The internet spreads things quicker than word of mouth ever could, so don't be surprised if a vast "underground" wave of conservative writers emerge. To those that say, "if anyone can publish, the quality will suffer." Nonsense, people know a bad book when they see it, the market will weed out the bad ones from the good ones. It's an exciting time, we have the opportunity to take away the reigns of control on information from the elites that would never have been possible just 10 years ago. I for one am encouraged by the changes taking place.
A few years ago, I wrote a novel about the World Trade Center attack on September 11th that could be viewed as conservative. I had no luck landing a literary agent and had to self-publish the book. I don't think it was any kind of conspiracy but I do believe the subject matter is one that a lot of literary agents didn't want to touch (among other things, the book tracks Mohammed Atta's activities in great detail during the months leading up to the attack). I'm not linking to the book on Amazon because I don't want people thinking I'm commenting just to try to get people to buy the book. Just offering another alternative as to why there might not be as much conservative fiction published.
Dittos to Will Beyer's suggestion of science fiction novelists. See Larry Niven's Laws in N-Space (or just search the 'net). See Jerry Pournelle's excellent commentaries at jerrypournelle.com.
Conservatives seem to be doing quite well in the thriller genre. Look at Brad Thor and Vince Flynn - both of whom have had movie options just picked up on their books. Why this is limited to "literary" novels is beyond me. Perhaps an explanation is that a lot of modern "literary" fiction celebrates qualities that conservatives reject in that literary fiction of late seems to celebrate surrendering to vices. Then again, I could be completely wrong about this.
