Why doesnt modern literature deal with current affairs?

[Orang Utan]

The OP might want to have a look at the shortlists of the last five years of the Orwell Prize for fiction.
There’s some great writers grappling with a wide variety of current affairs - migration, poverty, what it must be like to live in Kent etc etc as well as some writing historical political fiction.

(though Caledonian Road is on this year’s shortlist, because of course it is)

There’s a few in those shortlists who aren’t white male middle class journalists whose book covers are plastered with chummy praise from their friends and colleagues. Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Isabelle Waidner, Caleb Azuma Nelson and Megan Nolan all spring out at me as worthy of attention.

 

[Silas Loom]

migration, poverty, what it must be like to live in Kent

Misery-porn crossover with speculative-fiction romantasy is just another example of Big Novel scraping Book-Tok and Reddit for profitable niche genres, though.

 

[Rimbaud]

Could you outline the reasons you have for assuming none of the vast number of novels issued each year do not address contemporary concerns? We've addressed at least one novel about climate change on the boards, for instance. To say no one's writing about eg the middle east, the threat of war in the Pacific, the spread of illiberalism etc without offering some evidence of the absence seems like to make a rod for your own back when someone with some time on their hands names a range of titles.

Finding out a range of titles would be an ideal outcome of posting this for me, not a "rod for my own back."

 

[Orang Utan]

I think writers have struggled to write about covid because it was such an alienating experience for many of us. If the rest of us haven’t quite managed to process it yet, why would a writer.

 

[Pickman's model]

I think writers have struggled to write about covid because it was such an alienating experience for many of us. If the rest of us haven’t quite managed to process it yet, why would a writer.

well... Five books about the COVID pandemic to look out for in 2024 there's five to start you off

 

[Orang Utan]

I think TV has probably replaced the novel as described in the OP. The big fat metanarrative issues novel’s time has come, perhaps.
If George Eliot were alive today, she’d be a lauded showrunner like Jesse Armstrong or Sally Wainwright.

 

[Winot]

I think writers have struggled to write about covid because it was such an alienating experience for many of us. If the rest of us haven’t quite managed to process it yet, why would a writer.

Sally Rooney tried (a bit) in what turned out to be the weakest of her novels.

 

[Silas Loom]

Lockdown was very boring and it massively reduced the complexity of human interaction, which is what most fiction thrives on. Thank goodness nobody tried to base a quasi-epistolary novel on Zoom calls and voice notes.

 

[Orang Utan]

well... Five books about the COVID pandemic to look out for in 2024 there's five to start you off

Thanks, it’s probably more of a case of me not wanting to read them rather than people not writing them then.
Only one of those sparked a flicker of interest - the rude French one. I like French rudeness.

 

[Orang Utan]

Lockdown was very boring and it massively reduced the complexity of human interaction, which is what most fiction thrives on. Thank goodness nobody tried to base a quasi-epistolary novel on Zoom calls and voice notes.

I think a few probably did knock out stuff like that in the early days, but had time to reconsider, be ashamed of themselves and bin the manuscript without showing to anyone else

 

[DotCommunist]

A good plague novel needs the societal breakdown as well.

 

[A380]

Enclosures, napoleonic global war, industrialisation and the move of a rapidly expanding population to the cities, the birth of trade unions and working class self awareness. Jane Austin’s books ignored them all.

 

[Orang Utan]

A good plague novel needs the societal breakdown as well.

Can’t really improve on Camus and Defoe

 

[wtfftw]

The OP might want to have a look at the shortlists of the last five years of the Orwell Prize for fiction.
There’s some great writers grappling with a wide variety of current affairs - migration, poverty, what it must be like to live in Kent etc etc as well as some writing historical political fiction.

(though Caledonian Road is on this year’s shortlist, because of course it is)

There’s a few in those shortlists who aren’t white male middle class journalists whose book covers are plastered with chummy praise from their friends and colleagues. Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Isabelle Waidner, Caleb Azuma Nelson and Megan Nolan all spring out at me as worthy of attention.

Open Water by Caleb Azuma Nelson was one of my favourite books that I read last year. My memory is atrocious for content I've consumed but it has stayed with me.

 

[hitmouse]

Jarrett Kobek's I Hate The Internet and Only Americans Burn In Hell are essential novels about social media and tech, I've not read his book about Mohammed Atta but sure that's great too.

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood is another really great social media novel.

Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs by DD Johnston is a good novel about the early 2000s anti-capitalist movement, summit protests, working in fast food etc. Deconstruction of Professor Thrub didn't make as much of an impression on me and not got around to reading The Secret Baby Room but Disnaeland is a fantastic "utopian apocalypse" novel, not directly about covid but definitely covid-informed in terms of taking the local mutual aid groups as a starting point for thinking about social collapse.

Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler has a big section set at one of the first big anti-Trump protests, very much about social media and conspiracy theory stuff. Also kind of about being insufferable but overall in a good way I think.

I think Crudo by Olivia Laing is a Trump/Brexit novel, not read it though.

Vehicle by Jen Calleja is a future dystopia, very much a climate change and Brexit informed dystopia though.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a non-fiction writer, but fuck it, if Slouching Towards Bethlehem or Notes From A Native Son count as literature then Abdurraqib definitely does too.

Seconding the Copperhead mention fwiw.

Don't read Andrew O'Hagan, you literally never have to read Andrew O'Hagan.

Never actually read Rooney but she is meant to be a Marxist, and does seem to put her money where her mouth is a bit re Gaza and stuff?

Oh, and Emily St John Mandel (not to be confused with Edna St Vincent Millay) wrote one pandemic novel in 2014 and another in 2022, dunno if that means one counts as topical and the other doesn't?

 

[Santino]

I think a few probably did knock out stuff like that in the early days, but had time to reconsider, be ashamed of themselves and bin the manuscript without showing to anyone else

I thought we'd get a lot of COVID memoirs about writers drifting around their large houses in north London, musing on their relationships with their parents, but thankfully we don't seem to have.

 

[Orang Utan]

I thought we'd get a lot of COVID memoirs about writers drifting around their large houses in north London, musing on their relationships with their parents, but thankfully we don't seem to have.

There were enough fucking columns about it

 

[hitmouse]

Oh, and Barney Farmer's novels are all good, Coketown and Drunken Bakers are general neoliberalism/state of the UK as observed from Preston novels, Park by the River is specifically a lockdown novel about going for walks in the park a lot.

 

[Sue]

I thought we'd get a lot of COVID memoirs about writers drifting around their large houses in north London, musing on their relationships with their parents, but thankfully we don't seem to have.

Yet.

 

[Rimbaud]

Jarrett Kobek's I Hate The Internet and Only Americans Burn In Hell are essential novels about social media and tech, I've not read his book about Mohammed Atta but sure that's great too.

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood is another really great social media novel.

Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs by DD Johnston is a good novel about the early 2000s anti-capitalist movement, summit protests, working in fast food etc. Deconstruction of Professor Thrub didn't make as much of an impression on me and not got around to reading The Secret Baby Room but Disnaeland is a fantastic "utopian apocalypse" novel, not directly about covid but definitely covid-informed in terms of taking the local mutual aid groups as a starting point for thinking about social collapse.

Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler has a big section set at one of the first big anti-Trump protests, very much about social media and conspiracy theory stuff. Also kind of about being insufferable but overall in a good way I think.

I think Crudo by Olivia Laing is a Trump/Brexit novel, not read it though.

Vehicle by Jen Calleja is a future dystopia, very much a climate change and Brexit informed dystopia though.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a non-fiction writer, but fuck it, if Slouching Towards Bethlehem or Notes From A Native Son count as literature then Abdurraqib definitely does too.

Seconding the Copperhead mention fwiw.

Don't read Andrew O'Hagan, you literally never have to read Andrew O'Hagan.

Never actually read Rooney but she is meant to be a Marxist, and does seem to put her money where her mouth is a bit re Gaza and stuff?

Oh, and Emily St John Mandel (not to be confused with Edna St Vincent Millay) wrote one pandemic novel in 2014 and another in 2022, dunno if that means one counts as topical and the other doesn't?

Some intriguing suggestions there, thanks for this.

 

[PTK]

The Circle by Dave Eggers is explicitly about the ceding of control to social media/big tech and its increasing intrusion into our lives. I thought it was crap, but that's what it's about.

I thought that The Circle was worth reading. There have been a number of other novels about social media/IT. I Hate the Internet by Jarett Kobek, and The Future by Naomi Alderman are two I have read. I am not sure if these novels are about "now", though. I suppose that they are about the near future. Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov is about Ukraine in the post 2014 period.

 

[PTK]

Yes Lanchester springs to mind. Ali Smith's seasonal quartet addressed the Brexit fallout, albeit tangentially.

And Ali Smith also makes reference to the treatment of asylum seekers in one of that quartet.

Iain Rankin's Fleshmarket Close has much about that topic too.

 

[frogwoman]

There are a few psychological thrillers and detective novels set during Covid and lockdown and stuff, might not be considered great literature though.

 

[PTK]

“One of Us” by Melissa Benn is a very good novel about the rise of Blair’s New Labour. It seems pretty credible, and given that her father was Tony Benn, I imagine that she actually met the people on whom the characters are based. It reinforced my hatred of Blairism.

 

[PTK]

Every one a page turner, no doubt.

Jonathan Coe's novels are very good. Number 11 is on that I particularly recommend.

 

[PTK]

“Bournville” by Jonathan Coe is a good survey of aspects of the history of Britain since 1945, including the COVID pandemic. The comment of one of the characters on the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II were relevant to the Coronation of Charles III. There is a reference to an episode of Welsh history with which I was unfamiliar. There is a section at the end that made me particularly angry about the antics of Boris Johnson, which is based on the experiences of the author.

 

[hitmouse]

Yeah, not read any of Coe's post-Brexit novels but have really enjoyed all the ones I did read. And there's a character arc across Rotters' Club/Closed Circle that I think predicts 4chan impressively well. Colson Whitehead maybe also worth a mention? And Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters is the best trans novel I've read, if that counts as current affairs. Not that I can think of that many others. Suppose there's Frankisstein by Jeanette Winterson, but that's dreadful.
Suppose Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy is a bit current affairs-y, if that counts as contemporary?

 

[Orang Utan]

Yeah, not read any of Coe's post-Brexit novels but have really enjoyed all the ones I did read. And there's a character arc across Rotters' Club/Closed Circle that I think predicts 4chan impressively well. Colson Whitehead maybe also worth a mention? And Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters is the best trans novel I've read, if that counts as current affairs. Not that I can think of that many others. Suppose there's Frankisstein by Jeanette Winterson, but that's dreadful.
Suppose Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy is a bit current affairs-y, if that counts as contemporary?

Nah, that trilogy is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future populated with genetically engineered critters and the like. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re doing our best

 

[hitmouse]

Nah, that trilogy is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future populated with genetically engineered critters and the like. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re doing our best

Depends how you measure it I suppose, but I reckon it counts. Atwood's trilogy isn't set in the 2000s/2010s, but it's a dystopian future that's very much of that time, the same way 1984 is very much a book about the 1940s even though it's set in 1984.

 

[Orang Utan]

Depends how you measure it I suppose, but I reckon it counts. Atwood's trilogy isn't set in the 2000s/2010s, but it's a dystopian future that's very much of that time, the same way 1984 is very much a book about the 1940s even though it's set in 1984.

But that’s not what the OP was asking about