My literary agent, tasked with getting me into the commercial market, recently rejected one of my late 18th-century adventure novels because it had references to “breasts” and “spreadeagled legs.” He also pointed out that the dialogue consisted of longer sentences than are spoken today, although it was reflective of the historical period. “So what’s the problem?” I asked. His reply, “Those sexist terms and complex sentences have little appeal to contemporary acquisitions editors in their 30s-40s.” I wanted to ask, “…and who have no sense of history and possess short attention spans?” but refrained. He feared he might offend some in today’s woke literary establishment. We therefore decided to mutually part company, as he could no longer represent this recalcitrant author who wouldn’t bow to the capricious winds of fashion.
I decided to familiarize myself with this term (it’s more of a movement) that is strangling free expression and casting writers like me onto the fringe:
Woke: to be vigilant and informed about social injustice, racial prejudice, and systemic discrimination.
I also looked up a definition of literature that reflects my writing:
Literature (one definition among many): presents human experiences through sensations, feelings, moods, attitudes, thoughts and events.
When placed side by side, these terms appear perfectly congruent. Great works of literature like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, Oliver Twist, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Handmaid’s Tale, etc., were Woke in the themes they covered, although “the word” went mainstream long after these works were written. Even the much-vilified Lolita could be argued as being Woke in the taboo subjects of pedophilia, abuse, and power dynamics, as it boldly surfaced and explored. But then my AI assistant gave me a caveat on Woke: “The term has become highly politicized, evolving from its origins in Black American culture to sometimes being used as a pejorative to criticize progressive ideas and policies, while others use it to express pride in social and political awareness.”
And it is this politicization and threat to progressive ideas that irks me. A new, selective morality, also being termed Woke, has descended upon the literary landscape, which I thought was the last bastion of free expression. How does one portray the 18th century realistically when forced to use the morals and language of the early 21st century? And should one, if wanting to stay true to that historical period? What happened to the liberalization of literature that had progressively widened over the last two centuries, since the advent of Realism?
Authenticity has now to be subjugated to a moral yoke, which no one is sure who administers, but one which we all are supposed to follow. And when AI eventually takes over the editing (and writing) function (as it is relentlessly moving towards), will Woke algorithms automatically weed out bold but politically incorrect writing completely?
In my short stories and novels, I have covered the following topics: climate change, political subterfuge, big-business corruption, marital discord, dysfunctional families, social media subversion, small-town life, unchecked AI, misogynistic males, femme fatales, pandemics, colonial empires, immigrants, and power dynamics, among others, covering a time span from the 18th to the 21st centuries. My heroes are flawed, and my villains are pieces of work. In each of my works—and depending on the period, geographical location, and culture covered—I have tried to stay true to the morals, ideas, and behaviour of the milieu and paint as true a picture based on my research. The further back in time I go, humans are less ‘evolved” in their respect for the dignity of life and in caring for the Other, and are portrayed as such, warts and all.
Who will get us out of this hole? I see glimmers of hope in the independent press movement, which is bound by no such moral police, patron, or corporate sponsor, and which is free to push boundaries and explore what is possible, not merely what is permissible or fashionable, and thereby extend the frontiers of literature. After all, many of the “breakthrough works” that are considered masterpieces today – Joyce’s Ulysses, Voltaire’s Candide, even the dreaded Lolita, were published by “indies” willing to take a chance on writing that went against the grain.
I, too, opened my own literary press sixteen years ago to not only publish “politically-incorrect and displaced” writers like myself, but to carve out a distribution channel for my own work. By having my own channel, I figured I wouldn’t need anyone’s permission to publish the material I liked, and I would let the reader decide on the merits of the work published, and not leave it to some self-appointed gatekeeper with a different agenda. Today, I consider this a smart move among the many other dumb things I have done in my life.
I’m not sure if this situation will get worse before it gets better. All I know is that fashion swings between extremes, and the pendulum could go the other way soon. Therefore, I hope the zeitgeist wakes up soon—at least, during my lifetime—sees the folly of its ways, and recovers lost ground by returning to a more open world in which “all ideas matter,” not only some that are politically correct and dumbed down for the comprehension of a Sixth Grader.
