Political season is here, the Republican candidates for president are unavoidable, and that acrid smell you detect is the smoke coming out of my ears! It’s not just that I disagree with them on a lot of issues -- helping the little guy, health care, the environment -- it’s the level of intolerance they display towards …me.
David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, put it this way:
“One of the most striking aspects of the recent Republican Party Presidential debate was the way the candidates, each in his own way, tried to out-do each other in their disdain for gay marriage and their willingness—nay, their ardent vows!—to do everything possible to make sure that homosexual couples never gain the right to matrimony. One day soon, someone will play back that debate as an exercise in historical shame, much as we now watch documentary clips of serene racial bigots denouncing the efforts of the black freedom movement in days of yore.”
I added the emphasis because I think Remnick’s statement is so powerful. I mean this is the United States, isn’t everyone supposed to have the same rights?
The question I face as a writer is: Do I put my politics on the page? Do I use my characters to mouth my views? The answer is an unequivocal “no”.
I’ve read novels where the author uses a character as a mouthpiece for his or her political views and I find that it pulls me out of the world of the story and into the real world, which I'm trying to escape by reading the book.
I write about individuals, and I know that there are kind and decent (not to mention homicidal) people in both parties. It would simplistic, boring and jejune to define people solely by their political views. In my new Janet’s Planet mystery, Dead by Any Other Name, one of the prime suspects is a wealthy, ostensibly liberal woman who is actually a manipulative, condescending snob.
She may even be a murderer.
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