Shawn Hartje
The topsy-turvy times we live in were a huge catalyst. I think what's happening to American society is good, meaning that it is dynamic. In our present moment, real change looks crazy, dangerous, and evil, but in hindsight we'll see that chaos is necessary for a society to evolve, sort of how the weather evolves chaotically as it rolls across the land.
Please hear me out, and don't jump to any conclusions until you've read the entirety of what I have to say:
There's currently a negative focus on the white, straight male in American society. President Trump's victory owes much to disgruntled white males who were sick of being labeled 'bad' by popular culture. My hope is that Pipeliner's portrayal of a privileged white dude's puberty, warts and all, will open the door to empathy. I'm sure many people will scoff at that last sentence, but creating empathy (even for an entitled class) is better than dreaming up another reason to hate and blame straight white males for all the havoc they've caused over the years (which has been a LOT of havoc).
I'm not a fan of identity politics, but it's unfortunately the world we live in, and this phenomenon seems to be amplified within contemporary fiction. If I'm going to jump into this game, being a white guy from the midwest, I'm only going to be efficient at creating empathy for my own 'group.' Anyways, I dislike all this division and dissecting of our culture into 'groups,' that just leads to fighting. A better way to examine people is to view our actions as a response to the patterns that influence us.
So... my hope is that writing a super-realistic novel that doesn't try to moralize everything about a white-guy's coming of age will help to reveal these patterns as forces of nature that we may or may not have control over. Looking at people as simply responding to powerful and mostly undefined forces of nature, as opposed to a bunch of groups responding to other groups' oppression or aggression, helps to bring on empathy between people from all different backgrounds in a huge way. Metaphysics anyone?
Please hear me out, and don't jump to any conclusions until you've read the entirety of what I have to say:
There's currently a negative focus on the white, straight male in American society. President Trump's victory owes much to disgruntled white males who were sick of being labeled 'bad' by popular culture. My hope is that Pipeliner's portrayal of a privileged white dude's puberty, warts and all, will open the door to empathy. I'm sure many people will scoff at that last sentence, but creating empathy (even for an entitled class) is better than dreaming up another reason to hate and blame straight white males for all the havoc they've caused over the years (which has been a LOT of havoc).
I'm not a fan of identity politics, but it's unfortunately the world we live in, and this phenomenon seems to be amplified within contemporary fiction. If I'm going to jump into this game, being a white guy from the midwest, I'm only going to be efficient at creating empathy for my own 'group.' Anyways, I dislike all this division and dissecting of our culture into 'groups,' that just leads to fighting. A better way to examine people is to view our actions as a response to the patterns that influence us.
So... my hope is that writing a super-realistic novel that doesn't try to moralize everything about a white-guy's coming of age will help to reveal these patterns as forces of nature that we may or may not have control over. Looking at people as simply responding to powerful and mostly undefined forces of nature, as opposed to a bunch of groups responding to other groups' oppression or aggression, helps to bring on empathy between people from all different backgrounds in a huge way. Metaphysics anyone?
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