When I awoke last week to the news that Donald Trump had been elected president once again, my first impulse was to write. This is not unusual for me. I have been writing my way through difficult times for more than 60 years.
It’s what I did after the civil rights battles of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, the Sept. 11 attacks and at the start of the pandemic. At moments of crisis and historical upheaval, it’s easy to doubt that good writing can possibly help fix the many ills of the world. But whenever I have found myself lost in anger or anguish or confusion, the answer for how I could get through it was the same: Put pen to paper.
In my experience, good writing requires four things: precision of language, the freedom to say anything, respect and — perhaps most important — love. The responsibilities of the writer today are no different from those of any writer in any age. But the presence, character and now considerable power of President-elect Trump make the work of fulfilling those responsibilities all the more difficult and urgent.
Precision, freedom, respect and love: These qualities are sorely missing in Mr. Trump and his vision for our country. His “Make America Great Again” slogan, for instance, is deliberately imprecise. What does “great” mean, anyway? Richer? More powerful? How about more compassionate? I doubt it.
Freedom? He has indicated outright contempt for the democratic system and proposed rolling back freedoms of all kinds, from a woman’s freedom to make decisions about her body, to an immigrant’s freedom to pursue the American dream. Respect? His racial insults speak for themselves. Love? Yeah, right. The only love he shows is for himself.
With a character like Mr. Trump in charge of our country, it is all the more important that we, as citizens, demonstrate these qualities ourselves — and that we, as writers, exhibit them in our work.
But how to do it?
Start with precision: As Mark Twain put it, the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. The simple reason precision is essential in writing is that it allows both writer and reader a clear shared understanding. Often, this comes down to finding the correct noun. Emerson called nouns the “speaking language of things.” A good rule of thumb is that if you need three adjectives to describe something, you have the wrong something.
One must be precise in all facets of writing. One should choose anticipation over surprise. Surprise can be exciting but it’s a cheap thrill. Many of the best works of literature get along just fine without it. From the first lines of “Hamlet,” we know that the prince is going to bite the dust. Yet we watch the play again and again to see how his life leads to its inevitable end.
On freedom: The writer depends on total freedom, to write what she wants to write, say what she wants to say, in any form of her choosing. Freedom is what gives the writer power, or, as Vaclav Havel put it, “the power of the powerless.”
The basic freedom is to tell any story, any way one wishes. The story of the poem, the story of the essay, the novel or novella or play. Whatever its form, the story is of supreme importance to the writer. We are a narrative species, after all. We like to dignify ourselves as the rational species, but given much of human behavior, that is more of a bitter joke. A narrative species we are.
The Jews in the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto knew they were doomed, to diphtheria or to the extermination camps. Yet they wrote poems and stories and letters, and rolled them into scrolls, and slipped them into the crevices of the ghetto walls. They knew that if their writing was discovered by the Nazi soldiers, it would be derided and destroyed. That made no difference. They had a story to tell. They had to tell a story. And they seized what little freedom they had to do so.
On respect: In “Middlemarch,” George Eliot respected the single-minded, unfeeling Edward Casaubon, even as she condemned his cruelty to Dorothea. Fitzgerald respected Jay Gatsby’s obsession, even as it brought Gatsby to his fall.
An author respects all his characters because he recognizes that we are all flawed, and that everybody fails. He also respects all points of view, even the most abhorrent. Writers are representatives of all of humanity and thus are obliged to treat every person, idea and image fairly and honorably. Even a figure like Mr. Trump, who many (including myself) disagree with wholeheartedly must, to a writer, be a figure of curiosity and even empathy. In James Joyce’s short story “Clay,” the character Joe is an insincere, stupid, dangerous lout, yet it is to Joe that Joyce gives the epiphany of tears.
And finally: love. The love of one’s characters, of one’s language, of one’s thoughts and images, of one’s readers, and of the world.
Instead of viewing the world as a competitive playing field, the writer sees the world as a vast collection of people, all of whom share the same sense of wonder, the same fears and dreams, and the same griefs.
The writer understands that everyone she meets is carrying a heavy burden. The writer feels that burden — in Madison, Wis.; in Santiago, Chile; and in Moscow and Beijing — and loves all who bear it.
So we come around to Mr. Trump again and the atmosphere he is likely to foster. No precision of thought or language. Limited freedom, especially for women. No respect for anyone, or anything, really. No love but self-love.
Can writers survive, even thrive, in such an atmosphere? We’d better.
For that to happen, the idea of love must include the American people — all the people, not just those who voted for Kamala Harris.
Whatever accounts for Mr. Trump’s victory, the fact is that his candidacy appealed to millions. It is the writer’s business and obligation to understand that appeal, to prod what the essayist H.L. Mencken called our “inner soul,” and to try to meet that soul with love.
The post How to Be a Writer in the Second Age of Trump appeared first on New York Times.
