Just Fiction

A: “You can write whatever you like. It’s just fiction.”

B: “I’m not sure that’s true, actually. I mean, it is certainly fiction, but I’m not sure how freely I can write it.”

A: “Why would that be? Beyond ensuring that your work isn’t totally incoherent or monstrously offensive, the curators don’t seem to care much about form or content. Word limits, sure. Beyond that, it’s entirely up to you. You don’t have to be any good to publish, you know. There are some competitions that require greater skill on your obscure site, of course. But you needn’t enter at all. So why aren’t you free?”

B: “Well, when it gets around that you’re publishing online, people read your work. In many cases, they do so purely because they want to assure themselves that you’re a quack, or a weirdo, or whatever. In fact, if your writing offends or upsets them, they will hold that against you, too. At work. When it matters.”

A: “Oh, come on. You’re being paranoid. Why would you let that affect your writing?”

B: “As a matter of fact, I don’t. I just go on writing whatever I am moved to write, however I am moved to write it. I mean, I could have invented a world to play host to this discussion. I could have imagined a series of events that made this conversation seem necessary, if not inevitable. I could have given us both bodies of a given kind, wardrobe, an odd picadillo or two, just to spice things up. To be candid, I just did not see the point. The dialogue is the point, here. The rest would just be window dressing.

I think that’s a real weakness of my approach to writing fiction, in fact. I was totally spellbound by Plato’s dialogues when I was just a silly undergraduate. Trying to sort out what we mean when we say “good” or “beautiful” or “true,” by engaging someone else in rather rigorous, exacting dialogue; that seemed like a great idea to me. The idea that ideas themselves are more real than particulars was right on the money too, I thought. Just consider all of the shoes or sonnets or situation comedies in the world. They are always coming into being and passing away, moving from obscurity to center stage and then back into obscurity. You could will most of the ones that currently exist into oblivion, and they would be replaced rather quickly. But the abstract, mental representation of a shoe or a sonnet or a situation comedy would be completely unharmed. The ideas linger longest and spread most easily, especially when you’re trying to figure shit out.”

A:“What does all of that noise have to do with your writing, let alone your paranoia?”

B: “It’s funny. There are some jobs that want to keep track of your behavior when you’re off the clock. The number of jobs like that positively soared during the pandemic. The tools required to keep track of employees online became much more sophisticated, too. But the point is, we (ordinary people, I mean) are under scrutiny much more than we used to be. I think it’s great that they (those who monitor what I make and share) might read my humble offerings. If they think they’re awful—which many of them certainly are—they could give me pointers. They don’t want to improve my work, though. They want to use it to show that I am not behaving myself.”

A: “So what? I mean, no one can sue you, or fire you, or drag you in front of some sort of terrifying tribunal, for writing bad fiction and publishing it on a relatively obscure web site!”

B: “No, of course not. Not yet. But censoriousness is on the rise. People with power, of various political stripes and ideological affinities, understand how powerful contemporary information technology is. What AI has already done, and will do in short order, to exponentially augment the power of that technology, we can only guess. Some say Altman and his ilk are carnival barkers and snake oil salesmen. Hallucinations are common. Genuine AGI is miles off.

Others are convinced that either a gleaming utopia or a ghastly dystopia will come rushing in next week. Exaggeration is in vogue just now, as it has been during many periods of decadence and corruption and general malaise in the history of our odd species. What comes to pass will probably be somewhere between those extremes. But the tools are getting more and more powerful, and we don’t seem to have any idea what to do with them, or what they will do for, or to, us. We’ve completely abandoned what I think the Ancient Greeks meant by episteme and thrown everything we can muster in terms of time and money and energy and attention into techne. We are desperate to know how to do things, but we have no time to think about what we are doing, or why, or in service to what idea, or party, or deity, or whatever. Just do it. Don’t think too much about it.”

A: “Well, if that’s true, why don’t you just carry on writing whatever you like? Bust it all out, coward! Erotic adventures featuring a bored librarian and a centaur. Recipes for soup masquerading as free verse. Horror stories about dissertations that you can never finish. Be wild and free, not afraid. It’s just fiction. On an obscure website. Calm down.”

B: “Oh, it’s more subtle than that. There is a gigantic difference between being fired, and never getting the promotion, or the plum assignments, or the serious customers. You can be exiled to the hinterlands and hang on to your citizenship, you know? You can keep a lowly post, but that’s it. You see, most people these days pretend to be gentle, inoffensive subjective relativists: ‘That depends upon the person; it’s not for me to say what’s right or wrong, as long as you’re happy; there are lots of different ways of doing things, and they are all valid in their own way…’ but that’s not how we actually live. If you want to be promoted, you have to share the right ideas, or at least obey protocol and accepted convention. You have to be careful what you say, and write, and to whom. You ought to avoid unsavory ports of call and certain kinds of association. Your wardrobe should be tasteful and suitable. Your diet should be sensible.”

A: “You’re losing it. Nobody from my workplace has ever tried to control me in any of those ways.”

B: “That may be because they don’t care about you. I think the writing is especially problematic, and likely to get one into trouble with those who have a vested interest in maintaining the cultural status quo, whatever that happens to be in your neck of the woods.”

A: “Why? Who cares what some crank writes about, especially in a work of fiction?”

B: “Good question. Here’s another: what’s a metaphor?”

A: “Oh, fuck off. You are not Socrates. I think you’re nuts.”

B: “Just indulge me. It’s the kind of thing we just take for granted, or pretend to understand, just to get on with figuring out how to get things done. Humor an old crank. What’s a metaphor?”

A: “How about, ‘your mind is a fetid swamp,’ will that do?”

B: “Easy now, but sure. Now this is just based on my hazy recollection of some Northrop Frye I read in grad school, so I might be full of it, but I think a metaphor is a use of figurative language. That implies that it is not ordinary discourse. Its aim isn’t simply to give you the data as efficiently as possible. Instead, it’s designed to conjure a figure in the private theater of your imagination. In this case, a stinking swamp, full of rot and decay. That’s the vehicle. That’s what you wanted me to imagine, yes?”

A: “You’re getting warmer.”

B: “Fair enough. Now, that vehicle contains a tenor, that is, an idea. So, you wished to convey the idea of a ‘mental challenge,’ to deploy the air bag of a contemporary euphemism, right? I’m a few enchiladas short of a fiesta, si?”

A: “Warmer…”

B: “Now the two components are snugly integrated, as I understand it. So much so, that you might ignore the tenor completely, or it could be rendered virtually invisible, especially by shopworn familiarity. I think Nietzsche likens metaphors that have been around for ages to coins with the faces rubbed off—Truth and Lie in the Extramoral Sense, maybe?—which shows that he knew that an idea can find its way into many minds, most of whom will not recognize it as it gets absorbed.”

A: “Cooling off rapidly, dude. Do you have an example?”

B: “Sure. Money.”

A: “What do you know about money? Haven’t your shitty job and the obscurity of your work already been established?”

B: “Ouch. Sure. But money is just a vehicle, an image. The idea is transactional value, or it was to begin with. Now it’s also power, or virtue, or status—you see what I mean. The same vehicle, but the driver can change. I think fiction works like a single, complex, capacious metaphor. It gets ideas into our cultural blood stream. Mostly, it’s used to do maintenance on existing structures. Occasionally, it remodels them. On rare occasions, it helps to demolish existing structures, the better to get back to what was there before, or build something new. If you understand the power of fiction to do these things, you want control of it. You don’t want the potentially problematic stuff to be taken seriously. You’ve got to keep it on the periphery, or strangle it in the crib if necessary.”

A: “Ice cold, buddy. I’ve read some of your stuff. A succubus who met Douglas Adams? You must have been drunk. Who cares about any of it?”

B: “Oh, probably very few. My point is that a mediocre short story or a clumsy haiku can shake up a few minds. If you imply that students are not customers, or that a power point presentation isn’t a lecture, or that it’s alright to imagine conversing with succubi now and then, you can draw the ire of the custodians of business as usual. Not because the vehicle is especially beautiful or good, but because they don’t want anyone to get the idea. They’re not comfortable with it.”

A: “Huh. So, you’re not afraid to write fiction. You’re just saying that it could attract the wrong kind of attention, and get you into trouble. Not a cell or a coffin, just a comparatively miserable life.”

B: “Right. As you know, I’m accustomed to a pretty spartan existence. I just don’t want to starve in a tent under an overpass or anything. That sort of thing is rather common, you know? Some buy elections while others debate about buying gas or eating before they vote. The majority are scrambling, while the few recline in outrageous luxury. What’s up with that?”

A: “Well, nobody said the world had to make sense to you. Some people accumulate wealth and some don’t. Hasn’t that always been true?”

B: “Sure. But this goes on in many democracies. That seems odd.”

A: “Why? The wealthy subsidize the candidates, who do their bidding. Sometimes that has modest benefits for the great unwashed, but that’s just a happy accident. The people with the wealth decide who writes the laws.”

B: “That’s about the size of it now. But they’re so few. Shouldn’t people who know what they are doing when they vote reject the hired hands of the maintainers of the status quo, if it sucks for most of them?”

A: “Haven’t they done that, with Trump and his ilk? You’re growing cold again.”

B: “They think so, but they’ve been had. Trump considers all the bids and sells himself for the one he likes best. The vehicle is the tenor, as far as he’s concerned. Dollars or doughnuts or digital tokens—he just wants to collect as many of those symbols of power and freedom as he can before he succumbs. That’s the entire purpose of human existence, as far as he’s concerned.”

A: “Is he wrong?”

B: “I think so, yes. Given the brevity of our lives—we’re still entirely mortal primates with odd minds, not consciousnesses uploaded into some silicon sanctuary—don’t you think we should be trying to make life more bearable, more beautiful, better for human beings? Our offspring, should we have them, will have to live with what we leave behind. Should that be a desperate scramble for a shitty job in the hinterlands, for the majority? Should health insurance cost anything at all? Should education? I mean, if you can pay for state of the art killing machines, why you can’t you pay for state of the art healing machines, for anyone who needs them? Bad laws are written by the hired hands of the wealthy. There’s lots of money to be made from the sick, if you’re selling medicine. Even if it doesn’t work well, you’re bound to make a killing.”

A: “Digressions don’t make for good fiction.”

B: “No, but they can make for good dialogue. My point is that he hasn’t got good ideas. He doesn’t seem to understand that he’s collecting the means, without giving any thought to the ends. He’s got a gigantic garage full of driverless vehicles, and wants to go to a hotel, a casino and a golf course. Why not go to a library, or a hospital, or an experimental film, or a dinner with an artist and a philosopher, or a lively lecture? He could learn and become healthier.”

A: “Shouldn’t he be able to go anywhere he pleases?”

B: “Absolutely, but that’s my point. If he had taste, he would go somewhere beautiful, the better to discuss what we mean when we discuss truth or goodness or justice. Have you seen all of the ugly, gold ornaments in his office? He has wealth and power, but no taste.”

A: “So what? He can do what he likes, can’t he? Who are you to say what’s good or true, or tasteful?’

B: “Well, if it’s clear that he can’t tell beauty from ugliness, or truth from falsehood, or a criminal from a saint, why would I give him the power to run the place, insofar as the lawmaker can do so?”

A: “I don’t know. Maybe you like his schtick better than the nonsense the opposition comes up with.”

B: “Maybe. But what if I wanted to give power to someone of better character, with better ideas?”

A: “You could vote for his opponent. Hell, you could run, though I don’t think you’d make much headway.”

B: “I think you’re right. I’m not sure I’d vote for myself. But what if I could write something that changed a few minds, so they’d be less likely to usher in another greedy mountebank with bad ideas to run the show? What if I wrote something that moved people to challenge the status quo in some other way, that might make life more bearable for the many who suffer? What if I could reduce the misery of even one, idle reader out there, in the anonymous dark? Should I worry about my ability to collect vehicles, or concentrate on figuring out where I want to go, and why it might be a good idea to go there?”

A: “You know, one of the most annoying things about dialogues like this is that, at a certain point, the former dissenter sees the light and just says, ‘Quite right!’ “Yes, I see your point exactly!’ Lame. That’s not good dialogue. What if your ideas are just as bad as Trump’s? Shouldn’t you just shut up?”

B: “Yes. But I shouldn’t have to worry too much about being even more miserable than I currently am, simply because I rejected the fashionable nonsense and put a strange idea into a clumsily constructed vehicle to roll toward an obscure, hazardous destination. I’m talking about the freedom to make a fool of myself, when I’m off the clock. It might be good fiction, once in a while. It might reveal some truth. It could even be beautiful, I suppose. It’s just fiction, right?”

A: "Right. So write what you like and let the market decide."

B: "I will, but I'm not in it for money."

A: "Liar!"

B: "Way to shrug off tradition and call me on my bullshit! I'm serious: I'd like to think that someone with good taste and promising ideas might not dismiss my scribbling as worthless. I'd like to think that a turn of phrase, or a scene, or even the whole thing might give someone pleasure just by being itself. I'm not sure beauty should be defined in other terms, as a matter of fact. Ideally, I'd like to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar, while introducing some provocative ideas. But it's an end in itself. I suppose I'm saying that I'd like to make good art before I die, even if I die penniless and crazy."

A: "Good plan."

B: "I've got a lot of time for irony, even of the simplest, most vulgar kind."

A: "Hold it. Doesn't that definition of beauty make it easy to defend Trump's golden Tchotchkes? If they give him pleasure just by being themselves, aren't they beautiful?"

B: "As far as he knows, yes. But I disagree with his aesthetic judgment, because he could have kept a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his office, or a Van Gogh, for that matter. He doesn't get it. There are gold fixtures in his latrines. It's all a patina: a thin skin of illusory beauty over mundane nonsense."

A: "What about people? Aren't they all beautiful in their own ways? Isn't Trump beautiful to some people?"

B: "If they derive disinterested pleasure from him just being himself, I suppose. But he is not just a body. Thought, speech and action reveal his character. Is his character a source of disinterested pleasure? He's a vain, unscrupulous liar who partied with radical evil for years. He fomented insurrection when he lost an election. He cut Medicare to fund a tax cut for his rich friends. He's not beautiful. You can't spray on beauty."

A: "So, what are you working on?"

B: "I'm tempted to write something about a disgruntled student who tries to undermine her former teacher's reputation because he rebuffs an inappropriate overture. Say she finds his work on an obscure web site and decides to disparage it, to compete with it, to humiliate him. I want to conjure a world in which she succeeds, winning accolades in the process. I think he ought to do himself in with some theatrical panache. Then, it ought to come to light that the scorned party used AI to write her stuff, as well as her withering indictment of the poor twit she screwed over."

A: "What's that got to do with truth, or beauty, or goodness?"

B: "Well, it shows that pretty lies are easily mistaken for beautiful truths, and I hope it will also raise some intriguing questions about justice, which shouldn't be confused with revenge."

A: "So, what's justice then?"

B: "Giving each their due, insofar as we're equipped to figure out what that is, I think. It's trendy at the moment to see justice as synonymous with revenge. Just look at Trump again (I know it's annoying to return to him incessantly, but he is the most powerful elected official in the world, after all): he's using all of the resources at his disposal to get even with those who he believes have wronged him, instead of using those resources to make certain that the worker is paid well for her labor, or that the sick get medicine, or that AI won't be used to usher in a nightmarish dystopia. I think there's lots of room to maneuver, there."

A: "Do you think that will get you into trouble?"

B: "I don't know. Stay tuned."