Devaluing Escapism

I love escapism in fiction books.

Escapism says, look, there are some big problems out there but I’m going to chill with this here book. During the height of the pandemic, I imagine millions of folks who were stuck in their homes and had watched everything on their streaming apps, turned to books. By the stats, I’d say we turned to romance novels, thrillers, and mysteries. Or folks went hard into nonfiction to escape while in their own home.

And that is escapism. It makes sense. Most folks understand it.

Here’s what statistics don’t talk about. Many authors (not all), who, while they appreciated escapist sentimentality, when the time came to write during, say, the height of the pandemic, they felt their writing was pointless. Because it was escapist.

Why do a faery retelling when hospitals are being overrun with Covid patients? Why focus on a mysterious world through a secret door when stores were shuttering, when bookstores’ supply chains were compromised? Why waste the time? In addition, a certain portion of us didn’t think books would be back. We thought bookstores were done or would be soon. We thought people would be on the streets. Some of us were thinking, deep down, that a revolution would break out, in some form or fashion.

Were we really thinking about the need for escapism in fiction books at that time? Maybe.

Probably not.

So, as pandemonium broke out in the streets across the country, as hospitals filled with patients, I pondered the role of fiction, or what I thought about the role of fiction books. Because fiction is based on what the author observes through their filter, it needs to remain based on what is understood, escapist or not; we write about what we think, not about what we don’t think.

In other words, as authors we don’t escape. We understand situations in a variety of ways and we make our understandings available to readers. We can go back to our faery retelling with perhaps another level of emotion. Maybe it’s darker, but it can also be filled with joy, because that’s how we set up the arc. We’re writers, we have the power to do these things. We can write a literature piece based on Covid and mention it by name if we tell success stories. No guarantee, but it's possible, if not needed.

We can tell stories of how folks overcame after a school shooting. Or we can tell the story of how folks had a hard time afterwards. We tell stories of folks surviving cancer despite so many dying of cancer. We tell stories of war, for escape, despite the current one breaking out, despite there always being some kind of military-action happening. We tell stories of the worst bullying happening in schools, despite consistent school shootings for decades. As much as we love thrillers, so many of them are about taking over and destroying our own government. Are we really escaping or is it emotionally understood so we can write about it?

Well, what if we’re not ready to talk about it? Why would we write about negative things when we, as authors, aren’t ready? Here’s why. Some people feel pretty damned alone and just talking about it from outside of themselves is cathartic. So, we don’t need to be ready; we need to be present and honest, yes, even in fiction.

I’ll get personal. When there are issues, social, political, or personal, I want solutions, not escape. It is not that I crave discussion. It’s that I have a rough time distracting myself when a situation is important to me. In that sense, it’s like when you eat a salty snack. You just keep popping them in your mouth, and it’s not because you’re hungry. It’s like the last catchy song you heard. You don’t necessarily like it, but you sing it because it’s there for you. For me, someone saying something on a rough subject or situation I’m pondering, it’s what I need. I want the language of understanding, not the language of placation and avoidance. In other words, come at me, bro. Don’t smile when it’s not time to smile.

That’s just me, but I know I’m not the only one.

To recap, you can use emotion from whatever is around you in whatever you’re writing and even folks who are trying to escape will be better off. It’s my opinion that readers aren’t escaping emotions, they’re escaping situations. In that sense, we’re here to go deeper, yes, even with comedy, but we don’t need to throw an issue of discourse in a readers face because it’s timely. But we do need to write from a place of understanding.

And for those of you who are thinking of doing something like, Seinfeld, a novel about nothing, I dare you to go back and rewatch that show. It’s not about nothing emotional or political. Don’t lie to yourself.