chapter seven
Some Conclusions
In some areas of this study only the main outlines have been sketched in. Good books have probably been omitted, particularly in European literatures. Some mediocre ones, especially American novels, have been included. This was done to give some idea of the development of this form in the United States, but with the fervent hope that a gain in historical continuity would not produce too great a loss through exclusion of more quality. But if a few major points have emerged, this study has fulfilled its purpose.
The press has always been acknowledged as a major factor in influencing political opinion. A close look at the phenomenal success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin reveals that the right novel appearing at the critical time can exercise wide and lasting influence. With his freedom to place a quarter of a million words between two covers, the novelist can present more information and achieve more reader involvement than any newspaper using columns of factual accounts, brilliant editorials, and four-color Sunday supplements. The novelist can vie with Gibbon and Macaulay if he chooses, ranging freely from century to century, turning from Caesar to modern man, or from Machiavelli to a politician of the twenty-sixth century. Just as the writer treats the rise and decline of empires, so he portrays the flowering and withering of movement. Evoking the past, the novelist can people it with living beings and bring to life its tensions, its climaxes, its meanings. One can gain some understanding of the factors which make men like one another despite national and cultural factors which differentiate them. Silone’s peasants, like Garland’s farmers, crave enough to keep them sheltered and fed, to give them the feeling that they can work in peace with a feeling of security. One senses differences, however, in political hierarchies. The Prime Ministers of Disraeli and Trollope are masters, but the Presidents of Adams and Ford are badgered servants. There are insights into the small niceties, the little peculiarities that distinguish varying political usages. The American politician’s life is exposed to glaring publicity, but the Englishman is spared unless he is brought to court. In To Be a Pilgrim Tom Wilcher notes that “Gladstone’s missing finger appeared in all caricatures,” but “the newspapers never referred to the continuous drunkenness of Mr. A., a cabinet minister, or to even more scandalous liaisons than Edward’s.”
The novelist is able to hold his subject close or at a distance, and to examine it from any point of the compass. He can slice through the body politic and peel back its layers, stopping to scrutinize the one that interests him. He can follow the early struggles that preceded the English Labourites’ rise to power or trace the collateral decline of the Liberals. Even in his treatment of individuals, he can provide a sense of continuity with men of antiquity by presenting modern Caesars. They may dress differently, talk differently, and get their death wounds with bullets rather than daggers. But they are members of the same tradition, followers of the same principles of political action. Nor is the new man neglected. In a sense, Rubashov, with his gnawing conflicts, is as much a new type as is Gletkin with his mentality which precludes conflict. And, of course, one gets much more than history. Tourgée interlards the Reconstruction story in Bricks Without Straw with analyses of causative factors. In a long passage he elaborates his theory that “the town-meeting—the township system or its equivalent—in the North and South, constituted a difference not less vital and important than that of slavery itself.” Generally the European novelist places more stress upon theory than does the American, but in each literature close examination of causes is hardly ever excluded by concentration upon effects.
The political novel has a well demonstrated vitality as a literary form. The indications are that it will continue to grow. At the same time it will probably display a continuity in the phenomena and ideas it treats. The political novel will continue to chronicle movements. Just as Dostoyevsky and Conrad dealt with Communism’s origins and Koestler and Silone with its schisms and apostates, so other authors will follow its eventual destiny. The minutiae of political experience will provide material just as much as the major facets. One example is the “whitewash,” the investigation which begins with grim determination and implacable intent only to end with confusing or ineffectual conclusions. Such investigations are directed toward election frauds in Phineas Redux, the Great Subfluvial Tunnel Road in Honest John Vane, and oil lease scandals in Revelry. It is also likely that the political novel will treat a wider variety of subjects. Some of the attention which corruption has received, particularly in the American novel, may well be directed toward other aspects of the political process which have so far been explored little or not at all. The love story or love interest will continue to parallel the political story. But there will probably be more novels in which the relationship will be symptomatic of the same drives or needs operative in the political sphere. This is the sort of treatment given the relationship between Hydie and Feyda in The Age of Longing. If one interprets the word “love” loosely, this approach may be seen in the description of Nikolay and Marya in The Possessed. The latter novel and The Conformist will be followed by more novels in which the author concentrates upon intensive psychological studies of individuals representative of particular political mentalities or groups.
The novel set in the future will probably retain the vitality displayed by such books from the time of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) to Orwell’s 1984. It is in this area that science fiction may make a contribution to the political novel. Jules Verne’s novels were science fiction, but in the society in which he wrote, his work was likely to remain fiction for some time. Modern technology makes it possible for the best science fiction to achieve a greater relevance, to present what may shortly be fact. The world of the future in modern novels tends more often to be a hell than a utopia. And the space ships, robots, and other electronic devices emphasize the godless, mechanistic aspect of modern society which writers like Orwell and Koestler see in it. The better writers of science fiction use this technique. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), perhaps the best of these novels, portrays a post-atomic war America two decades hence in which technology has been used to kill freedom and make its subjects love their bondage. Guy Montag’s revolt against his role in this society may not be completely believable, but Bradbury’s three-wall television sets and book-burning fire brigades bring home the horror of a possible totalitarian society of the future with an impact matched only by Orwell’s telescreens and Ministry of Love.
The future should bring more political novels than the past because this age is so permeated with politics. The Napoleonic era and the late nineteenth century may have been just as political in their ways as this one, but with modern mass communication media, more people are now involved in and aware of politics than ever before. And, of course, politics has become more complex, more in need of interpretation than ever before. Only a relatively small number of Disraeli’s and Trollope’s novels concentrate on politics. By contrast, most of the output of Koestler and Silone lies within this field. Each good novelist, no matter what his age, finds the particular subject matter which allows his talents freest range. But his material is life, unless, like James Branch Cabell and others, he creates a reflection of life in a special land of his own which never was in time or space. But as life grows more political the novelist must inevitably reflect this fact, even if only casually.
All this means that the reader who wants to learn about political phenomena from the novel will have a greater mass of material to work with than ever. Overall quality will be at least as good as it has been and probably better as proportionately more good novelists work in this genre. All of the fictional histories, analyses, and interpretations will require the same reader value-judgments as ever. Prejudice will still intrude; partisanship will still distort. But these same judgments are necessary, in a measure, when the reader picks up the book of a historian or a political scientist. And the novelist may use all of the tools in their workrooms while he adds to them his own resources—imagination, dramatic form, and the freedom and scope given him by the versatile art of fiction.