I am Thankful for a Good Dressing Recipe

'Tis time to tickle the titillating turkey! 

[Updated for 2017]

Many of us this week will believe we have little to be thankful for. Things have not gone our way in more than a few ways. That's life, and I'm thankful for life. Others will possibly worry about the truth of the story of the first Thanksgiving. Go with the overall idea, I say, and do not focus on the details. Some of us will simply sit down and lustily dine until their belts burst. Whichever category you fall into, be sure to pick yourself up and find something, anything, for which you are thankful this week. Be thankful I've written this blog, for example. That's the real message of the holiday. (Tip: Invite a political opponent to dinner, then only discuss bunnies.)

For those who may be curious or forgetful, I recommend this source of information about Thanksgiving because practically all of it is wrong, or considered wrong to someone somewhere. Or the official source, Plymouth Plantation, if you care to surround yourself with facts and speculations. They may yet be debated, if you have time after dinner and between the games. (Tip: Discuss bunnies instead.)

I choose to boil it all down from whatever origins are true and run with the general idea of being thankful for what I have and being humble about what good things I may be thankful for in the year to come. You are welcome to do likewise - even though we may acknowledge bad things that have occurred  this year, and some awful events will linger in our memories. Good things surely happened, too. 

Nevertheless, holiday traditions die hard (though the turkeys are fairly easy). From time immemorial, my relations would gather at the grandparents' house bearing much food and together have a grand feast. I recall dinners with a giant turkey at one end of the long table and a giant ham at the other end, and a hundred side dishes and a thousand desserts stacked everywhere. I was a little boy with big eyes; later, I was a starving teenager with a bottomless stomach. I do not recall having many leftovers.

Now, however, I can barely finish a turkey sandwich with a side of dressing. Then my cousins grew up (and I suppose I did, too) and we all had our own families. By then, the grandparents had passed on and Thanksgiving dinners became separate and self-contained. At some point in my own household, it became pointless to go to the trouble of it, even at the risk of having no leftovers. Deli turkey was good enough for a few sandwiches. 

No matter what happens this year, indulge in excessive moderation for at least one day, and may your moderation be indulgent. See you on the other side!

Stephen's Stuffing (or "dressing" to some folks)

Ingredients: a loaf of really cheap bread, a stick of real butter, one medium-length summer sausage, a bag of dried apricots, a bunch of celery, a little jar of sage, a bottle of orange juice, salt & pepper to your taste. (You could substitute cooked/dried cranberries for the apricots, if you wish; in that case, skip the OJ and use cranberry juice.)

Spread the butter over most of the slices of bread. (Tip: kids love to help with this part!) After buttering, tear up the bread into little pieces and put the pieces into a large bowl.

Cut up the sausage; slice then dice. (For a variation, we also used oysters instead of the sausage; works better with cranberries than apricots.) Put the diced sausage in the large bowl that has all the bread pieces. Cut the apricots and celery into little pieces, too, and put those pieces into the large bowl, as well. Shake in a good amount of sage, salt, and pepper. Mix up everything in the large bowl until your arms are tired.

Take the mixture from the bowl and put it into a small pan, something like 8x8 inches will do--or 9x9, 10x10, 12x12, whatever fits the size of your appetite. (I do not recommend stuffing the turkey itself because it is rather gross when you think about it and you don't know for sure what is still inside the turkey.) Then sprinkle some sage on top. Pour some orange juice into the pan; not a lot, but get everything wet. The OJ will make it slightly tart; you can skip the OJ if you want to and it will still be good.

Put the pan with the stuffing/dressing in it into the oven and bake until it starts to smell good, perhaps 30 to 40 minutes at 350*F. I'm going on memory now, so be careful. Putting foil over the top may help it along. It seems to me that we always put it in along with the foil-wrapped potatoes or yams for the same time and temperature, so try that.

Or, you could layer each ingredient in the pan: bread pieces first, then the pieces of sausage, celery, apricot, sage, and repeat. Kids who insist on helping can be put to good use in this procedure. Then, pour the orange juice over the top, let it soak down into the mixture, then bake. 

NOTE: I am not, nor have I ever been, a cook, chef, or baker. However, this recipe is a hybrid of recipes I assisted with in my youth, standing alongside one or the other grandmother, so it checks out. You will not get sick from eating it as long as you cook it thoroughly. Enjoy!

And thanks to all of you for your indulgence, your patience, and your constant attention to whatever the heck I post here, lo these many months!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Protagonist as Social Justice Warrior

This month may be a dangerous time to blog, but I feel I must rev up the blog once more for a new year or it will never get started. However, given the stormy season we have passed through, this blast from the past may be sufficiently mind-boggling as to be entertaining, or worse thought-provoking. In this political season, who are our protagonists?


The following was originally posted on 4 October 2015, edited to update the context.

Do you write what you preach? Are fiction authors supposed to promote their personal values? Or is the story supposed to be a self-contained entity with its own political views and separate from the author's? Must (or should) the author reveal personal positions on every social and political issues undergoing discussion in the public arena? Or is the story just a story and everything political is thrown to the wind for the sake of the story? 

The writer is supposedly imbued with a welter of imagination, able to leap tall plots in a single bound, about to stop dastardly antagonists with bare hands (obviously, on a keyboard). So it should go beyond the "write what you know"--shouldn't it? It is the mark of an author that he/she can make you believe he/she knows what he/she is writing about. 

However, there are plenty of instances where readers get in the way. I mean that in a wholly innocent sense. If writing for a particular category of reader, the writer may shape the story in certain ways to appeal to those readers. Part of that may be, say, to use initials instead of a name or to use a pen name completely to hide the gender of the author. Because a Romance author cannot be a man...in theory. And a hardcore sci-fi author cannot be female...traditionally.
I don't intend to focus on, say, gender issues, but today we seem surrounded by issues of all kinds, political and social, which make me wonder. Do authors include their personal values and views in their fiction writing? For example, if you are opposed to same-sex marriage, do you write stories in which the traditional opposite-sex marriage is the only option? Granted, the world of the story may demand such, but if the author feels strongly about the issue, might there not be some occurrence in the story of a same-sex marriage?

If an author is against guns...would the story be gun-free? If the author believes in a nation having a strong military and the government protecting its citizens by militarizing city police forces, would that idea be reflected in the author's latest book? If the author is a card-carrying conservative opposed to abortion, would the character in the story who gets pregnant have an abortion or, more likely, have the baby and offer it for adoption? It starts to get complicated. Or perhaps it's very easy. Do your characters act as you would act?
I have to say here that the examples in the preceding paragraphs were cherry-picked and do not reflect my own personal positions on those issues--or perhaps they do. You can never know for sure, because we like to keep our beliefs private. Or do we? Plenty of us speak up and speak out on whatever we believe is right or should be right, and we either find those who agree with us speaking with us or those who disagree trying to shout us down. The third column, which I suspect is the largest one, remains mostly silent--or dabbles in subtle sarcasm just to be able to vent something when necessary to maintain personal mental health.

And then there is the marketing question. If an author writes books in which the characters act as he/she would, hold views the author holds, act as the author would act with regard to a whole host of political and social issues, views, and positions, where does that leave the reader? Could that reader like a story enough to buy it and read it even though that reader and the book's author may have different views on, say, immigration reform? Or do we authors censor ourselves so as to be as mild-mannered as possible and not offend anyone who just might be tempted to buy our book? Do we act so as to not alienate half the potential readership, or do we go forth boldly proclaiming where we stand on this or that issue, and hope or expect that we will be praised for our stance(s)? Tough questions--or non-issues?

Perhaps many writers, authors, dabblers in words, whatever the label, just don't care about such matters because just writing an interesting story is hard enough and we don't have time to be concerned about things outside the story. Or are we politely disingenuous, hiding our true nature and our true beliefs and values for the sake of that interesting story, afraid to speak out about something we feel strongly about because we worry about offending fellow authors and potential readers. Compare the statistics of recent voting and decide which half of the book-buying population you will market to.

I don't believe fiction writers, as a clan, deal much with pontification; that is, we do not write a work of fiction solely to push a view of how the world should be. Or do we? Or should we? Or...why shouldn't we? When I've written sci-fi and fantasy, I've invented political systems which run the spectrum from left to right, not as a reflection of my own view of "how things should me" but only for the sake of plausibility in the story and influence on the plot. (One might consider the Sekuatean Empire, for which this blog was originally named, as an example.)

Sure, the literary canon is full of authors who pushed agendas, who wrote dogmatic tales, who gave us strongly-worded suggestions of how we should behave, what we should think, what we should do or stop doing--woven more or less subtly through a fictional narrative that served to entertain us long enough to get the message across. And others wrote to warn us of possible future scenarios we may not wish to experience. The world of literary imagination is both a safe space and a war zone. Reader beware. Or are they simply stories which only in hindsight do we see a message or a warning? And if the warning may be too strong, too upsetting, too triggering, then such a book might be moved into the banned book pile. Fearing the ban, authors may self-censor, keep it clean, water it down, set it all in a land of make-believe where nothing is actually meant to be real or serious, certainly not as a commentary on the present political climate, oh no!

And yet, in this present day world of saying the right thing, being politically correct or decidedly not, what is the author's responsibility...or compulsion? Must a novel follow a political agenda? May a work of fiction illustrate differing views on particular social issues? Should our protagonists be social justice warriors? 

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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How I Lost the Election

About two months ago I declared my candidacy for President of the United States of America and the mainstream media did not notice.

Surprised? 

Well, apparently most people were. I thought I could be the solution. If I offered myself as a write-in candidate, then voters on both sides of the voting booth could have a choice to select which they did not loath. After all, I'm a pretty nice guy most of the time. As proof of that, I regularly post bunnies on Facebook. Those who knew me through social media would attest to my good-naturedness, my clever repartee, and my wholesome disposition. I even had some kind of a platform, which I outlined in a previous blog post. I also had an animal logo that would stand alongside the donkey and the elephant. 

Then the harsh reality set in. First, I learned that not even my own state allowed write-in votes. Other states had similar rules. Right then I knew I could not win but I still hoped to gain some support so I could make a valid run next time. I thought my platform was good, too. Nobody complained. I got several comments of support and none asking questions about details. I knew I would work out the details later, anyway, when I hired top people to think through all the problems and how to solve them. That's how it works; I learned that from the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati.

There were no scandals in my campaign, either. Having no staff and no press corps, I could have done anything, yet I continued my happy-go-lucky, carefree campaign almost exclusively through social media. Wikileaks does not even know my name, it seems. I accepted no donations from big donors; in fact, I had zero donations so I was forced to self-fund. I took out almost seventy-nine dollars from the bank and spent it on coffee and ice cream and hamburgers to keep the campaign going. I gave no speeches and had no rallies. I made no banners or yard signs. I was asked for no interviews and gave no statements to any election board. I did not even make a major magazine cover.

All right, I know I was naive, too innocent for politics, and I started too late in the cycle. Then I kept to myself and just hoped everything would come together and then I would be coronated by the masses. I would awaken on November 9 and be as surprised as everyone else that a simple lad born and raised in Missouri who had so many qualifications [sic] would be invited to direct the activities of a mighty nation. I could do it, too; I would willingly put aside my fiction writing business for a few years. And yet, it didn't happen. Instead, it seems everyone still voted for one of the two they didn't hate--when they could have voted for me. 

Now all there is is gridlock. Half the voters are pleased and half protest. Some cry out that it was all unfair, they didn't get their way. Some shout how they suffered during the past eight years so now others can suffer. Many think the world is about to end while others see the world being saved--both of them, of course, electing only a president, the leader of one of around 182 nations on this planet. Granted, it's a big-talking nation with wide reach and a bottomless belly, but hey...I could've done it. I would be a unifier. I would have brought people together, all the cat folks and all the dog folks. After all, that is what I did on Facebook. And, as we all know, what happens on Facebook...well, let's leave it at that. No reason to express an opinion that would only incite a response from...well, someone...anyone...please?

I hope for better luck next time. Can I count on your vote?

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(C) Copyright 2010-2016 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How would your Protagonist Vote?

If I had avoided social media and television, I would not know what has happened with regard to the presidential campaign during the past week. But I'm naturally curious. I feel the anguish each side has and understand their derision for the other side. I even feel a little pity for the third sides of this two-dimensional juggernaut overrunning us. 

I've even suggested that friends write in my name on election day. After all, I have paid taxes since my first job at Taco Bell and I have never deleted any emails. I've always spoken well of other people and seldom even go into locker rooms. At this point I'm not sure what my platform would be but I know it will be made of wood - good ol' American timber, of course. Mostly I just want everyone to get along, treat each other kindly, and work together for the common good. (More on my non-candidacy next time.)

About a year ago I posted the following because at the time such issues as same-sex marriage and gun laws were in hot debate. It caused me to wonder how much authors consider political and social viewpoints for the characters they write. Does the character need to have a certain view to act a certain way? Or does the character act according to the author's political and social views?

See what you think....

From 4 October 2015

Do you write what you preach? Are fiction authors supposed to promote their personal values? Or is the story a self-contained entity with its own political views? Must or should the author reveal personal positions on every social and political issues undergoing discussion in the public arena? Or is the story just a story and everything political is throw to the wind for the sake of the story? 

(Apologies for using a white, male, middle-class image.)

Once upon a time, a writer wrote a book. In this case, the writer is a "he" and the story involves a "she" as the main character. What could go wrong? one might ask. Many male authors have written female protagonists, and certainly many female authors have written male protagonists. Still, perceptions exist. "Write what you know" is an old axiom, and yet if that were to be followed religiously, a writer would only be allowed to write his (or "his or her") autobiography.

Conversely, the writer is supposedly imbued with a welter of imagination, able to leap tall plots in a single bound, about to stop dastardly antagonists with bare hands (obviously, on a keyboard). So it should go beyond the "write what you know" - shouldn't it? It is the mark of an author that he/she can make you believe he/she knows what he/she is writing about. So, if we allow for rule number 3, then anything goes. 

However, there are plenty of instances where readers get in the way. I mean that is a wholly innocent sense. If writing for a particular category of reader, the writer may shape the story to appeal to that reader, for example, in genre-driven stories. Part of that may be, say, for the author to use initials instead of a name or to use a pen name to hide the gender of the author. Because a Romance author cannot be a man...in theory. And a hardcore sci-fi author cannot be female...traditionally.

I don't intend to focus on, say, gender issues, but today we seem surrounded by issues of all kinds, political and social, which make me wonder. Do authors include their personal values and views in their fiction writing? For example, if you are opposed to same-sex marriage, do you write stories in which the traditional opposite-sex marriage is the only option? Granted, the world of the story may demand such, but if the author feels strongly about the issue, might there not be some occurrence in the story of a same-sex marriage?

If an author is against, say, guns...would the story be gun-free? If the author believes in a nation having a strong military and the government protecting its citizens by militarizing city police forces, would that idea be reflected in the author's latest book? If the author is a card-carrying conservative opposed to abortion, would the character in the story who gets pregnant have an abortion or, more likely, have the baby and offer it for adoption? Or keep the baby? It starts to get complicated. Or perhaps it's very easy. Do your characters act as you would act? And if they do, is that realistic for the character?

I have to say here that the examples in the preceding paragraphs were cherry-picked and do not reflect my own personal positions on those issues - or perhaps they do. You can never know for sure - because some of us like to keep our beliefs private. Or do we? Plenty of us speak up and speak out on whatever we believe is right or should be right, and we either find those who agree speaking with us or those who disagree trying to shout us down. The third column, which I suspect is the largest one, remains mostly silent - or dabbles in subtle sarcasm just to be able to vent when necessary to maintain personal mental health. 

And then there is the marketing question. If an author writes books in which the characters act as he/she would, espouse views the author would espouse, act as the author would act with regard to a whole host of political and social issues, views, and positions, where does that leave the reader? Could that reader like a story enough to buy it even though the reader and the author may have different views on, say, immigration reform? Or do we authors censor ourselves so as to be as mild-mannered as possible and not offend anyone who just might be tempted to buy our book? Tough questions--or non-issues?

Perhaps many writers, authors, dabblers in words, whatever the label, just don't care about such matters because just writing an interesting story is hard enough and we don't have time to be concerned about things outside the story. Or are we politely disingenuous, hiding our true nature and our true beliefs and values for the sake of that interesting story, afraid to speak out about something we feel strongly about because we worry about offending fellow authors and potential readers. 

Fiction writers, as a clan, do not generally deal with pontification; we do not write a work of fiction solely to push our view of how the world should be. Or do we? Or should we? Or...why shouldn't we?

Sure, the literary canon is full of writers who pushed agendas, who wrote dogmatic tales, who left strongly-worded suggestions of how we should behave, what we should think, what we should do or stop doing--woven more or less subtly through a fictional narrative that served to entertain us long enough to get the message across. Or were they simply good stories which only in hindsight do we see a message or a warning? 

And yet, in this present-day world of saying the right things, being politically correct or decidedly not, what is the author's responsibility... or compulsion?

UPDATE: My latest work, an epic fantasy, started off innocently enough but then gradually began to delve into the relationships in society between men and women. I bent over backwards to not take sides or seem to give weight to one view over another. In the story, different cities our hero visits have different customs, not all of them agreeable to our hero or to me, the author, were I to visit. So, even though it was supposed to be just a fun fantasy to pass the time, it turned out to have quite a bit of politics and social issues covered in it. Apologies in advance; my only goal was - as it always is in everything I write - to tell an interesting story.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2016 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

To Write PC or Not to Write PC?

Do you write what you preach? Are fiction authors supposed to promote their personal values? Or is the story a self-contained entity with its own political views? Must or should the author reveal personal positions on every social and political issues undergoing discussion in the public arena? Or is the story just a story and everything political is throw to the wind for the sake of the story? 

(Apologies for using a white, male, middle-class, heterosexual image.)

Once upon a time, a writer wrote a book. In this case, the writer is a "he" and the story involves a "she" as the main character. What could go wrong? one might ask. Many male authors have written female protagonists, and certainly many female authors have written male protagonists. Still, perceptions exist. "Write what you know" is an old axiom, and yet if that were to be followed religiously, a writer would only be allowed to write his (or "his or her") autobiography.

Conversely, the writer is supposedly imbued with a welter of imagination, able to leap tall plots in a single bound, about to stop dastardly antagonists with bare hands (obviously, on a keyboard). So it should go beyond the "write what you know"--shouldn't it? It is the mark of an author that he/she can make you believe he/she knows what he/she is writing about. So, if we allow for rule number 3, then anything goes. 

However, there are plenty of instances where readers get in the way. I mean that is a wholly innocent sense. If writing for a particular class of reader, the writer may shape the story in a certain way to appeal to that reader, say in genre-driven stories. Part of that may be, say, to use initials instead of a name or to use a pen name complete;y to hide the gender of the author. Because a Romance author cannot be a man...in theory. And a hardcore sci-fi author cannot be female...traditionally.

I don't intend to focus on, say, gender issues, but today we seem surrounded by issues of all kinds, political and social, which make me wonder. Do authors include their personal values and views in their fiction writing? For example, if you are opposed to same-sex marriage, do you write stories in which the traditional opposite-sex marriage is the only option? Granted, the world of the story may demand such, but if the author feels strongly about the issue, might there not be some occurrence in the story of a same-sex marriage?

If an author is against, say, guns...would the story be gun-free? If the author believes in a nation having a strong military and the government protecting its citizens by militarizing city police forces, would that idea be reflected in the author's latest book? If the author is a card-carrying conservative opposed to abortion, would the character in the story who gets pregnant have an abortion or, more likely, have the baby and offer it for adoption? It starts to get complicated. Or perhaps it's very easy. Do your characters act as you would act?

I have to say here that the examples in the preceding paragraphs were cherry-picked and do not reflect my own personal positions on those issues--or perhaps they do. You can never know for sure, because we like to keep our beliefs private. Or do we? Plenty of us speak up and speak out on whatever we believe is right or should be right, and we either find those who agree speaking with us or those who disagree trying to shout us down. The third column, which I suspect is the largest one, remains mostly silent--or dabbles in subtle sarcasm just to be able to vent when necessary to maintain personal mental health. 

And then there is the marketing question. If an author writes books in which the characters act as he/she would, espouse views the author would espouse, act as the author would act with regard to a whole host of political and social issues, views, and positions, where does that leave the reader? Could that reader like a story enough to buy it even though the reader and the author may have different views on, say, immigration reform? Or do we authors censor ourselves so as to be as mild-mannered as possible and not offend anyone who just might be tempted to buy our book? Tough questions--or non-issues?

Perhaps many writers, authors, dabblers in words, whatever the label, just don't care about such matters because just writing an interesting story is hard enough and we don't have time to be concerned about things outside the story. Or are we politely disingenuous, hiding our true nature and our true beliefs and values for the sake of that interesting story, afraid to speak out about something we feel strongly about because we worry about offending fellow authors and potential readers. 

Fiction writers, as a clan, do not generally deal with pontification; we do not write a work of fiction solely to push our view of how the world should be. Or do we? Or should we? Or...why shouldn't we?

In my latest novel, still in the final tweaking stage, my protagonist uses guns. She hunts for food. Later she is a soldier. (You may notice the pronoun "she"--which may imply to some that I have a second strike against me in that a male writer shouldn't write about a female protagonist.) Two valid uses of guns. However, the recent (yet again!) mass shooting on a school campus brings the issue of guns to the forefront once again. I almost feel the need to apply a "trigger warning" to a book where there is (or may be) the shooting of a gun. Is that where we are heading as writers? 

I am quite aware of the three strikes already against me as I step up to the plate with my book in my hands, ready to swing at an outfield full of readers (personally, I am opposed to sports metaphors being used in subjects unrelated to sports, but I do so here strictly for the potential humor): 1) I'm a male writer with a female protagonist; 2) I'm not the same ethnicity/race as my protagonist; 3) I grew up in a city with two married parents and I'm writing about an orphan in a small village. 

But let me plunk down that huge weight on the other side of the scale: imagination, research, and a beta reader who is female, the same ethnicity as my protagonist, and an orphan from a small village. I hope I got the story right--and by "right" I mean authentic, no matter what social and political issues are swirling around the social media forums and bookstores of this world as I write it and offer it to readers.


Sure, the literary canon is full of writers who pushed agendas, who wrote dogmatic tales, who left strongly-worded suggestions of how we should behave, what we should think, what we should do or stop doing--woven more or less subtly through a fictional narrative that served to entertain us long enough to get the message across. Or were they simply good stories which only in hindsight do we see a message or a warning? 

And yet, in this present day world of saying the right thing, being politically correct or decidedly not, what is the author's responsibility...or compulsion?



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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Is there a Message in this Novel?

[NOTE: Last time, I shared a report about my brief visit to Seoul, South Korea while I lived in Japan, working as an English teacher. The experience happened more than 20 years ago and when giving it the once-over of revision before posting it, I realized how dated it was. It also may have had a tinge of "cultural imperialism"--although I tried to express positive things about the culture I was experiencing along with what my negative impressions were. I hope I did not offend anyone, especially anyone from Korea or of Korean heritage. My subsequent visits to Korea were quite different and very positive.]

That brings me to the issue of the day: Politics, Social mores, Cultural memes. I might as well throw in mention of all the chaos happening around the world today. Well, for most of this year. Online, friends and colleagues (not necessarily the same) are quick to state or "restate/reblog/share" political and social views. Others are quite quick to respond either superficially (I tend toward a quick sarcastic bit) or, occasionally, with well-considered, even researched, responses that invite further thought regardless of the position of a reader.


I've never been what I would call a politically-minded person. Mostly that comes from my uncertainty of knowing everything I would need to know to make a valid decision on some issue. Also, being someone who purports to teach Argument, I try to present all sides equally, if only to provoke students to seeing sides they had not considered. As a novel writer I also live in a schizophrenic world of multiple characters, each with their own views, positions, and agendas. It can be quite maddening--which is partly why I blog (insert "LOL"). But in light of writing a fictional work supposedly full of realistic personas, we have to accept that, though invented, they must also come with political positions and social agendas.

And so, what do we make of fiction where the characters bring their own politics? Many writers use their characters to present or promote certain ideas. Nothing wrong with that; ideas should be presented. Of course, creative writing teachers preach that there should be no preaching in a story or novel. I say, preaching cannot be excluded if it comes in the form of a character's pontificating. A fine line, yes, but if a character is that type of person, the author must let the character speak freely. And that, friends, brings us to moralizing.

Sorry to say, but I've been thinking about my latest novel, A DRY PATCH of SKIN, and the "moralizing" that comes through in the protagonist's voice. His ideas and the way he speaks of them is steeped in the Western tradition, certainly. In fact, the Judeo-Christian influence on Western Civilization is embedded in the narrative. At first Stefan Szekely refers to "the gods" as though it was an everyday meme. Gradually he switches to "God"--the one and only. Still later, he is directly arguing with God, who he believes has cursed him and his family line. He soon is making deals with God--whether God is in the sky above him or merely in his head, he believes.

By the end this novel may seem like a Christian allegory, but it was never intended to be that. Rather, it is Stefan, the hero, Byronic as he may be, who comes to believe the illusions he has convinced himself are true. He never insists others believe as he does, never chastises others for not believing as he does, and in the end, what is real and what is in his mind are only known to him--and to his confused author.

So is that what I believe? Hard to say. I was drilled with the Bible and those Judeo-Christian beliefs, and schooled in their influence on Western Civilization. I think we have to accept our Western Civilization, for better or worse, as a product of that religious entrenchment--even as I have explored around its edges and found both positive and negative things as alternatives to that religious dogma. It is in my background, my upbringing, my family history, but I like to think I am above all of that "indoctrination." And yet, when inventing characters, I fall back on what I have learned or been exposed to and apply it to a character or two, just to make them more real, more believable.

So what do I believe? As a writer, I have thought long and hard about many, many issues over the years. It's difficult to find the one perfect mantra that will enable everything else in my life to swirl around me in perfect order. Also as a writer, I seem to have fallen back, in these older years of mine, onto author and critic John Gardner's idea in On Moral Fiction: the position that "moral" in fiction is a turn toward life and life-affirming narratives (“True art is moral. We recognize true art by its careful, thoroughly honest search for an analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force, it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach. It clarifies like an experiment in a chemistry lab, and confirms.”). 

Postmodernism, however, has flipped that around so we get so many stories of death and destruction, fragmentation and dissolution, fear and loathing, and more tragedy than "life-affirming" conclusions. Seemingly for the sake of disrupting the psyche. Or it's all for the sake of the drama. 

Perhaps, I'm the one who's off balance. I grew up with one foot on each side of the great divide, so I see the Utopian stories of my youth and today's Dystopian stories. I believe that a tragic ending can still show us a better way, a "moral" view of the human condition. I also believe that, regardless of one's personal religious, spiritual, political, or social positions, views, beliefs, agendas, everyone wants to live, be happy, be free to pursue happiness, and, at the same time, not fear any harm to self, family, or others of one's community. Or perhaps my neighbor said it best: "I just wanna play WOW* all day and not be f***ed with!"

Perhaps that is simple enough without getting all moralizing and stuff.

For a fun exercise in fictional moralizing, I recommend THE DREAM LAND Trilogy, set in part on another world and, as such, includes alternate religious beliefs, deities, and doctrines--all of which directly impact why and how the people there do what they do. In the third volume, such religiosity serious compromises the population's attempts to evacuate the planet in advance of a lethal comet strike.

Enjoy your week, and many happy weekends to you!


(*World of Warcraft, a computer game in which players take on military roles and seek to kill the enemy.)


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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.