A sneak peek from The Creative Hour podcast, we hear from Madeline Ffitch (author of STAY AND FIGHT) about exploring radical politics in our fiction and rejecting both the “american project” and the “american novel”.
This is a clip from an episode of The Creative Hour podcast that Madeline Ffitch is featured in. Available on all podcast platforms.
TRANSCRIPTION
Prince Shakur: One big thing I wanted to unpack and it's something that you mentioned the process of seeing the book be out in the world and seeing reviews. And it's something that I really held on to and I brought it into how I wrote my memoir and how I wanted to think about it being in the world. But I remember when you were talking about the reviews, you express, I believe some frustrations about reviewers saying or calling it an “American novel or novel about the American family”, and how that was like a big frustration to you. So one, I want to ask you to unpack that.
Madeline Ffitch: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, several things. Thanks for asking about that.
Yeah, I mean, for one thing, I'm a writer,.I'm a storyteller. A part of that responsibility is to really get at the realness of things, to really imagine. Grace Paley says, “We need to imagine the real.” So you know, America isn't real. It’s a shorthand for something. I mean, just literally, I'm not trying to make a political statement here. I just like that's it. That's something we invented. But it's not my, that's not my creative obligation is to tell a story that's about that invention, right?
And so, I mean, I am telling a story that's about that invention. But it's not my project. And it's not my obligation to kind of enter into that shorthand with everybody else.
I think something that's happening is right now, culturally, is that there's a huge amount of anxiety about “the American project”, and especially amongst progressives, who I have more in common with… I do not consider myself to be a blue or a red person. And I don't believe that electoral politics can save us, but I definitely don't have anything in common with right-wing politics or anything resembling fascism.
So I'll just say that I think most of the people who are talking about this are even interested in the book and who are saying they're saying it in a complimentary way. And I think it speaks to the anxieties that progressives have right now that the American project is being lost or being claimed by the right. So they want to say this is not American, they want to say that the values that the right-wing is saying are American, they want to say those are not American.
And then they want to claim pluralistic values, values of diversity, tenacity, perseverance, independence; those things are American values to them. That's why they're saying that… Those of us who are hoping our, our stories can be irreducible, are… So once our stories are public, our job is to make is to render the human experience irreducible and once those stories are public, they're up for being claimed by what I would consider to be people who are thinking of things in a slightly more dull or polarized way, right?
To be generous and not to be a brat about it, I understand that people assign commonality or affinity to something that they like, even if they don't, I mean, I have that all the time. People have a right people to say,, “Oh, that reminds me so much of myself, or of this thing that I do.”
It's just a way of appreciating and liking something. Really what you're doing is nothing like what they're doing what they think. So I just, you know, I try to take it in good grace. Like, I think that that's what they're why they're calling it American. But I'm not here to support the project of America because I, it's the invention and the project of America, to me, is completely inextricably linked with genocide and usurping land theft and erasing the reality of Turtle Island. So that's not what I'm doing. I'm not trying to prop up the American project and I'm also not writing in response to right-wing bullshit. I don't write in a reactive way, that way.
I try to imagine that there are not.. In my mind, when I talk about conflict being about non-disposability and working through grave conflicts with people we disagree with. I don't mean the sort of like Liberal Democrat thing of, “We should reach out to the other side.’ Because I don't really know what they mean. I think what they mean by “the other side”. Are people who like don't wear masks at the grocery store? And I don't necessarily think that’s “the other side”.
I just think that there are so many sides and there are assholes everywhere. And there's motherfuckers, who need to be told and published. So I'm not talking about, compromise and making nice. I'm talking about being brave enough to actually have real conflicts and respect the people that you are around or live near or disagree with enough to be totally upfront about those disagreements. And that being in intense discomfort or pain with your neighbors is quite different than sending people to prison and getting the third party, the police, involved. It's sort of like outsourcing conflict.
So I'm more talking about being bold enough to actually have these conflicts. And also, I'm never talking about there being a two-sided thing where the blue or the reaching out to the red, I'm imagining, I'm trying to imagine a world where our disagreements are much more varied and odd and fundamental and unpredictable. And so are our affinities.
Madeline Ffitch on Rejecting the American Project and the "American Novel"