This project began with frustration. I was angry. I was angry about the way we were talking to each other. But not in the cliche, “Don’t talk about politics during Thanksgiving” type of way. We were past that. Politics were at the dinner table: buried in Grandma’s creamed corn and waiting to boil out of the bubbling homemade cranberry sauce. Your first cousin doesn’t have to bring his MAGA hat to the dinner table for the tension in the room to be tangible. It seemed that everyone wanted to offer their expert, or more often non-expert, opinion about how to handle this sticky situation: engage, don’t engage; educate - but don’t get preachy; no name calling! Okay, sounds like he deserved it.

 

A masterclass could be taught drawing upon using only the writing dedicated to navigating the polarized political landscape. To me it seemed like these conversations - the times I engaged with politically opposite family members, and the times I buried my head in the proverbial sand, or feces, which is closer to what it felt like - didn’t feel productive. Why does it feel like we have all been eternally damned to a life of slip-sliding around the topics that cause friction between ourselves and those we have been genetically cuffed or otherwise bound to? 

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In my frustration, I found myself frantically scribbling thoughts onto a scratch sheet of paper, compiling an incoherent Op-Ed that, in the moment, felt Bruni-esque. In retrospect, it was grotesque. 

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I brainstormed project ideas that could gnaw at this frustration: a podcast, a series of essays, maybe some journalistic endeavor. In my haze I proposed the idea of an interview driven podcast where I would ask guests to lay out their political leanings and we would, I don’t know, discuss them? The power dynamics inherent in my position as the host of this fictional podcast, the public nature of it, and the fact that I wanted to interview my family members (yikes!) as well as my college friends was a recipe for antagonism and little productivity. We get it: we are living in an increasingly polarized time. The world didn’t need another person to point it out in a manufactured conversation. That had been done, a million times. The horse was long dead. 

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I haven’t been a fiction writer since elementary school, when my career peaked and I decided to get out while I was ahead. Kidding. In reality, I used to feel the urge to pick up a pen and create a world that I was in control of. That urge diminished the same year TiK ToK by Ke$ha came out. I doubt this was just a coincidence. 

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I stopped reading fiction for a long time, convincing myself that I was only into nonfiction. I couldn’t justify reading something that wasn’t immediately useful. More pointedly, I just didn’t want to.

 

I fell back in love with fiction only recently, and I found the work of George Saunders even more recently. I read Lincoln in the Bardo, and decided a more genius work of literature had never been created. Saunders brings to life the ghost of Abraham Lincoln - as well as an eccentric cast of characters whose stories are given even more weight than the deceased president. In Lincoln, ghosts in the graveyard are able to physically enter each other’s bodies and minds: it is empathy personified.

 

I’ve come to realize that above all, I am drawn to Saunders for his capacity for empathy. He is a humanist. He believes in the good intentions of people, while making fun of the institutions that often corrupt us. While these institutions are human made, they are not what define us. They are manmade, and maybe one day, they can be unmade. 

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In a time where facts are up for debate and the truth is not a clear-cut concept, we all still share one universal language: feeling. Few art forms convey feeling as well as fiction writing. One of the main reasons that I know that other people have felt the way that I feel is because I can read a story and have a sentiment articulated better than I could have conveyed it myself. If I can’t speak to a family member about current events, maybe I can speak to them about George. Or maybe I can just retreat into the worlds that George creates for us. 

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In the beginning, I felt as though turning away from reality was a cop out. I was retreating into fiction to avoid facing the gut-wrenching reality of the world as we know it. I’ve come to realize that turning to fiction was not a cop-out: it was far from it, in fact. With an intensity unbeknownst to other activities, reading and writing allow us to tap into each other’s shared humanity. This has never felt more important. 

 

Now more than ever, laughter feels vital. As does criticism. I keep returning to George’s words in the letter he wrote to his students:

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"There’s still work to be done, and now more than ever." 

 

Damn right there is.

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