Literary Fiction's 'Uptown Problem' Problem
A call for highbrow novels that get their hands dirty
A friend of mine used to remark that the things I complained about were “uptown problems.” After two suicide attempts, he took a broader view than most. So, while sympathetic to my concerns, he occasionally reminded me that my life—both of our lives—were basically fine.
We had good jobs and roofs over our heads. Our kids were healthy, as were we. We moved in circles of high-functioning white-collar professionals. Almost everyone we knew had good health insurance and working cars, existing in a golden circle in which real crises were few and far between.
Did we still have personal problems? Yes, we did. But they were the problems of smart, capable people who paid their bills, fed their kids vegetables, and pampered their dogs. Uptown problems.
It seems to me that writers and readers of literary fiction exist in a similar world, for the most part. And maybe, before 2020, that was fine. Back in those innocent days, I was happy to curl up with a well-written novel about the personal challenges of middle- or upper-middle-class characters who lived, as I did, in the present age. Perhaps they fell into an extramarital affair or were struggling to achieve “work-life balance.” Perhaps they argued with their siblings or distrusted their close friends. Perhaps they stumbled on an old diary, revealing a dark secret . . .
But now, new novels of this sort bore and annoy me. Did no one else live through the last four years? Remember how society went batshit crazy in one grand, exquisitely orchestrated meltdown? And remember how it’s still kind of going on?
I’m not sure our literary writers are processing all this. After a nerve-jangling era, they give the impression of returning to form. And that is writing nice, safe novels about sensitive people whose personal problems require lengthy and subtle elucidation.
In this fugue of amnesiac normalcy, such writers are far from alone. Starting in 2022, a sort of fainting couch mentality came into vogue among the laptop class, and it concerns “the news.” It’s not uncommon to hear shudders at the mere mention of that phrase: “the news.”
“Oh, I never look at the news!”
“I stopped following the news years ago.”
“I can’t even, with the news.”
“Ignoring the news is self-care.”
“I find I’m more at peace when I don’t read the news.”
“The news is way too upsetting/stressful/depressing. I never look at it, and I’ve never been happier!”
That is all well and good, I guess. But should our “serious” writers take to their fainting couches, also?
Because it’s starting to seem like that’s what they’re doing. No one wants to deal with “the news.” It’s all so vulgar, so low-class, to even care about “the news”!
Today’s literary writers tend to be a certain kind of person (and, being one of them, I have nothing against it): a highly-educated, conscientious rule-follower who moves responsibly through life, avoiding the gutter and jail. It’s not a very edgy group, as artists go, but we are good citizens and decent parents. We hit our marks and don’t make trouble. We just enjoy expressing ourselves in prose, mostly about the uptown problems we know well, and are happy to leave unpleasant, scary topics—like “the news”—to other people.
But, what if there are no other people—i.e., contemporary literary writers?
A few months ago, after she’d been writing for six decades, I began reading the novels of Joyce Carol Oates. Even if her style isn’t to your taste—and she has various styles, some of which I love—she is a wonderful novelist in that she leans into American culture in every era. Far from shunning them from on high, she’s interested in current events. Oates hails from a rural blue-collar background where violence was commonplace (though not in her own household), and an ambient darkness was perceptible to a sensitive child. She was the first person in her family to go to college, and she had scant familiarity with uptown problems. But, as it turned out, she had brilliant insight into real problems. As a famous and iconic novelist, she deigns to read “the news.”
(What Oates’ particular “takes” are on the news, it hardly matters. She’s being a freaking writer, writing about the historic period in which God, in his alacrity, has placed her. Her views and takes are on the record, as filtered through complex fictional narratives. She’s not whispering them to a close friend over tea.)
Of course, plenty of brilliant writers could never be bothered with “the news.” Just to name two of my favorites who come to mind, Iris Murdoch and John Cheever concerned themselves entirely with uptown problems (and, in Murdoch, their philosophical implications), and they are glorious, rewarding writers.
But they’re not quite on point in 2024. Because, increasingly, even the well-to-do have serious problems. If they have children, the wolf of serious problems is at the door. Everyone knows it, even if they avoid “the news.” Where are the novels about the post-2020 lives of parents, the ones whose 17-year-old son took a pill from a friend and died of fentanyl poisoning in his bed? The one whose daughter is a cutter? The one whose twelve-year-old is addicted to pornography? The one whose nine-old-year suffers from crippling anxiety and cannot attend school? These are fairly common scenarios, yet not a word of them is ever breathed in literary fiction. How about the parents who discover their daughter, an accomplished and athletic college sophomore, is on OnlyFans? That seems like it might be an interesting novel.
Nope! Tacky! We must have none of that. The only things literary novels can talk about are racism and climate change. And interpersonal problems. Three whole things!
Because we wouldn’t want to get into “the news.” We’re literary novelists, not TikTok influencers!
Sigh.
As for me, in 2024, I’m going to write the kind of novel I would like to read.
thought #1: actually it seems like TikTok influencers are among the best-promoted and most-read "literary" novelists. The socmedization of poetry has left it a shriveled sugared apricot of inspo-posts with gratuitous line breaks, and I can't *wait* to see what fiction will look like after five years of the same treatment.
thought #2: if it doesn't touch upon the preoccupations and nod to the values of affluent people from Los Angeles or New York (and hasn't been written by someone who either blogs/influences from a coastal metropolis or has been appropriately shaped up and vouched for by an MFA program), the arbiters of literary publishing aren't interested. there's been a perverse feedback loop at play in American publishing for a long time now, and it's not going to be broken anytime soon.
I think the main issue is that "society novels" as I call them are mixed into the 'literature' section when they're every bit as much a genre, with dependable tropes, conventions, forms, characters, and guard-rails, as any other fiction genre such as sci fi, horror, action adventure, romance, mystery, etc. It's an understandable genre with an understandable audience. Just like genre it can be about real world events and issues but mostly as springboard for the expected, the familiar, the comfortable. A way of binding the chaotic world into a safe drama sandpit that can be resolved in familiar ways; in short: escapism. Totally fine, but not for me. I don't expect the writers of this genre to be particularly attentive to things I find important, so it's fine if they tune out.