Gary Wolf, author of many fine novels (The Embracer, Workshop of the Second Self, Alternating Worlds, and Shaya), has kindly agreed to answer a few questions about one of his latest creations. Readers of The American Culture weblog will see that Gary expresses in his fiction the concerns we all share about the drift of Western culture into what he so rightly calls “rampant nihilism.”
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Q: What prompted you to write The Kicker of St. John’s Wood?
A. Western civilization is decaying at an alarming rate, buckling under the pressure of political correctness, multiculturalism, affirmative action, declining standards, feminism, Diversity, and other symptoms of rampant nihilism. The arts have become dominated by people who seek to destroy the foundations of our glory. Everywhere one looks—in art, music, literature, theater, cinema—one sees an anti-rational, anti-intellectual perversion of that domain. To add insult to injury, much of it parades itself around as highbrow culture, for example in the exhibitions of contemporary work on display at almost any art museum.
The Kicker of St. John’s Wood, like my other futuristic novels, attempts to come to grips with this situation. It portrays characters who grapple with the decline they see all around them. I take the current reality and extend it further, to demonstrate the end result of political correctness run amok.
The book takes place in the year 2020; the characters are essentially us in ten years (or less). How will we react when multiculturalism threatens to wipe out the very last vestiges of free speech? When feminism succeeds in extinguishing the very last expressions of masculinity and fortitude? When the victim culture and affirmative action demand the end of open elections and the “fair” appointment of candidates? When works of cultural genius are outlawed because they challenge the tenets of “diversity”?
One theme in Kicker that deserves special mention is the scourge of “anti-racism”; i.e., of decrying as “racism” any opinion that runs counter to the PC catechism. This trend in our society is helping to destroy the individual, insisting on subsuming all of us under the rubric of our assigned racial or ethnic labels. It is a form of totalitarianism, of leveling out the society so that we become faceless automatons. The characters in the book are compelled to combat this phenomenon, or face the destruction of their own personalities.
Q: The American Culture weblog concerns itself primarily with issues dealing with America’s way of life. How would you relate The Kicker of St. John’s Wood to the American culture?
A. [See previous item.]
Q: Could you tell us about how you did research for the book?
A. N/A
Q: Do you have any projects in the works that you would like to tell us about?
A. Yes, I am writing a new novel, one that takes place in an imaginary civilization that existed 40,000 years ago. One of the major themes to be explored is the eternal conflict between intellectual life and our yearning to to be part of nature. Or, put differently, between those who believe in rational, advanced human civilization, on the one hand, and the partisans of Rousseau and Al Gore, on the other.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to say that we haven’t already discussed?
A. No, thank you.
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—Mike Gray