Political correctness in fiction

Last weekend I also caught quite an interesting article in The Australian. Lionel Shriver (author of We Need to talk About Kevin) wrote on some of the feedback she had received about the attitudes and behaviour of characters in her novels. Given the social-political climate she wondered if authors would soon be charged because of the views of their characters.

It was quite interesting reading some people’s responses to her characters, asking why the mother in We Need to talk About Kevin was Armenian; and didn’t attend P&C meetings. She was waiting for the day her narrator would be arrested. 

As it seems there is often an enforced silence about issues (note the fuss with Martin Sheen and the Dixie Chicks, when they spoke out about the war with Iraq). It does seem to me that we should fight for the right of novelists (and other artists) to write freely. Shriver commented that writing a novel allowed her more freedom to deal with issues. 

I might leave the last word for Shriver: 

My characters are full of prejudices. My characters may not like Chinese people. My characters may believe that homosexuality is unnatural. My characters may slander Islam, or belief in crystals, or my father's Presbyterianism. My characters murder schoolchildren, plot to massacre two billion people overnight and hit their husbands over the head. My characters are obnoxious, spiteful, seething, difficult, resentful and inconsistent; and no, my characters will not always take their six-year-old kids to therapists to get help. My characters think abominations. In other words, my characters are the closest approximations I can contrive of real people.