Most often the authors deal with their own countries, although they sometimes write about a foreign land. Some of them are hard to pigeonhole: Henry James, an American expatriate writing about London terrorists in The Princess Casamassima; Joseph Conrad, an Anglicized Pole analyzing Russian revolutionaries in Under Western Eyes; Arthur Koestler, an Austrian-educated Hungarian living in France, describing the Moscow trials in Darkness at Noon. This is one reason why it is more fruitful for present purposes to avoid strict concentration on national literatures and to accept valid insights into national characteristics and behavior patterns no matter what the language of their source.
Characteristics of the Political Novel
In The Charterhouse of Parma the witty and urbane Stendhal says, “Politics in a work of literature are like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, something loud and vulgar yet a thing to which it is not possible to refuse one’s attention.” His own work contradicts the great French novelist, yet his comment is perfectly accurate for many other novelists. Politics in some modern novels of political corruption, such as Charles F. Coe’s Ashes, do seem loud and vulgar, and in books like Upton Sinclair’s the reader may hear not one pistol shot but a cannonade. But this is not to say that the use of political material must disrupt a work of literature. The trick, of course, is all in knowing how. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote an artistically weak, politically successful work in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, while Fyodor Dostoyevsky produced a politically unsuccessful, artistically enduring classic in The Possessed.
The quality of these novels varies widely, just as would that of a group dealing with religion, sex, or any other complex, controversial theme. In general, the European novels considered here attain a higher level than the American books. This is partly because only the better European novels are treated. But they are also superior to the best American works, except for a few comparatively recent ones, because of the wider variety of political experience presented, the greater concern with ideology and theory, and the deeper insight into individual motivation and behavior. This in turn is probably due to several factors. From the time when the United States attained its independence until the end of the first quarter of this century, it possessed a relatively stable set of doctrines and frames of reference (compared to those existing in Europe) within which the individual led his political life. Although American parties rose and declined, although the Union was preserved, its borders expanded, and international responsibility accepted, this evolution was orderly and limited compared to that which occurred in Europe. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights provided a stable yet sufficiently flexible political framework. Europe during the same period reverberated with the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the unification of Germany and Italy, and the Russian Revolution. These were violent changes not only in theory but in the actual form of government. It is not unnatural then that American political novels range over a relatively narrower area, with their main emphasis on local or national subjects, while those of European authors delineate changing, conflicting, and radically different ideologies and resultant events. It is only since the 1930s, with the increase in centralized government, the impact of international Communism, and the recent appearance on both the Right and the Left of what seem to be threats to traditional American freedoms, that the American political novel has begun to approach the European in breadth of theme, concern with political theory, and interpretation of varying political behavior patterns.
The larger number of bad novels in the American group is also due to the fact that more American novels are treated. Because of their greater availability both for research and teaching, it is possible to show the evolution of this genre in the United States. In doing this one is able to examine the good ones, old and new, such as Henry Adams’ Democracy, John Dos Passos’ District of Columbia trilogy, and Irwin Shaw’s The Troubled Air. One pays, however, by suffering through period pieces such as F. Marion Crawford’s An American Politician. Less obtuse politically but nearly as abysmal artistically, is Paul Leicester Ford’s The Honorable Peter Stirling. One is compensated, however, not only by the view of a developing genre, but also by the recording of significant periods in American national life and of the people who helped shape it, as in the Dos Passos work, and by the sensitive and penetrating analysis of central problems in contemporary life, as in Shaw’s novel.
The English political novel is also uneven. That its depths are not so low as those in the American novel is due in part to the political heritage which its authors share with their colleagues on the continent. Its authors work from a long and rich political history in which the evolution has been less violent but no less steady.
The Novelist and the Political Scientist
The differences between the methods of the political novelist and the political scientist are worth studying. Their intentions are often at variance. Whereas the scientist is dedicated to objectivity and statistical accuracy, the novelist is often consciously subjective; if his work is intended as a political instrument, as were Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Possessed, scrupulous attention to the claims of the other side will invariably lessen the emotional impact and political worth of the novel. If a scholar sets out to examine the rise of Nazism, he will have to treat not only the Beer Hall Putsch and the Reichstag fire, but German history and the German national character as well. He will chronicle the effects of Versailles, the staggering of the Weimar Republic, and the growing strength of the Brown Shirts. He will be concerned with national attitudes, with the relative strength of the parties that vied with the National Socialists. His study will gauge the effects of the aging Hindenburg and the demoniac Hitler on a people smarting from defeat, searching for a scapegoat, and longing for a resurgence. And all this will be backed with statistics where possible. It will be a cogently reasoned analysis with documented references to available sources. Also, the study will be aimed at a fairly homogeneous and well-defined audience. The appeal will be intellectual. If emotion creeps in, the work is probably bad.
The novelist who is to examine these same events will present them quite differently, even apart from the techniques of fiction. If he is a rather dispassionate chronicler of human foibles and frailties such as, say, Somerset Maugham, he will probably portray a group of people through whose actions the rise and significance of Nazism will become meaningful. The reader will probably observe the drifting war veteran, the hard-pressed workman, the anxious demagogue. Out of these lives and their interactions will emerge an objective study of the sources of a political movement and of the shape it took. If the novelist is an enthusiastic Nazi, the book will reflect his particular bias. The storm troopers will become heroic Horst Wessels, the young women stalwart Valkyries, the Führer an inspired prophet and leader. Out of the novel will come a plea for understanding or a justification of violence and a perverted view of German national destiny. The book will be emotionally charged, a calculated effort to produce a specific desired response. If this series of historical events is used by a Frenchman, they will undergo another change. There will probably be an evocation of the Junker mentality, of Prussian militarism, of hordes of gray-green figures under coal-scuttle helmets. If this novel is not a call to arms, it will be a warning cry to signal a growing danger. These three fictional books will use the same staples of the novelist’s art, yet each will differ from the others in motivation and attitude. They will portray aspects of the same complex of events treated by the political scientist, but this will be virtually their only similarity.
A disadvantage for the novelist is his need to make his book appealing enough to sell and to make his reader want to buy his next novel. Although the scientist too must make his work as polished and interesting as he can, the novelist does not, like him, find his readers among subscribers to the learned journals. He cannot rely upon sales prompted by the need to keep abreast of research in a specialized field. If a novelist is to stay in print, political savoir-faire and intellectual capacity are not enough. He has to sell copies. Perhaps this is one reason why all but a few of these novels have a love story accompanying the political theme. Sometimes the love story inundates it, as in An American Politician; in other novels, such as Sinclair’s Presidential Agent, it is peripheral and pieced out with flirtations. It may be that these novelists include this element because love is as much a part of life as politics. Its nearly universal presence is a reminder, however, of one aspect of the novelist’s task and one way in which his work differs considerably from that of the political scientist.