Tom-munist manifesto

I oppose writing about rich people. I oppose writing about popular people. I oppose writing about beautiful people. I oppose writing about people who somehow have the financial wherewithal to live comfortably even when, throughout the entire course of a book or play or movie, there’s no evidence that they ever actually perform any sort of labor.

I oppose books and plays and movies that don’t encompass genuine struggle. I want to read about, to write about, to know about people who need to make sacrifices and choices just to survive. Not which of the sisters to court, but how to find the food to feed a starving family. I want to write about this. I want to write about the people you never read about. The ones that mean well but don’t have the means to elevate themselves. The ones born without bootstraps.

I oppose memoirs by people below the age of 30. I don’t want to write any (though I missed my window anyway.) I oppose writing that lacks the perspective of years, the knowledge of experience, the distance of maturity.

I don’t want to write about what’s going right. I want to write about what’s going wrong, not in a ‘ripped-from-the-headlines’ way, but in a ‘ripped-from-the-inscrutable fine print on page D7’ sort of way. I have no interest in the headliners, because their stories are already known. I want to hear about everyone else.

I oppose writing about the people we supposedly want to be. Because there is a cycle at work here: we want to be them because we read about them. We read about them because we want to be them. What if we all read about social workers and inner-city teachers and the janitor from Weehauken who just does his job, day in, day out, and loves his wife and children?

The tyranny of the majority. That is what I oppose. I want to write about small people in big places, everymen caught in the snarls of government, the helpless abandoned to drift in the eddies of power. I don’t want to hear about the people who shape events, but those who are shaped by them, and the ways in which this affects all of us.

I oppose plays you can write off after you leave the theater. I oppose throwaway entertainment. I oppose cheap sentiment. I oppose morality plays. I oppose easy answers.

I oppose pat conclusions.