Historically Screwed

When I finished my book, An Aspiration to Lie Flat, I realized I’d accidentally written a British novel. The problem was, I live in America.

While much of the English-speaking world shares literary traditions, there are definite regional differences.

For obvious reasons, Britain heavily influenced English language literature in the U.S. This was true from the arrival of the colonists up to the American Revolution when the U.S. began to form a national identity.

The divorce between the nations was final. Art was not placed under joint custody. Americans went on to develop our own literary traditions, ignoring Britain as they ignored us.

As a result, Americans sat out over a century’s worth of evolution in British comedy. We skipped Jerome K. Jerome and only tuned back in to encounter farce in Wodehouse’s middle to late years.

This is the core difference between the two national traditions:

Americans can’t stand watching a character suffer as a result of their delusions for very long (so long as they are harmless). We want moments of hope.

Not so the British. They love to watch a delusional character’s steady decline.

We place brightening, redemptive arcs into our farce, even when we adapt British comedies.

The dark, hilariously sad David Brent from the original British Office, played by Ricky Gervais, appealed to me far more than Steve Carell’s softened Michael Scott.

The process of taking comically tragic figures and humanizing them, often beyond palatability, even had a name in television circles:

Aldaization.

Once Alan Alda gained influence, M*A*S*H turned from a biting, satirical farce with a cast of caricatures into a dark, emotional, moralizing comedy with deeply relatable characters.

(The miracle of M*A*S*H is that it transformed and remained good. That show pulled off a remarkable bait-and-switch, though.)

The most tragicomic recent mainstream American character I can think of who was never forced to yield is Tobias Fünke from Arrested Development, played by David Cross.

Cross couldn’t have played the character’s delusions more straight.

And the producers let Tobias suffer endlessly.

I loved it.

My wife, however, wanted to run from the room. She hated the pain, born of the character’s profound social awkwardness and self-denial.

And you know what?

That’s fine.

Everyone is entitled to their tastes.

But since I don’t include redemptive character arcs in An Aspiration To Lie Flat, it means I’ve written a book outside my country’s mainstream literary tradition.

I’m effectively genre-less.

I must hope global English speakers from nations that weren’t divorced from Britain in the 1800s will find my book and it will register with them.

I might have a better chance of selling internationally than selling to my next-door neighbor.

If not, I’m historically screwed.