Elizabeth Gilbert is pulling a novel set in Russia from publication. That’s unsettling
More than 500 people posted negative reviews on the book recommendations website Goodreads, urging Elizabeth Gilbert not to publish The Snow Forest. Like them, I haven’t read her novel. But I do know why her many fans were so distressed. The novel takes place in Siberia during the middle of the last century, and the objections to it have centered around the fact that its Russian setting would cause further pain to Ukrainians caught up in a defensive war against Vladimir Putin’s merciless aggression.
I met Elizabeth Gilbert once, at a dinner. The impression I got, and one that is sustained by her books – most notably, the immensely popular Eat, Pray, Love – is that of a kindly, thoughtful person who would never want to hurt those who have already suffered so much. According to an explanatory statement she issued, “I do not want to add any harm to a group of people who are continuing to experience grievous and extreme harm.” But while her choice to indefinitely postpone the book’s publication (formerly scheduled for February 2024) may have been made out of empathy, her decision, as well as the public outcry against the novel, was so ill-advised and unwise – for so many reasons – that it’s hard to know quite where to begin.
So let’s start with the most obvious: writing a novel set in a country waging a monstrous imperial war is simply not the same as condoning that war. Of course it would be quite different had Gilbert written a work of proPutin propaganda, or if she intended the proceeds from her book sales to be channeled into the Russian dictator’s war chest. But that is clearly not the case. Indeed, the book is reportedly about a group of people who resisted Soviet oppression, which, it could be argued, might be seen as encouraging (rather than wounding) those who are engaged in a similar struggle today.
But the problems with Gilbert’s decision to cave to the objections of people who haven’t even read her book go further than this novel, this author, this war. If we are to ban the cultural products of countries who are attacking, or who have attacked, smaller weaker nations and innocent populations, there would be almost nothing left for us to read. Does the ban on Russian literature work retroactively? Should I build a bonfire in my backyard and consign Gogol, Tolstoy and Chekhov to the flames? What are we to do about the work of refugees who left Russia to escape the excesses of its past and present dictatorships? And should each new (and old) global conflict ignite a ban on the aggressor’s writers and artists? Taken to its illogical extreme, no one should have been allowed to publish or read books set in the United States during the costly and indefensible wars we fought in Vietnam and Iraq.
But what’s equally unreasonable – and disturbing – is the precedent that Gilbert’s decision sets, the potential danger it poses to writers, to the future of literature, to the culture, and to our freedom of speech. What will happen if authors allow themselves to be bullied by their readers? What if the themes we write about, and how we write about them, are to become the subject of a general referendum? Should survivors of domestic abuse band together to prevent any future productions of Othello? Should we quit reading Anne Frank’s diary because it takes place in a country that was hospitable to Jewish refugees – until it wasn’t? Should animal rights activists campaign to have Moby-Dick banned for its portrayal of the horrors of the whaling industry? One can all too easily imagine what might have occurred had Nabokov submitted Lolita to the court of public opinion before it appeared in print.
I’ve always thought that the great subject of literature is the question of what it means to be a human being. Whether we like it or not, whether we are proud of it or not, cruelty and violence have always been part of the human experience. It’s hard to think of a situation worth writing about that doesn’t involve conflict of some sort. To set our novels in an earthly paradise and populate them with angels would be to lie about the nature of existence.
But that seems to be the lie that certain readers and critics – those who believe that literature should offer a bubbly mix of light entertainment and improving moral instruction – would like us to tell. When authors think of an idea for something we might want to write, will it be necessary to take a survey, polling our readers: Hey, is anyone out there going to have a problem with this?
The censorship (let’s call it what it is) of Elizabeth Gilbert’s unpublished novel is less surprising than it should be, given how much energy is currently being exerted across the political spectrum, by both the right and the left, to control and sanitize what we read and what we teach. Social media has facilitated campaigns such as the one against The Snow Forest, choosing books and writers as soft targets in the effort to suppress free speech, to determine what can and can’t be said.
And it all seems like part of the widespread and disturbingly successful campaigns waged largely on social media that aim to misdirect our grievances, to mislead and deceive us about whom we should be struggling against. Our enemy is not the middle school librarian recommending an LGBTQ novel, not the art teacher showing students an image of Michelangelo’s David. Why not redirect our rage at more harmful and powerful targets: at big pharma, the gun lobby, the military industrial complex, the petrochemical industry.
Every story, every image that emerges from the war in Ukraine is heartbreaking and profoundly tragic. But not for one instant can any sensible person imagine that Elizabeth Gilbert is ordering the strikes on apartment buildings, kidnapping Ukrainian children, vowing to continue a war until
a nation’s independence has been destroyed and its spirit shattered. Our sympathies – and our revulsion – should not cloud our belief in the power of literature to tell us how people live, what they suffer and endure, and how – if they are extremely brave and extraordinarily lucky – they may yet survive and triumph.
Francine Prose is a former president