“I find it incredible that they didn’t cancel me”

Lionel Shriver (Gastonia, North Carolina, 1957), author of “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” believes that we are not far from this illusion of parity. But for now, it only exists in “Manía” (Anagrama), his new novel.

— When did you start thinking about this dystopia?

—It has to do with the “social fads” of the last decade: transgender, MeToo, Black Lives Matter… It all appeared suddenly, out of nowhere, and suddenly it was the only thing people were thinking about and talking about. And what triggered the book was the pandemic. In many countries, overnight, it was decided that it was perfectly normal to lock yourself up at home and suspend your civil rights because a disease with low mortality was circulating there.

— This was not discussed at the time.

—I thought lockdowns were stupid, and I thought that from the first moment.

—Is intelligence therefore in danger?

— My “mental parity movement” is the fate of the left’s obsession with equality. They want us all to be equal: they are increasingly obsessed with equality of results, not equality of opportunity. And that’s a big change. Equality of results can only be achieved by authoritarian and unjust means. The left doesn’t like the fact that we are not born equal. It’s uncomfortable. But the truth is that we are born with very different talents, abilities and intelligences. What’s boring in the novel is that some are geniuses and others are idiots, and then they reap the consequences. It therefore seemed very logical to me that a movement would emerge which would say: we are all equal, we all have the same level of intelligence; any difference in our performance can be considered a simple “processing problem”. It’s a linguistic solution to a glaring problem. This is very typical of the left: they believe that all problems can be solved by changing words. This is magical thinking.

— To what extent does all satire end up being a prophecy?

— Well, that depends on the prophecy (and the smiles). All satire, regardless of when it takes place – and many take place in the future – is always about the present. Our propensity as a species for mass hysteria is not exclusive to any specific nation or era. What makes the social fads of the last twenty years more feasible, faster and more global is technological possibility, that is, the Internet. There, these ideas spread with terrifying effectiveness.

— In your novel, we kill intelligence so as not to offend sensibilities, which is one of the mantras of our time. In this state of affairs, isn’t the task of the writer or the intellectual precisely to offend, to provoke debate?

—Yes (laughs), but it hasn’t happened. The literary world disappointed me, there was very little resistance to left-wing orthodoxy, to woke thought. Conformity prevailed almost universally. And this goes against our interests: this ideology does not favor us. It goes against imagination, creativity, it is authoritarian in its application. It tells us which words we can use and which we cannot use, which are “uncomfortable”. For example: They no longer want you to say that someone was “born female,” but rather that they were “assigned female at birth.” It’s a long sentence, scientifically false and comes across as ridiculous. All these prescriptions – and there are many of them – constitute an interference in the work and freedom of the writer. And I was amazed at how many colleagues, even novelists, joined the program. The normal reaction when someone tells you what you can and can’t write and what you should think is: fuck you. And it puzzles me that it’s so rare. I still remember the issue of cultural appropriation.

— But today, this concept seems dead, right?

— Yes, but how long did it take? Almost ten years. And it was a ridiculous idea. When I criticized him, a lot of people jumped on me: that I was horrible, racist… In short, the usual insults. I expected to have lots of company and I didn’t. Hardly any fiction writers supported me. And this concept of cultural appropriation has been poisonous to us. This should have been dismissed from the start as something crazy and illogical. Instead, most of my colleagues signed up, as they did everything else. And the logical conclusion of this delusion was that ultimately men couldn’t write about women and women couldn’t write about men. What kind of fiction would we have then? Very boring. With a lot of homosexuality (laughs).

— Is there a lack of courage in the literary world?

—I think that if anything characterizes our times, it is the cowardice that exists on practically all fronts. And one would hope that the art world would be the exception. But no. They behaved like everyone else. I guess this confirms what we’ve always known: there are very few real artists in the world.

— In the book, everyone submits to mental parity for fear of cancellation: they are terrified. Today, that fear seems less, doesn’t it?

—The cancellation industry has reached its peak. And now it’s easier to say things than before. The trans issue is a good example: before, if you said one word against it, your career was over. I think the “don’t open your mouth about the trans issue” was more extreme than any other issue. The race issue during Black Lives Matter had a similar degree of hypersensitivity. But now you can say whatever you want. I do it all the time. And I write articles in “The Spectator” that would never have been published before. Something is broken and that’s a big relief. I find it incredible to have survived this time without being canceled.

—Is the awakened one dead or not?

—I think we’re rushing there. Woke has been largely excluded from federal executive power in the United States. But this way of thinking continues to dominate universities, the arts sector, museums, foundations and even large corporations. And of course, it also dominates most major media outlets, with a few exceptions like “Fox News.” This is not something you can change in a year, as Trump did during his second term. And it’s always possible that the Trump administration will implode, failing spectacularly in a politically sensitive area, and that this will only be a temporary hiatus. Let the Democrats return to the White House and the ideology will remain intact. Ultimately, I don’t see many Democrats moving away from woke thinking. I fear that the “Trump revolution” will be temporary and even backfire.

— So there hasn’t been a big cultural shift to the right?

— I think so: the left no longer has the same control over public discourse that it had; people are less afraid. This is a real cultural change. For around ten years, particularly in English-speaking countries, the atmosphere has been… Maoist. And I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. There was this feeling that you better keep your mouth shut or you were screwed. Maybe they weren’t going to send you to a gulag, but they might ruin you, and anyone who was even remotely attentive had to set the “internal filter” to maximum power. We all have this filter, and it varies greatly from person to person. I have it too. I always pause briefly before saying something. I think: is this really what I mean? Is that the best way to say it? Should I say it? Will saying this get me in trouble? This part of the brain has taken control, particularly in the intellectual and media domains. In part, we are still there.

—Why did the awakened ones triumph?

— It’s curious: the whole woke phenomenon, which emanates from universities, looks at first glance like a movement of self-hatred against the West. I don’t think that’s the case. It has to do with status. If you accuse your race of being white supremacist, then you are exempt: it does not apply to you, because you are the one pointing the finger. Americans who hate America, who say that it has a racist culture and a terrible history, that it is nothing but a source of shame, are not ashamed of themselves: they have excluded themselves from the group. They are no longer Americans. I mean: if you say America is terrible, you’re not terrible, because you’re the one who knows America is terrible. This makes you virtuous and places you on a higher level, because these are privileged perspectives. It’s a way of showing off. It’s posturing. And what’s happening in these progressive circles is that the positions are becoming more and more extreme because they’re competing with each other. Extreme opinions compete with other extreme opinions, and the best way to win is to go even further. It’s all about climbing the social ladder. This is not self-hatred: it is exactly the opposite, it is vanity, a feeling of superiority and contempt towards the rest of the country. This is a monumental absurdity. None of these virtuous people feel guilty about being American or white. They don’t feel like they’ve done something wrong: they believe that others have done something wrong. It’s not a fault. Real guilt is horrible. And it is not displayed. When you really feel guilty, what you want to do is crawl into a hole and die.