We all, by necessity, deal with politics on a daily basis. Newspapers, websites, even our conversations all make us acutely aware of political issues and questions surrounding us. So in a sense, every part of our lives is saturated with and affected by political decisions—who gets what, who oppresses whom, how we order our lives.

As a person who lives in a community, I am involved with the politics of my town, my nation, and the world. As an individual, I can state my beliefs and opinions and even try to convince others to join me in them. As a novelist… ay, there’s the rub. What role do politics play in fiction?

Politics are shaped by people, and people can be shaped by the fiction they read—though not always in ways the author intended. (Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle in the hope of changing conditions in the meatpacking industry. It did raise consciousness and pushed the government to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, both of which ensure the meat we purchase is safe, but don’t do much for the safety or well-being of the workers who make our dinners possible.) Fiction can enable us to see the world through people unlike ourselves—and possibly view them more empathetically—and in that way, the novelist’s contribution is of something general and abstract and vague. How explicit can one be?

Some novelists try to be as clear and forceful as Sinclair, but fall short of the mark. Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom attempted to chronicle the crimes and lies of the Bush administration, yet the novel ended up a grating liberal complaint. It doesn’t inspire anything other than a desire to read something else.

Robert Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers in a matter of weeks (well, he apparently wrote all his books in a matter of weeks, a timetable I admire) as a political response to a then-present cold war event. The book’s clear message was the need for personal responsibility in the face of militaristic oppression, with the moral decline of society as a backdrop and a sharp call to action around—wait for it—the right to vote. Plus ça change…

Of course, most novels aren’t as clearly political as Heinlein’s book. But I’m also thinking it’s impossible to completely divorce one’s work from one’s self, and that it’s not in anyone’s best interests for us to do so. I don’t want to write books that are merely entertaining; but I don’t want to alienate readers, either.

Many people consider fiction an escape from their worldly concerns. That’s certainly the general opinion of readers of mystery fiction, my primary genre. Stories enable us to shut down the parts of our brains that deal with the problems of reality, and they allow us to pursue pleasure, intellectual nourishment, even artistic satisfaction.

Perhaps it’s an issue of agenda versus propaganda. “Agenda” is a word that’s been hijacked by politics (the gay agenda, the Communist agenda, etc.), mostly by those intent on maintaining the status quo du jour. But it doesn’t have to be a negative thing. A political agenda in fiction isn’t a problem if it’s done in moderation; it’s when it isn’t that the work slips from having a political agenda into presenting political propaganda. And the problem with propaganda is that the more you see of it, the more it feels strident, and the less you want to read.

I’m writing this mostly because it’s an issue with which I struggle. I haven’t yet discovered the line between agenda and propaganda in my own work. (If you don’t believe me, go to Amazon and read some of the reviews of A Killer Carnival, a book that, I’m sorry to say, slipped fairly decisively from agenda into propaganda.) I’m constantly questioning the role of the (mystery) novelist in culture and society, and not always finding my way.

Storytelling informs, inspires, enlightens, entertains. Finding a balance among these different functions is perhaps the greatest challenge novelists face. After that, two thousand words a day? Piece of cake!