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Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-cancellation sets a dangerous precedent
The author has delayed her latest book after a public backlash
Bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert began writing her novel The Snow Forest when she was utterly alone in the early months of the pandemic. Her isolation, she realised, satisfied a deep longing. “What is the farthest away you could go from what we call humanity?” she wondered.
She remembered the extraordinary story of Karp Lykov and his family, who were discovered by geologists in 1978 after surviving for decades, completely cut off from all human contact, in the Siberian taiga. The family were members of an orthodox sect called Old Believers, and fled to the forest in 1936 to escape religious persecution, after Karp’s brother was shot by a Communist patrol. It’s hard to imagine how she could set her novel in any other country — when you lose Russia, you lose the Lykovs’ profound motivation to stay alive and continue practicing their faith.
In the creator economy, the relatability of an author’s brand, the size of her following, and the strength of her connection to her audience is a more powerful, reliable marketing engine than anything a publisher can provide. As part of her publicity campaign, the Eat, Pray, Love author promoted her upcoming book to her 263,000 Twitter followers, calling them “Dear Ones” before she asked them to click “Buy”. But shortly after the tweet, Gilbert announced that she had received “an enormous massive outpouring of reactions” from Ukrainian readers, upset that she would release a book set in Russia after the Ukraine invasion. Six days after sharing the preorder link, Gilbert told her audience that she is removing The Snow Forest from its publication schedule.
The idea that a novel about a family fleeing religious persecution from Communists is in any way “pro” Russia is not only absurd — it’s also the exact same argument of potential “harm” wielded by the crusading book banners in American schools. But more importantly, her self-cancellation sets a dangerous precedent for authors who lack her wealth, career stability, and clout. If writers have to participate in the creator economy to earn a living in this industry, what happens when their audience demands a product recall? A novel can take many years to write; there’s no way to predict whether you’ll sell it to a publisher, let alone predict how geopolitics will impact the public reaction to your work. If we can’t stomach novels set in countries that have dark and ugly stains on their records, I have bad news for anyone writing fiction about America.
Russia’s war against Ukraine is horrific, and their unconscionable invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties. But Gilbert’s decision to postpone her novel’s publication will have no material effect whatsoever on the lives of innocent Ukrainian citizens; nor does it do anything to change the tide of public opinion, when a majority of Americans already support Ukraine in the war.
If the publishing industry becomes an arena of culture where the only works deemed worthy of public reception are the ones guaranteed to do no harm, we will become like the isolated Lykovs, whose highest form of entertainment was to describe their own dreams.
Leigh Stein is the author of the satirical novel Self Care.
For the time is coming when men will not tolerate wholesome teaching. They will want something to tickle their own fancies, and they will collect teachers who will pander to their own desires. They will no longer listen to the truth, but will wander off after man-made fictions. For yourself, stand fast in all that you are doing, meeting whatever suffering this may involve. Go on steadily preaching the Gospel and carry out to the full the commission that God gave you.
2 Timothy 4.4
If we can’t stomach novels set in countries that have dark and ugly stains on their records, I have bad news for anyone writing fiction about America.
America is hardly alone. Maybe there are a few undiscovered atolls in the Pacific, we could write about those. And does this mean that War and Peace is cancelled? Is Dostoevsky off reading lists everywhere?
Indeed. Considering Solzhenitsyn died just 15 years ago, his depiction of the Gulag seems to have been forgotten by those such as Gilbert who profess to value literature.
He suffered greatly for the cause.
She’s doing it as a career move, to enhance her profile which she will see as being of greater value than the loss of her latest scribblings.
There is more to Solzhenitsyn than the staunch critic of Soviet Russia. His later years, after his return to Russia were not quite so glorious. He became very anti-Western and even pro-Islam.If you haven’t already, try reading Cathy Young’s essay Solzhenitsyn: The Fall of a Prophet (Quillette 21 Dec 2018) for a more rounded view of his later life.
Ah dude, those islands are sinking into the sea. Using that as a setting would be pretty triggering to us folks really super duper worried about climate change.
“The idea that a novel about a family fleeing religious persecution from Communists is in any way “pro” Russia is not only absurd — it’s also the exact same argument of potential “harm” wielded by the crusading book banners in American schools.”
I think we need to have an adult conversation about books being banned in schools. In Florida, parents are actually getting input into these decisions and restricting some extremely offensive and sexualized material.
Restricting access to books can be very fraught and can lead to some abuses and overreach. That’s why we need an adult conversation – because children can’t. Censorship is never good, but parents also have the right to challenge the gatekeepers, who have approved some material that is very offensive and inappropriate.
Here are a list of some books being restricted.
Rhymes with Witches
Boy meets boy
Boy girl boy
Antiracist Baby
This Book is Gay
This list is short and doesn’t capture the nature of books being restricted, because many of the most graphic and sexualized books have banal titles.
You can get the nonfiction book about the Lykovs from the library. What I found most striking was the extraordinary destitution and filth in which they lived.
Ya. This is a pretty pathetic example of cowardice.
Oh well, there’s enough existing decent literature to see me out.
It is quite unfortunate that Elizabeth Gilbert had to self-censor. But there is no solidarity among writers so no one would have stood with her against the cancellation mob.
It would have been pretty easy to explain that the book is actually anti-Soviet/Russian.
At last, an upside to cancel culture.
If we had had the self censorship culture of today in the 1870s, there never would have been Impressionist art. Of course, those artists did give each other support, something which it appears today’s artists do not do.
Elizabeth Gilbert is the flakiest of the flakes, but even she knows which way the wind is blowing. If she had released the book, she would have been cancelled, and so self-immolated before the inevitable happened.
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