We live in a hyperfast electronic world with no space for humanity. We’re detached from reality. Most of our entertainment consists of escapes from, or bad simulations of, reality. The biggest part of the publishing business at the current time consists of various versions of fantasy. Sci-fi, romantasy, fake medieval pseudo-histories of thrones and dragons, lords of hobbits or robots, idiotic spaceships talking lions and what not. At their core, nonsense.

Recently I read (reread really) Mario Puzo’s little-known first novel, The Dark Arena, published in 1955. A tough narrative set in post-World War II Germany during the American occupation, when the landscape consisted of bombed-out ruins and life was brutal.

The novel wasn’t a hit when it came out. Too much reality. Maybe for the same reason, it’s been ignored by critics and cognoscenti in the decades since. A hard portrayal of societal chaos: perhaps a cautionary look at where we’re headed.

The book got me thinking about realistic fiction– though The Dark Arena might better be classified as Zolaesque naturalism. “Realism” in the context of a defanged literary world has always been a narrow version of the term. Guaranteed not to offend powers-that-be in the clubby world of the literati. Never going too deep into human nature and the human condition, much less the broader context of society and its layers of crimes and cruelties.

ANYWAY, some off-the-cuff reality ratings of several in-this-world novels:

-Wuthering Heights/Bronte: 92
-Bleak House/Dickens: 96
-The Idiot/Dostoevsky: 97
-The Dark Arena/Puzo: 98
-City for Conquest/Kandel: 98
-Don’t Stop the Carnival/Wouk: 88

OTHERS

-The Great Gatsby/Fitzgerald: 50
-Vineland/Pynchon: 40
-Harry Potter/Rowling: 20
-The Hobbit/Tolkien: 10

Thoughts? Suggestions? Let us know!

-K.W.