When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, he is reported to have said, "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." The story may be apocryphal, but like all great fictions, it points toward an important truth--in this case, that a work of art can shape minds and direction the course of a culture.
Today, many of us still hold those high expectations for fiction. If you've participated in many conversations about politics over the past several years, there's a good chance you've heard someone compare our national situation to something from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, or George Orwell's 1984. And if you've had a conversation with conservatives about their favorite novels, it's likely that you've heard some variation of Ayn Rand, J.R.R. Tolkien, or Tom Wolfe. These writers, of very different literary qualities, all have something to contribute to conversations about conservative ideas.
It's healthy for people to share a core group of books in common. The problem is that our group of shared books has become too limited. The consequence for conservatives in particular is that we've so narrowed our literary vision, we've blinded ourselves to a great tradition of literature that conveys conservative ideas.
Particularly at a time when conservativism in the United States is experiencing a series of internal conflicts and conversations, we should expand the conservative canon to better understand conservatism's meanings and merits, and to introduce readers to more books that illustrate the beauty and truth of conservative principles and ideals. Truthful Fictions does just that, providing thoughtful and accessible analysis of works by a variety of important authors spanning the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. Each chapter, covering works from Samuel Johnson and Willa Cather to V.S. Naipaul and Leif Enger, recounts the author's life and works, as well as the relevant political social context, but with a focus on the enduring conservative values conveyed by the novel. In the process, it not only provides suggestions for the many people wondering, "what should I read next?"--it also develops a core set of readings around which American conservatives can better debate and win the battle of ideas.