Obviously contemporary literature unravels story that is relevant to its time, both in the way a society or culture is current in its trends–at least for a segment of the population–as well as its ideas of past and future.
With the understanding that literary fiction is written by those with something in common, that is, the love of story and drama, then we can by no means conceive of it as an accurate telling of how mankind thought and considered his world except as representing something in general. The writers, and more importantly perhaps, the readers may however reveal what was being sought and what was relevant at the time in ideas and needs.
It is even telling of a society in the writing of fantasy, science fiction, in that man at that period of time was thinking about a world beyond his own. While it reveals a creative and exploratory nature, it doesn’t really say just this alone; obviously, though few sci fi novels were written in the early centuries, what we can see is that since Frankenstein and the huge interest of the 1950s in alien worlds, man was already set upon the path of reaching the moon.
The political atmosphere of an era is also an indicator that shows up in fiction contemporary to the times; Candide being just one early example. Faulkner and many others wrote of a South that Northerners really had no accurate image of knowing, although it would be obvious that the characters, especially in Faulkner’s families, were not necessarily common to the area, but rather a generalized and exaggerated extension of the poor/rich and black/white relations.
It is with much interest then that as I read contemporary fiction together with Plato and some of the literary classics of the mid twentieth century, I note not only the time period of the setting, but of the time in which it was written and the time it is being read currently.
Reminds me of Boethius’ statement in Consolation that the divine concept of time may be a constant present.
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