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5.30.2025 6:55 AM

Accidental Zeitgeist Novelist by Ben Macnair

Accidental Zeitgeist Novelist

You become that which you most despised, in your callow youth, the author of the book that everyone is talking about. You are this year’s Accidental Zeitgeist Novelist.

People you have never met describe you as a genius. This book, which you wrote in three months and was meant to be a break between all of the research you did for the novel you wanted to be known for is the published one that will be spoken of on Radio 4.

You are known for the simplicity of your prose, the coarseness of the language a sad reflection on the place you wrote about, but never spent any time in. The people you know view you differently. They expect you to buy all of the drinks in the pub. They think that character A is them, but it isn’t. It never is. You never thought about these people when you were writing it.

You are, after all a writer. You write people, places and events that never happened, but in the writing you have some control. You can make sure that the nice people meet each other and live happily, and the unpleasant people meet unpleasant ends. The bloke that met his maker under a piano was an old boss, but you have had seven old bosses. The girl with the piercing green eyes could have been one of your former lovers, only none of them had green eyes.

It is a biting indictment of its time. A call to arms. A rallying cry.

It is none of those things. It was never meant to be anything.

But, here it is.

The wet dog in the rain that shakes itself and never does anything right.

The book that will buy you a house, and keep the publisher in fancy caviar and champagne for a while.

It is said to be the book that future generations will mark their adolescence by, but they grew up in a time of social media and Donald Trump as a former president. You are in your forties, and remember Donald Trump as the bit-part actor in Home Alone II.

It starts slowly and then builds to a juddering end, where nothing is what it could be. The novel has no easy resolution, like life. Do the boy, girl, and the other boy end up together? Will they find closure? Will they make peace with their pasts, and with each other?

All of the questions are waiting in the sequel. Or, that is at least what the publisher hopes. You don’t have it in your heart to write a sequel. You will be the one hit wonder. You have other things to do than sit in a studio at 5.30 waiting to answer questions, or to talk about film rights, the play that will surely come from the book, although you don’t know how they will film the piano sequence. That was a bit gory in the book, fun to write, but gory. It would need a fifteen certificate at least.