In her book Future Histories, Lizzie O’Shea credits Van Wyck Brooks with coining the term usable past. Brooks wrote, “The present is a void and the American writer floats in that void because the past that survives in the common mind of the present is a past without living value.”
O’Shea goes on to point out that, for young people in particular, the past can feel like a dead weight, there to hold us back from creating our future. But she warns us not to ignore the past. If we do, it survives “…as a default genealogy, a mere reflection of the status quo, fixed and irrelevant.”
That term default genealogy struck me as much as the concept of a usable past.
Default means our choice is already filled in for us. That’s why the vast majority of documents generated on MS Word all look alike, Calibri font, 1 inch margins, single spaced. Default also means failure to fulfill an obligation or a debt. By choosing the default history, we are defaulting on our obligation to create and harness a usable past.
To create a usable past, we should approach history with the understanding that it did not have to turn out the way it did. The past isn’t a sequence of inevitable events that rushes towards the future as if on tracks. At every juncture, there were options. At every juncture, there was the possibility for a different outcome.
What does that mean for thriller writers?
My novels are set in the real world. Although my characters are figments of my imagination, the issues he deals with are real issues. Of course, I add scenarios to create the tension that needs resolution at the end, otherwise the story would be dull, but the basics are real. How can my readers understand my characters and their motivations if I don’t create a usable past in my writing?
Without it, they fall back on the default genealogies. Many people living in rich countries have little usable past at their disposal. Their default genealogies consist of unquestioned assumption about the world, tinted by race and class. We are doing fine, so the world must be right. The fates of those in poor countries, the refugees that come to our borders, the economic misery they are escaping are somehow of their own making.
My just completed manuscript for the sixth Vermeulen thriller deals with the tragedy that’s unfolding at the southern border of the US. If Americans had a usable past, they’d understand that the long history of US intervention in Central America is the root cause of the flood of refugees we see today. How many know that US marines occupied Nicaragua from 1912-1933? Or that US troops intervened in Honduras seven times between 1900-1925? Or that President Teddy Roosevelt asserted that the US had the right to intervene in Central America when countries were unable to pay their international debts?
Although those events happened a century ago, the institutional and economic structures created then persist today. My job as a thriller writer is to eschew the default genealogies and help create a usable past that has a “living value” for my readers.
