I looked up an old interview with Colin Dexter, the great writer of mysteries, hoping to get some advice on writing fiction. Instead, I found him worried about democracy.
This was in 2006. The Strand Magazine asked Dexter if he was a pessimist. He replied:
I am indeed, yes. I’ve not much faith in the future of the planet and I’m not just thinking about Mr. Bush or global warming. I feel that we’ve lost our way and it looks as if, in so many fields, things are turning sour. Even democracy is turning sour, isn’t it?
When the interviewer pressed for details, Dexter said:
Yes, I think part of it is that we’ve lost faith in the honour or honourability of our leaders. We read so much about incompetence and corruption in all sorts of places. I’m not just thinking of the United Kingdom and the United States. Almost everywhere there seems to me to be an increase in incompetence and general dishonesty. This is what I mean about democracy — you feel that you’ve got the ability to arrange things and influence matters and it’s not quite so easy as that, I’m afraid.
I think what’s going on in the United States is a tragedy.
I also think it’s important not to spend every thought one has on the political crisis. In times of political upheaval, we ought to value our common goods: concerts, baseball, detective stories. We ought not neglect them — or each other.
But even when I’m reading old detective magazines, I run across people who fear for democracy.
• Source and notes: Excerpts from an interview that appeared in The Strand Magazine, Issue 19, June-September, 2006, can be found here:
https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/interviews/colin-dexter/
Dexter, whose characters were featured in the Morse and Lewis television series, died in 2017.
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