It has been noted by many of late: Fiction just doesn’t seem to cut it for the modern, engaged reader. The books that have been the most talked about nowadays, not to mention the best-selling, have been non-fiction. Non-fiction has particularly dominated the political disussion. But is it true that fiction just isn’t a suitable way to talk about contemporary culture? Larry Beihart, author of the novel American Hero, which the movie Wag the Dog was based upon, says, “In all that I’ve read about George W. Bush in non-fiction, I’ve never seen anything that truly illuminated the man.” In an essay for Buzzflash, he says the problem is “line by line, you have to call him a liar,” but at the same time “it is difficult to imagine anyone who can lie so well and so consistently as he must be doing, if we are to completely reject what he has been telling us. So it is hard to accept the total cynicism, combined with blind optimism, that must — in my estimation — actually be behind his actions . . . If, however, I offer you a fictional president . . . and tell you this is his motivation and this is his narrative, you can accept that quite easily. Then, when you notice that his specifics match the events in the real world, you can transfer it, you can say, maybe there is a better narrative than the one we’ve been told.”