ABSTRACT
If one were to ask a literate or semi-literate person, “What is the function of literature?” this would be understood as a question about the overt (manifest) function of literature and, accordingly, one might expect to hear answers pointing to relaxation, the desire for vicarious adventure, curiosity about certain subjects, interest in the “who dunnit” in crime mysteries, and so forth. However, literature also performs certain latent functions, such as conveying social and political messages, critiquing past political behavior, presenting a past or present system in a favorable or unfavorable light, even offering a past warrior or holy person as a kind of model (although that last function might also be overt). At any rate, my interest in this chapter is not with any overt functions of literature and certainly not, in the first place, with the specific plots of novels or even with the writing styles of the writers discussed herein. What follows then, (with the exception of the section on “Three Novelists” immediately below and the material presented in boxes), will not present the storyline of one or another novel or play but will, rather, look at how the novels, play, and reminiscences have presented the communist era, capitalist America, and post-communism as well as such reflections as these writers have offered about the process of writing itself. I am not interested in what these works of fiction can tell us about the societies in East Central Europe but, rather, about what creative intellectuals have had to say about the three themes mentioned above.
