Disclaimed

Characters seem to be exempt from morality. Mariel Nicosovic--as a character, not a human being--has no obligation to notice or work to alleviate the poverty in her backyard, or to reflect on the absurdly inflated death rate around the corner from her mansion. It is her duty as a character, only existing from the outside, to tirelessly spend her efforts on the upkeep of her preposterously large house, hiring people to train the domestic help, ignoring her kids, buying new boots every season, and appearing at important social functions, all within the same universe--the same zip code--as young black men who are more likely to either murder or be murdered than learn long division.

The premise is: M.N. does not care about the cycle of violence. But that's okay, because she has such a distinct personality.

To tell a story--a made-up one--about a world of people whom the plot depends on to be ridiculous and nonsensical is to detach oneself from the events and to wash one's hands clean of moral responsibility. In other words, a plot that derives from its characters' inability to act humanely condones immorality by immortalizing it.

Is it necessary to be a solipsist for your life to be a good story?

For instance, the novel Trainspotting is about a bunch of heroin addicts. If they all made the right decision (to stop using heroin), there would be no Trainspotting. Trainspotting, arguably, is a good thing--first, if only because it is a book, and books are objectively and inherently good; and second, because it is a good book, well-written, innovative, imaginative, highly enjoyable, insightful. Why is it acceptable to suspend morality for the higher cause of a good book? It only encourages suspending morality in one's own life. Either: it is necessary to have an outlet, a way of exploring the path, the results of immorality, so that people do not suppress their wandering thoughts; or, it is an atrocity to invent evil and bring it so close to daily life that it is at times hardly separable. Or, people who are most susceptible to the invented immorality of novels are the least likely to read them, so it doesn't matter.