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The Klavan File

A novelist of values in the Age of Terror.

Apr 23, 2007, Vol. 12, No. 30 • By JOEL SCHWARTZ
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Andrew Klavan is a prolific crime novelist and screenwriter, author of about 20 novels (some pseudonymous). He is also a conservative, as is evident in a January op-ed that he wrote for the Los Angeles Times, criticizing Hollywood for not making films about the war against Islamist terror:

In the history of our time as told by the movies, the war on terror largely does not exist. Which is passing strange, you know. Because the war on terror is the history of our time. The outcome of our battle against the demographic, political and military upsurge of a hateful theology and its oppressive political vision will determine the fate of freedom in this century.

To tell that story, Klavan noted, filmmakers would "have to depict right-minded Americans--some of whom may be white and male and Christian--hunting down and killing dark-skinned villains of a false and wicked creed. That's what's happening, on a good day anyway, so that's what you'd have to show." But Hollywood is reluctant to celebrate that combat, for fear that doing so "might appear bigoted and jingoistic." In short, "we can't bring ourselves to fictionalize the larger idea: Islamo-fascism is an evil and American liberty a good."

Klavan concluded by lamenting Hollywood's unwillingness to "dramatize the central event of our time" and to pay tribute to the "lawmen and warriors" who protect us.

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