The only obvious credential of a novelist has to do with his trade. He trafficks in words and meanings. So the chronic misuse of words, especially the fobbing off of rhetoric for information, gets on his nerves. Another possible credential of a novelist peculiar to these times is that he is perhaps more sensitive to the atrocities of the age than most. People get desensitized.
Atrocities become banal.
But a 20th century novelist should be a nag, an advertiser, a collector, a proclaimer of banal atrocities. This statement will probably offend one side in this already superheated debate, so I hasten in the interests of fairness and truth to offend the other side. They seem pro-life only on this one perfervid and politicized issue. Nothing new here of course. Now I don't know whether the human-life bill is good legislation or not.