At Christmas, 'It's a Wonderful Life' makes me cry in exactly the same places every time, even though I know it's coming.
I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up.
Great drama is all about conflict, and what's a better conflict than Republican-Democrat?

