There Is No Contemporary Fiction

I write contemporary fiction. Sometimes it’s more contemporary than some people find entirely decent: I published a lockdown novel during lockdown and was bemused to find that for some critics and readers it was “too soon”, as if the major global event that had dominated everyone’s lives for two years needed to be put away to mature like wine or cheese before we were allowed to make art with it. Who would ring the bell, I wondered, when it was time? Where are the gatekeepers of contemporaneity?