{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3967", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3967, "subject": "Generic Considerations", "messages": 40, "voices": 14, "first": "2003-04-22T19:26:31+00:00", "last": "2003-04-27T13:47:09+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-22T19:26:31+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Fair warning: This is going to be boring to about 50% of\nlistmembers; contains a lot of stuff that some of you have seen\nbefore, either from me or from outside reading; and I don't\nguarantee any explicitly Lupine content at all." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I find this thread to be of particular interest. I cannot and will not \npurport to be an expert in 'SF', but the above comments from you both have \ngiven me pause for thought last coupla days, roughly to the effect of what \n_is_ science fiction, anyway?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "and also:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would tentatively suggest that much of Mr. Burroughs's (William Seward \nhenceforth unless stipulated otherwise) work could be called SF" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I reply:\n\nThere are a lot of definitions of SF which depend on content, such as\nthose you mention; all of these seem flawed. Often I use Damon Knight's\nostensive definition (\"Science fiction is what I'm pointing at when I\nsay 'science fiction'\"), but that's ... well, not a joke, certainly,\nbut not actually very useful.\n\nI regard \"SF\" as a multivalent and multiordinal term, depending on\nwhether one uses it in the context of reading, writing, publishing,\nmarketing, sales, etc., but for critical purposes, I find the following\nuseful, if a tad verbose:\n\n SF is a fuzzily-bounded collection of texts generated by\n an equally fuzzily-bounded collection of writers, operating\n in an ongoing dialogue and a developoing tradition, and\n using a common set of \"thematic\" and rhetorical tropes.\n\n [For the purpose of this discussion I'm using the word\n \"thematic\" rather more broadly than is normally its\n proper range, mostly because I can't recall offhand the\n correct term for what I want -- the set of codes and\n devices which deal with the literal \"content\" (plot,\n landscape, etc.) of a story. \"Hermeneutic\" seems wrong\n here.]\n\nAs such, SF neither existed before Hugo Gernsback gave it a name\n(originally \"scientifiction,\" or STF) and a home (THE ELECTRIC\nEXPERIMENTER, then AMAZING STORIES and apres ca, la deluge), nor\ndid it spring suddenly to existence from the brain of Gernsback;\nwhat he named and located was a tradition and dialog that had\nalready begun to develop in a number of writers. By thus naming\nand locating it, he partially-separated it from the larger tradition\nand dialogue of mainstream/mimetic/mundane fiction, which I will\nrefer to as MF; this separation however occurred as part of a larger\ncommercial/artistic movement in which quite a few such namings-and-\nlocatings similarly took place, caused by/causing the explosion of\nthe generic pulp fiction marketplace. (SF may not be, as some critics\nhave suggested, the \"last\" of the pulp-derived genres to gain a name\nand a home, but it was certainly quite late in the game.)\n\nSF, a knowably-small \"pool\" of writers and texts, was thus enabled\nto develop its own concerns and its own ways of addressing those\nconcerns. SF _apparently_ begins as simple adventure fiction with\nexotic locales; however, it also begins with an editorial mandate to\neducate. While it never did really fulfill (and rarely tried to)\nGernsback's prescription for educating its readers about science,\nthe presence of that prescription exerted from the first a kind of\npressure on its writers to address something more than, as the classic\nanthology title puts it, adventures in space and time.\n\nNone of which is to claim that all, or even much, early generic SF\nwas ambitious or even intersting. Much of it was written by career\npulp writers who were interested in it only as another market for\npenny-a-word adventure dreck.\n\nHowever, even \"before the Golden Age,\" SF also attracted writers\nwho perceived it as possessing possibilities beyond exotic adventure,\nand who saw in it the chance to write something impossible in MF or\nthe other pulp genres. Crude as their early productions were, writers\nlike Leinster, Williamson, and most especially Stanley G. Weinbaum\nactively sought to _do something_ with SF.\n\nDelany has written extensively on the linguistic possibilities of\nSF -- how SF writers write sentences that have meanings utterly\ndifferent from what they might have in an MF text (\"He turned on\nhis left side\"; \"Her world exploded\") as well as sentences which\nsimply make no sense in an MF text (\"The door deliquesced\"; \"I\nspent a year working the monopole magnet mines in the second\nasteroid belt of 61 Cygni\"). This is is also (of course) true at\nthe level of scenes and stories - indeed, SF began with these\nlarger blocks of the unique and worked only gradually toward the\nrhetoric of style, the ability to pack a sentence.\n\nConsider again \"The door deliquesced.\"\n\nThis sentence, from Delany's novel STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS\nOF SAND sets itself explicitly in dialogue with the famous (at\nleast, in-genre) sentence, \"The door dilated,\" from Heinlein's\nnovel BEYOND THIS HORIZON.\n\nHeinlein's sentence has been analyzed at length by a number of\ncritics as a remarkable example of STFnal rhetoric: in three words,\nfor the reader willing and able to do the work to decode it, it\nimplies not only the visual image of a door constructed as an iris,\nbut a discourse on the engineering and construction solutions\nnecessary to make such doors part of an ordinary home. Somewhat\nless clear is a discourse on the kind of society that finds dilating\ndoors more desireable than hinged: are they more secure? do they\nkeep out pollution better? what are the economic implications? etc.\n\nThe point of all of which, of course, is that _none_ of these\ndiscourses are explicit in the text. They exfoliate as the\nreader considers the implication of the sentence, which is\ncasually placed in the middle of a longer scene.\n\nHarlan Ellison, commenting on this sentence, summed it up\nsimply: \"By God, now I _knew_ I was in the future.\"\n\nNow, Delany's sentence, which also implies a similar set of\nvisual imagery and technological and socioeconomic discourses,\nalso operates at the metatextual level to place both his door\nand the society in which it operates into contrast with\nHeinlein's. It isn't necessary to know that, or to have read\nHeinlein, to enjoy STARS IN MY POCKETS...; it is, however,\nnecessary to know how to decode a sentence like \"The door\ndeliquesced\" -- a skill which not all readers possess; it\nmust be learned, in much the same way one must learn the\nskills involved in reading poetry or any other genre with its\nown special tropes.\n\nHeinlein is neither the originary point (obviously) nor the\nterminal point (thank God) of STFnal rhetoric. He is, however,\nits first master; he invented or developed most of the tropes\nby which modern SF signifies its fictive landscapes. John\nCampbell encouraged this and encouraged other writers to learn\nfrom Heinlein's writing. Prior to the advent of Heinlein in\nCampbell's ASTOUNDING, the tropes of SF were crude beyond\nbelief -- to accomplish what \"The door dilated\" accomplishes,\na typical SF writer would bring the story to a screeching\nhalt while he described the functioning in excruciating detail,\nfollowing which either the author or a scientist \"character\"\nmight discourse at length on the engineering and socioeconomic\nbackground of the dilating door: the dreaded Expository Lump,\nalso known as the \"As you doubtless know, Smithers\" speech.\n\nOne aspect of STFnal rhetoric is a kind of literalness not\navailable in MF -- the sentences cited above provide excellent\nexamples; the person who \"turned on his left side\" is\ntransformed, by being in an SF text, from a guy rolling over\nin bed to a cyborg, robot, or android activating some of his\nbody's circuitry. The woman whose world \"exploded\" is turned\nfrom a romance heroine who's just got some bad news to, well,\nPrincess Leia: someone who owns a world and watches it destroyed.\n(\"No! Basketball is a peaceful planet!\") Admittedly, this is\nstill probably bad news...\n\nWhich brings us back, at long last, to William S. Burroughs. Are\nbooks like NOVA EXPRESS \"SF?\"\n\nThis is where I value the fuzziness I insisted on in my\n\"definition.\" Burroughs clearly does _not_ operate in the generic\ndialogue and tradition of SF. Nonetheless, he clearly _does_ use\n_some_ of the \"thematic\" and rhetorical tropes of SF to address\nhis own concerns, which are _not_ typically those of SF. The\ntropes he borrows tend to be pre-Heinlein: in fact, he seems to\nwrite a more sophisticated prose using the primitive tropes of\nan Edgar Rice Burroughs.\n\nThere are several implications here, but perhaps the most\nimportant is that Wm. Burroughs does not use the literalized\nrhetoric of modern SF. Nor, I hasten to point out, does he fall\nback into the realm of hazy metaphor.\n\nThe rhetoric of MF uses a lot of discursive energy describing\nsubjectivity: emotions, mental states, etc., all of which propels\nand enables the use of the \"her world exploded\"-type metaphor.\nMy point here is not pejorative; a good MF writer would use a\nfresh metaphor, but it would still be a metaphor and would still\nexpress subjective states.\n\nSF by contrast stresses objectivity, thus the \"literalness\" of\nmuch SF rhetoric. Again, this is not pejorative; the objectivity\ndrives the possibility of a vast (possibly metaphoric) dialogue\nbetween an imagined world and the \"real\" world, in which the\ndifferance of the two drives an interrogation of the latter --\nwhy are things the way they are? What are the implications?\n\nThe non-STFnal SF of Burroughs simply _does not_ take advantage\nof that possibility. The subject is still primary, but it is\nexternalized and literalized in the horrific worlds he describes.\n\nSomewhere in there I hope I've answered the questions and comments\nI'm nominally replying to!\n\nA few other of your comments and questions, answered in far less\nagonizing detail:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "(In fact, it just occurred to me, by the above definition Ambrose Bierce's \n'The Damned Thing' could also be defined as an SF story, as could many \nothers not normally included in this canon.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Bierce is often cited as a generic ancestor of SF, though on a very\ndifferent trajectory from, say, Verne, Wells, or (ER)Burroughs --\nrather, along a trajectory paralleling that of H.P. Lovecraft and\nEdgar Allan Poe." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And, if Burroughs is not a SF writer in these terms, is this being said \nbecause his work also attempts to meet other objectives? And, if so, it is \npossible for a work to be SF but also _more_ than SF?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This implies a limitation to the possible/potential value of SF per\nse which I categorically reject.\n\nHowever, I certainly agree that a work can be both SF and something\nother than SF." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "In fact, (WSB)'s SF owes more to Edgar Rice Burroughs than to >modern SF," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Oh, to be sure! But if the images are employed by a 'modern' writer such \nas WSB in a different context, might they not take on a contemporary value \nof their own?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Clearly they do. The point, however, was that ERB -- though some of\nhis works had content of a sort which would come to be part of SF --\nwas not an SF writer as such. His early work is closely ancestral to\nSF, but after SF-as-such appeared in the world, he continued on his\nown way and pretty much ignored the developing dialog and tradition\nthat defines the genre _as_ a (critical or writerly) genre. To be\ninfluenced by ERB, then, is not to be influenced by SF at all." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "but even he uses the strategic-deployment-of-details riffs Heinlein \npioneered (especially, but not solely, in NOVA EXPRESS)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm afraid I haven't read enough Heinlein to really understand what you \nmean by this pioneering." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The sentence discussed in detail above is one example. Another\nmuch-discussed example is a trick Heinlein pulled several times, but\nmost notably in STARSHIP TROOPERS: his first-person narrator does\nnot mention his own racial/ethnic history for a long time; the\nreader is, therefore, likely to assume that Johnny is the typical\nwhite hero of an SF adventure novel. Something like 3/4 of the way\nthrough the book, he briefly mentions, in passing, the dark color\nof his skin. Delany (himself black) describes in several places\nthe shock he felt as a young man, realizing that, for several hundred\npages, he's been mentally living in a society where the color of\none's skin is so socially unimportant that it needn't be mentioned.\n\n(A decade later, Delany was told by an editor at Bantam that he\ncouldn't _possibly_ get away with not mentioning in the first few\npages of his novel DHALGREN that the protagonist was not white...\nsome things just don't change.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, sieur, you may very well be right - I've disqualified myself already \nfrom passing specific judgement - but, surely, by the same standard, the \ninvention of another world to comment on this one (Ballard's words, BTW) is \nhardly original to Mr. Heinlein, is it?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That was precisely _not_ my point; the contrast between the worlds\nof Le Guin's novel is very much her own. It is the way in which the\nsocieties of the world are made real that she borrows from the SF\ntradition-and-dialogue." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Ballard is the toughest one, because so much of his SF is in a deliberate \nrejection of Campbell-Heinlein SF/F;" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would guess, once again, that it might be more of a matter of an \nexpansion beyond these parameters rather than a rejection of them per se;" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree with this ... What I had in mind was not that Ballard\nrejects Campbell-Heinlein SF per se so much as its governing\nvalues. He definitely participates, at least through the mid-'70s,\nin the ongoing dialogue.\n\n[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I do agree with your contention that Ballard has used rhetorical and \nthematic devices which were employed by Heinlein and his contemporaries, \nespecially in his earlier work, as you say...although ultimately to a very \ndifferent end. (I find it interesting, BTW, that Ballard's status as an SF \nwriter seems to be unquestioned, in contrast to that of WSB.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ballard is, almost, the inverse of Burroughs. Where Burroughs drives\nthe subject into the objective, Ballard objectifies the subject,\ntreating \"mental states,\" \"emotions,\" etc., as proper objects\nof scientific or pseudo-scientific examination; the subjective\nas such disappears in Ballard's rhetoric. This, I suggest,\nrepresents in essence an intensification and repurposeing of\nthe techniques of Campbell-Heinlein STFnal rhetoric." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "General remarks: firstly, I do apologise to any Heinlein fans whose \nfeathers or feelers I may have ruffled. I am sure that he deserves his \nstature, but unfortunately, I didn't read much Golden Age stuff in my \nvanished youth," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"The Golden Age of science fiction is 13.\"\n -- Isaac Asimov" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and the passage in 'Stranger' I've cited has pretty much put me off \nre-examining him for the present." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Somewhat akin, in my opinion, to giving up on Tolkien because of\n \"Yrch!\" cried Legolas, falling into his own tongue.\n\nBut as you say: Vita brevis. If you don't derive pleasure from\nRAH, don't waste your time reading him." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Re. Manson, please forgive my offhand remarks if they caused offense; \nnevertheless, I am a trifle confused about your correction. I was under \nthe impression that Mr. Manson had read 'Stranger' well before his release \nfrom Terminal Island in 1967." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Many people are. After the murders, this rumor went around.\nHeinlein was very upset by it, and had his attorney look into\nthe matter. The attorney found (or Heinlein claims he did, cf.\nGRUMBLES FROM THE GRAVE) that Manson had never in fact read\nSTRANGER.\n\nSome rumors are very persistent." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At any rate, as I already observed, he was well-misversed enough in the \ntext to name his son Michael Valentine Manson...or are you saying that \nthis did not happen?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Never having read a biography of Manson I have no idea what\nhe named any children he may have fathered, or why, and so would\nnot be so bold as to make that particular statement." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "...the abuse is suggestive, given the nature of the text...it was also \nalleged that the Family referred to some of their murders as \n'discorporations', despite their all-too-tangible and messy nature..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not sure what it's \"suggestive\" of; even if Manson did in fact treat\nSTRANGER as an inspirational text, the only thing this suggests to\nme is that a lunatic can find support for what he wants to do anyway\nin pretty much anything. My own religious tradition includes a\nshameful series of events called \"the Inquisition,\" propelled by\npeople who took the good news of Love and used it as an excuse to\nact on their hate." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "PS: _Every SF writer?_\nLem?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Lem clearly writes outside the dialog/tradition I'm speaking\nof, and in fact criticizes it as-a-whole (excepting, for reasons\nhe makes clear in a few essays, Philip K. Dick)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The Russians?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ditto ditto." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mike Sakasegawa", "address": "john.saxon at verizon.net" }, "date": "2003-04-22T20:44:06+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hello all! I'm new to posting on this list, but have been lurking for a couple of months. I have to say, you people constantly amaze me with your feats of analytical prowess.\n\nIntroductions having been completed, let me get on to content.\n\nBlattid,\n\nI found your post insightful and thorough, but it left me wondering whether GW's works fit very neatly into your SF paradigm. In many of his works he certainly seems to embrace the thematic elements \nHaven't come up with a good Whorl name yet, so I'll sign with:\n\n-Mike Sakasegawa" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2003-04-22T23:44:49+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Cool, blattid.\n My working definition has been: Science fiction is fantasy \nliterature that uses the beliefs of then-present establishment science and \ntechnology to accomplish its fantasy elements.\n Explication: It's fantasy literature because it is not OUR world, \nwhether in the future or in a parallel world or an alternate history. It \nuses the (changeable and changing) beliefs/models/paradigms of current \nestablishment science, such as \"you can't go faster than the speed of \nlight.\" (Of course, there are exceptions; one might right a story in a \nnon-Einsteinian universe building on alternate non-establishment science, \nor in a creationist universe; and there was that excellent novel a few \nyears back, *Celestial Matters* by Richard Garfinkle -- a Lupine treat -- \nthat was set in a Ptolemaic/Platonic universe.) In traditional fantasy, the \nother-worldly aspects are justified in terms of some kind of magic -- \nthough in SF magical elements are sometimes introduced in terms of \n\"psionic\" powers, an aspect of SF devoid of establishment-science hypotheses.\n From there I think your other points follow. Traditional \"magical\" \nfantasy will tend to generate a certain kind of writing, and so does SF.\n The more interesting question, in some ways, is why writers like \nMichael Crichton, and some of Walker Percy's novels, are considered \nmainstream and not SF. I think it has to do mainly with who publishes them \nand how they are marketed.\n FWIW. But how does this strike you?\n\nNutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-23T04:06:08+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Cool, blattid." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thank you." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " My working definition has been: Science fiction is fantasy \nliterature that uses the beliefs of then-present establishment science and \ntechnology to accomplish its fantasy elements.\n Explication: It's fantasy literature because it is not OUR world, \nwhether in the future or in a parallel world or an alternate history." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes ...\n\n... but ...\n\n... _all_ fiction is set in a parallel world or alternate history.\n\nThis is perhaps an intensified way of stating the case, but I\nbelieve it is fundamentally accurate, with the semi-exception of\nhyper-autobiographical fiction like Proust's. Take -- say --\nGONE WITH THE WIND. Even if (and I don't know) Margaret Mitchell\ndid extensive research and got every detail of antebellum,\nwar, and reconstruction Georgian and South Carolingian culture\ncorrect, it's set in an alternate world where there's a place\ncalled \"Tara\" inhabited by a woman named \"Scarlett O'Hara.\" An\ninsignificant difference from our world? Perhaps; but I wouldn't\nbe surprised if, in _that_ world, Jimmy Carter was never elected\ngovernor of Georgia, let alone President of these hyah Newnited\nStates ... the butterfly effect, donchaknow.\n\nFor that matter, historical novels using real characters take\nplace in alternate realities even closer to ours.\n\nThe point is, of course, that all fiction partakes of the\nfantastic. (Mimetic fiction, pretty much alone among the genres,\nis ashamed of its fantastic nature and tries to hide it.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It uses the (changeable and changing) beliefs/models/paradigms of current \nestablishment science, such as \"you can't go faster than the speed of \nlight.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmm. I posit that a lot of SF uses science for more than world-\nbuilding; hard SF in particular uses it as an episteme ... which\nis why most hard SF has such wretched excuses for\ncharacter(ization)s; SF may emphasize the object rather than the\nsubject, but in hard SF, subjectivity is nearly nonexistent,\nand writers like Clement, Niven, and Forward strive for an\nabsolutely objective approach to fiction in a way radically\ndifferent from Ballard's objectification of the subject; where\nBallard treats the subject as an object, these writers simply\nignore it in the hope it will go away.\n\n(Once upon a time I thought that Niven had actually created\nan engaging, interesting character in Ringworld's Louis Wu.\nThen I read the sequel and realized it was an accident.)\n\n(And don't even get me started about Pournelle.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "(Of course, there are exceptions; one might right a story in a \nnon-Einsteinian universe building on alternate non-establishment science, \nor in a creationist universe;" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "... or a universe based on the sephiroth of Kabbala, mayhap?\n\nJust an idea. 8*)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and there was that excellent novel a few years back, *Celestial Matters* by \nRichard Garfinkle -- a Lupine treat -- that was set in a Ptolemaic/Platonic \nuniverse.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I need to look that up. (Quickly adds it to the \"find-me\" list in\nhis PDA.) Thanks for reminding me." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In traditional fantasy, the other-worldly aspects are justified in terms of \nsome kind of magic -- though in SF magical elements are sometimes \nintroduced in terms of \"psionic\" powers, an aspect of SF devoid of \nestablishment-science hypotheses." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh, there's no shortage of establishment-science hypotheses about\n\"psionics.\" They tend to be hypotheses about the honesty and/or sanity\nof people who believe in psi, or purport to.\n\nHey, I'm just sayin', is all ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " From there I think your other points follow. Traditional \"magical\" \nfantasy will tend to generate a certain kind of writing, and so does SF.\n The more interesting question, in some ways, is why writers like \nMichael Crichton, and some of Walker Percy's novels, are considered \nmainstream and not SF. I think it has to do mainly with who publishes them \nand how they are marketed." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, that has to do with my point about the multiordinal and\nmultivalent nature of the term \"SF\" depending on its context. In\npublishing and marketing contexts, \"SF\" -- any genre -- is a\npigeonhole, a way of categorizing books to target certain\nreaderships. Crichton is published in a way that targets those\nwho buy \"best-selling (suspense/adventure) novels,\" the same\nmarket targeted by Tom Clancy. (H'mmm: \"Red October,\" come to\nthink of it, also has a certain STFnal quality to some of its\nthematics and even some of its rhetoric.)\n\nFor that matter you could ask the same question about Vonnegut.\n\nA better question, to my mind, is how it happened that SF began\nregularly appearing on the bestseller lists." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " FWIW. But how does this strike you?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think you have a lot of interesting points here. Obviously, I\ndidn't agree with all of them, but they're all interesting." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus", "address": "zibethicus at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-23T10:51:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Blattid,\n\nThank you for taking the time and trouble to respond so comprehensively. My \nunderstanding is enriched as a consequence of your effort.\n\nAt the risk of staying off-list-topic - tho' not wholly - I feel compelled \nto make some response, tho' I will try to keep it short...\n\n(I also echo your fair warning regarding topicality and length.)\n\nI understand your initial working definition of SF to be, effectively, \nbounded by Gernsback and the didactic urge, and to have evolved into a \n'genre' where it is possible to take linguistic and thematic ventures not \nusually found in MF - to adopt your term.\n\nThank you for clarifying this.\n\nThe example of the deliquescing/dilating door is a useful one for \nunderstanding how the language and concepts of SF differ from those of MF. \nIt would appear, from what I understand you to be saying, that the casual \nassumption that the door dilates without the necessity for invoking the \nExpository Lump is, in itself, one of the major achievements of SF as you \nhave defined it. Do I understand you rightly?\n\nI do remain confused, however, regarding the dichotomy between MF's \nsubjectivity and SF's objectivity...I am currently leafing randomly through \n'Nova Express' in pursuit of an understanding of the distinction...\n\nAnd, in hopefully concise direct response:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Bierce is often cited as a generic ancestor of SF" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ah, well, that would explain it, then..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This implies a limitation to the possible/potential value of SF per se \nwhich I categorically reject." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm sorry; that was not at all what I was trying to suggest. Personally, I \nincline more to Ballard's view that SF is actually \"the main literary \ntradition of the 20th century\" (intro. to 'Crash' again), not to mention the \n21st century...but, again, this is a question of just how the 'tradition' is \nto be defined.\n\nMr. Wolfe's work is a shining instance of the strength and power of \nSF...provided one concedes its membership of the category..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "However, I certainly agree that a work can be both SF and something other \nthan SF." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now, you see, I would have to suggest that BotNS, for instance, is in this \ncategory - one reason being the 'subjectivity' of Severian's examination of \nhis inner being, and its depicted development and growth, throughout the \nwork." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "To be influenced by ERB, then, is not to be influenced by SF at all." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "(bows)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The sentence discussed in detail above is one example." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, but could one not, perhaps, equally say that a sentence such as: \"It \nwas a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen[,]\" \nwas achieving a similar effect of displacement through a similar device?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Something like 3/4 of the way through the book, he briefly mentions, >in \npassing, the dark color of his skin." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Interesting...I missed that the first time around..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That was precisely _not_ my point; the contrast between the worlds of Le \nGuin's novel is very much her own. It is the way in which the societies of \nthe world are made real that she borrows from the SF \ntradition-and-dialogue." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ah, I understand you now! Thank you! But am I to further understand that \n(in saying that Le Guin \"borrows from the SF tradition-and-dialogue\") the \nimplication is that 'The Dispossessed' is _not_ an SF novel in your opinion? \n Or am I merely being obtuse again?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "the subjective as such disappears in Ballard's rhetoric. This, I >suggest, \nrepresents in essence an intensification and repurposeing of the techniques \nof Campbell-Heinlein STFnal rhetoric." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I _did_ quote Ballard's assertion that the task of the author has become \"to \ninvent the reality\". To me, this really summarises one of the reasons why I \nfeel vaguely uncomfortable with the concept of SF as a 'genre' or 'school' \nor 'style' or other category of literature. It would seem to me that \nBallard was both extremely astute and highly prophetic in making this \nstatement over thirty years ago. We are now surrounded in our daily lives \nby the effective impedimenta of what was once 'SF'; computers, spaceflight, \ninvasive monitoring for the dystopian-inclined...\n\nSpeaking with my professed lack of expertise on the subject, might this not \npossibly mean that the present day has become science-fictional in its \nnature? (I mean in the terms of the dilating door, so to speak...)\n\nAnd cannot all contemporary MF literature be considered at least partly \nscience-fictional insofar as it deals with these developments?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Somewhat akin, in my opinion, to giving up on Tolkien because of \n\"Yrch!\" cried Legolas, falling into his own tongue." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But as you say: Vita brevis. If you don't derive pleasure from RAH, don't \nwaste your time reading him." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, no: you have convinced me that I may be doing him an injustice. I will \npencil something of his other than 'Stranger' into my \nreading-list-after-the-current-twenty." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Not sure what it's \"suggestive\" of; even if Manson did in fact treat \nSTRANGER as an inspirational text, the only thing this suggests to me is \nthat a lunatic can find support for what he wants to do anyway in pretty \nmuch anything." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What I meant was that it was suggestive, at least to me, that the book's \npernicious passages regarding sexuality as cited were unusually prone to \nabuse - in the hands of, as you so rightly say, a lunatic or at least a \npsychopath. I _did_ take care to stipulate that I was certain that Mr. \nHeinlein never intended that 'Stranger' should be used in that fashion.\n\nIn any case, I made the connection in an off-hand and facetious moment. I'm \nsure that I may very well have been mistaken again, in any case." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Lem clearly writes outside the dialog/tradition I'm speaking of, and in \nfact criticizes it as-a-whole (excepting, for reasons he makes clear in a \nfew essays, Philip K. Dick)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now I must confess my confusion again; are you saying that you consider Lem \nto not be a SF writer in your definition of the term?\n\n*\n\nGeneral remarks in very short: I think that, as Mike Sakasegawa said \ndirectly after your post, the question of whether Mr. Wolfe can be \ncategorised as SF in these terms is a useful and intriguing one. Looking at \nBotNS, as I've already said, I suspect that the work does not lend itself to \neasy categorisation; for instance, I would guess that the story could still \nbe told if much if not all of the actual advanced technology was omitted \ntherefrom. Many of the concerns of the Book are philosophical and (pardon \nme) ontological and theological and ethical; moreover, in one sense, the \nBook could be argued to be founded on an illogical premise, inasmuch as \naccording to what is known of the theory of evolution, humanity might \nreasonably be expected to have evolved into an entirely new species by the \ntime the Urth reached the age given in the Book (as Olaf Stapledon suggested \nin his works).\n\nOf course, Mr. Wolfe does take care to explain that the _animals_, at least, \nare very different to those of our day, even where they perform similar \nfunctions, and on considering this possibility in the light of your postings \nI can see no very compelling reason to rule out the possibility that the \n'humans' of Severian's day are actually intended to be a different species \nto ourselves...provided we accept your theory that the inhabitants of the \nJungle Garden are actually contemporary residents of Nessus who have been \nreprogrammed...as a theory, this only leaves Pa. Silk's sighting of the \noriginal Palm Sunday during his enlightenment to be explained...but perhaps \nthe physical changes are not profoundly obvious, especially from a distance.\n\nAt any rate, what I found when first reading BotNS was that I was \nexperiencing a suspension of disbelief...the work was not necessarily \nscientifically convincing, but I was not reading it with those questions \nuppermost in my mind. I find it interesting that the publicity for 'Shadow' \nattempts to liken it to the Gormenghast trilogy, among other works, which \nwas written by a poet and artist who was not pursuing scientific \nauthenticity as opposed to suspension of disbelief.\n\n*\n\nForgive me for ranting. Responding to your post has littered the diverse \nhorizontal surfaces of my study/studio with even MORE books, and what passes \nfor my mind with even MORE thoughts...as if I needed more clutter in either. \n Thank you anyway, and my apologies to those whose bandwidth I am, in my \nturn, cluttering...\n\n...back to normal programming...\n\n->Zx<-\n\n\n____________________________________________________________\n\nHEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of \ntheir personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound \nyour own.\n\n- Ambrose Bierce\n____________________________________________________________\n\nThe Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe in\nit. Further, the lowest Rung in Hell is reserved for them that believe in\nit on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't.\n\n- The Honest Book of Truth, The Gospel According to Fred, 3:1\n____________________________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Josh Geller", "address": "dclxvi at dclxvi.best.vwh.net" }, "date": "2003-04-23T13:21:59+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\n... _all_ fiction is set in a parallel world or alternate history." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good point.\n\nPlenty of people never get this.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "matthew.malthouse", "address": "matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk" }, "date": "2003-04-23T14:17:51+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 23/04/2003 14:21:59 Josh Geller wrote:\nOn Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "... _all_ fiction is set in a parallel world or alternate history." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Good point.\n\nPlenty of people never get this." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Is there a practical difference between a fictive universe which - apart\nfrom the fictional narrative - maps exactly against the real and one that\ndoes not?\n\nMatthew" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-23T16:29:07+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Matthew inquires:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Is there a practical difference between a fictive universe which - apart\nfrom the fictional narrative - maps exactly against the real and one that\ndoes not?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Can you show me a fictive universe which maps exactly against the real?\n\nIf so, how can you know it does?\n\n(Note that I am, with courage and restraint, refraining from asking just\nwhat you mean by \"real\" anyway.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2003-04-23T16:41:49+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 11:29 AM 4/23/2003, Blattid wrote:\nMatthew inquires:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Is there a practical difference between a fictive universe which - apart\nfrom the fictional narrative - maps exactly against the real and one that\ndoes not?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Can you show me a fictive universe which maps exactly against the real?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Let me rephrase the question: A difference between a fictive universe that \nthe author intends to correspond to the real world, and a fictive universe \nthat introduces things that are not at present in the real world -- as the \nauthor understands the real world.\n\nNutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-23T17:42:32+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Fair warnings as before.\n\nPa.N. rephrases:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Let me rephrase the question: A difference between a fictive universe that \nthe author intends to correspond to the real world, and a fictive universe \nthat introduces things that are not at present in the real world -- as the \nauthor understands the real world." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, though I still wish to avoide the \"real\" question, I at least\nhave some clue as to how to approach this. Further, I think I can\nmention Wolfe at least once in the process.\n\nShort answer: I regard the difference as one of degree but note\nthat an accumulation of small quantitative differences can be\nqualitatively transformative.\n\nLong answer: I will, for the sake of argument, rephrase the question\nslightly more: instead of \"things that are not in the real world,\"\nlet us speak of \"_types of_ things that are (or may not be) at\npresent, or in the past, in the real world.\" The purpose here is to\navoid excessive reduction; looking at GWTW again, Tara and Scarlett\nO'Hara are obviously \"things that are not in the real world,\" but it\ncan reasonably be claimed that they are _types_ of things that were,\nin the past, in the real world: the Southern Plantation and the\nFeisty Southern Belle With Serious Neurotic Twitches.\n\nOver against that we can put ... well ... THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN,\nwhich contains all sorts of types of things that don't exist and\nprobably never will, from the analeptic alzabo to Baldanders.\n\nOne's MF. One's SF (or \"science fantasy,\" anyway). No argument,\nhere. BOOK is a pretty extreme case, but it makes the point well.\n\nI suggest, though, that the difference, what makes one MF and one\nSF, is less in the \"content\" -- i.e., the words of the text -- than\nit is in the way the words are read, in a Borgesian\nPierre-Menard-ish way.\n\nLet me borrow from Delany again.\n\nSuppose you're reading an anthology of \"the modern short story\"\nand you come across a text that begins: \"One morning, Gregor\nSamsa awoke from troubled dreams to find that he had become a\ngiant insect.\"\n\n[Note: I'm writing at work and don't have the text to hand. This\nis a (hopefully reasonable) paraphrase. And, yes, I know it's\nnot a short story. This is for purposes of demonstration.]\n\nHow do you, reading an MF text, decode this? Most likely, as a\nmetaphor, a comment on alienation, disfiguring disease, etc. As\na reader of MF, you will ask questions about the\n_subject-oriented_ aspects of Samsa's metamorphosis: what it\n_means_ to him, what in his situation this represents, how it\nfeels, how others respond to him, etc. To do otherwise is to miss\nthe point of the MF text. Your reasonable expectation is that the\nauthor will, in the course of the text, explore these\nsubject-oriented questions.\n\nNow, suppose the next book you pick up is a collection of SF\nstories. Remarkably, in this anthology, you also come across a\ntext that begins: \"One morning, Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled\ndreams to find that he had become a giant insect.\"\n\nHow do you, reading an SF text, decode this? Most likely, by\ninquiring into the causes and consequences of the transformation.\nAs a reader of SF, you will ask questions about the\n_object-oriented_ aspects of Samsa's metamorphosis: how it came\nabout, how he can survive under the circumstances (square-cube law\nand all that, y'know), the socioeconomic impact of a giant,\nsentient insect upon society, etc. To do otherwise is to miss the\npoint of an SF text. Your reasonable expectation is that the\nauthor will, in the course of the text, answer at least _some_ of\nthese object-oriented questions.\n\nNote that these are generalizations. The SF writer can in fact\nexplore the subject-oriented questions as well. The MF writer\nmight offer causal mechanisms or consider consequences. (Genre is\nafter all a non-exclusive adjective, not an exclusive and\npigeonholing noun). But in each case, that isn't the _expectation_:\nif they're neglected or passed over lightly, the reader does not\nfeel cheated.\n\n\"Passed over lightly\": Consider Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s STFnal\nmechanisms as an example of object-oriented concerns in MF, and\nthe millimeter-thin \"characterization\" efforts of Arthur C. Clarke\nas an example of subject-oriented concerns in SF. Neither writer is\nthe worse for their shallow and silly answers to questions that are,\nfinally, not the questions their texts are concerned with.\n\nBut if a writer chooses to neglect the concerns that are proper to\nthe genre in which she presents her text, woe, woe, nine times woe\nunto her! A writer who wrote an SF text that began with a\ntransformation like Samsa's and did _not_ explore the question of\nhow it happened -- mind you, she needn't answer the question*, but\nshe _must_ attend to it -- will earn the just wrath of her readers.\n\n-----\n* SF is full of unexplained wonders; perhaps the most blatant\n example would be RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA, a text which is firmly\n STFnal despite its ultimate failure to explain much of anything,\n because it's deeply concerned with the questions it fails to\n answer.\n\n At this point someone will bring up Michael Bishop's \"Rogue\n Tomato.\" Pfui. That's a romp, and a grand one, but is _not_\n SF. Stuff just happens. (I mean, for Pete's sake ... Birds flying\n in the vacuum of space ...)\n-----\n\nWhich brings us, by a commodious vicus of ricorulation, to Wolfe.\n\nWolfe, I suggest, is not only firmly but fussily in the STFnal\ntradition in most of his work, and especially the SUN sequence. While\nthe texts in question are rich in their coverage of the characters'\nsubjective lives, they are ultimately object-oriented; they take\nplace in a universe where the \"meaning\" of things and events is the\nevents themselves, and not how they serve to reflect and comment on\nthe characters' psyches. Further, when presenting what I,\nsubjectively, regard as plainly miraculous, Wolfe seems to take a\nspecial glee in providing an out -- in giving or hinting at a\n\"scientific,\" object-oriented explanation for the events.\n\nThen there's the question of narrative reliability. Of course this\nis\na question of subject, but does not in itself make the text subject-\noriented. The concerns of the text are still in the realm of the\nobject: what happened, why, what are the (physical, socioeconomic)\nconsequences. That Wolfe _also_ explores the realm of the subject\n(that is, the events _mean_ something to and about the characters)\ndoes not change or detract from this: it makes Wolfe a richer writer,\none whose SF is also something else ... but still SF.\n\n(Here we get into theology, btw; I don't want to drag this out in\ndetail, because this _isn't_ a religion list: but it can reasonably\nbe taken that God is pure subject, and over against God we are all\nobjects; the play of subject/object in Wolfe thus becomes very complex\nindeed.)\n\nH'mmm. One last attempt to clarify this subject/object thing and I'll\nquit. By saying a text is \"oriented\" toward one or other side of this\n(highly permeable) bar, I'm asking what it interrogates -- rather,\nwhat the reader interrogates, what questions the reader reasonably\nasks of the text to produce a rich and interesting reading. Asking\nabout the mechanism by which Gregor Samsa is turned into a giant\nblattidaean is approximately as valid as asking why Typhon is such\na bastard. You can ask, but the text won't respond. In both cases,\nthe real concerns of the text are elsewhere. Kafka is concerned with\nSamsa as a subject, and the text repays questions on that level.\nWolfe is concerned with Typhon as an objective presence in Severian's\nworld, and the text repays questions on _that_ level.\n\nWhich is, finally, why readers schooled in the classics of MF find\nsome of SF's finest texts \"impoverished\": they ask the wrong questions\nof the text and are unhappy when the questions go unanswered." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-23T19:05:42+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My reply to Pa.Nutria, I hope, answered Mike Sakesegawa's question,\nand some of ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus' also. But Zibethicus asks other\nquestions I want to address.\n\nUsual warnings apply in the usual way. Yes, there is Lupine content\nsomewhere below. 8*)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I understand your initial working definition of SF to be, effectively, \nbounded by Gernsback and the didactic urge, and to have evolved into a \n'genre' where it is possible to take linguistic and thematic ventures not \nusually found in MF - to adopt your term." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmm. With a repeated insistance that the \"bounding\" is fuzzy, yes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The example of the deliquescing/dilating door is a useful one for \nunderstanding how the language and concepts of SF differ from those of MF. \nIt would appear, from what I understand you to be saying, that the casual \nassumption that the door dilates without the necessity for invoking the \nExpository Lump is, in itself, one of the major achievements of SF as you \nhave defined it. Do I understand you rightly?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "At a first approximation. The point here is somewhat more though;\nit's that the writers of SF have come to assume readers of SF,\nreaders schooled in decoding and unpacking a sentence like \"The\ndoor dilated,\" who will recognize the _implied_ Expository Lump.\n\n(There's an interesting trick some writers, faced with the necessity\nof an EL, sometimes pull: They have one character begin to expose the\nmatter. The character is then interrupted by another, who says, \"Don't\ninsult my intelligence! I know perfectly well that ...\" and continues\nthe exposition. I regard this as an excessively cute wink to the\nreader, the writer intruding on his text and saying, \"Look, I know\nthis is an annoying hunk of exposition, bear with me, okay?\" The late\nIsaac Asimov did this kind of thing far too much.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I do remain confused, however, regarding the dichotomy between MF's \nsubjectivity and SF's objectivity...I am currently leafing randomly through \n'Nova Express' in pursuit of an understanding of the distinction..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, it's been a while since I've read Burroughs, but ... I think\nit's fair to say that, for example, his Venusian jungles are not\nreally about Venusian jungles at all (and in fact frequently get\nbleshed with South American jungles); they're about the experience\nof being in a certain condition that the heat and wet and danger of\nthe jungle represents. Burroughs' early novels are, first and\nforemost, \"about\" a highly subjective matter indeed: the Condition\nof Absolute Need. Addiction in its broadest sense (where addiction\nto drugs is only one example).\n\n[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "This implies a limitation to the possible/potential value of SF per se \nwhich I categorically reject." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm sorry; that was not at all what I was trying to suggest. Personally, I \nincline more to Ballard's view that SF is actually \"the main literary \ntradition of the 20th century\" (intro. to 'Crash' again), not to mention \nthe 21st century...but, again, this is a question of just how the \n'tradition' is to be defined." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You know, my edition of \"Crash\" doesn't seem to have that intro.\nI bought it a looooong time ago. It must have been added in later\n(possibly post-Cronenberg?) editions." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mr. Wolfe's work is a shining instance of the strength and power of \nSF...provided one concedes its membership of the category..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "See the other message." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "However, I certainly agree that a work can be both SF and something other \nthan SF." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now, you see, I would have to suggest that BotNS, for instance, is in this \ncategory - one reason being the 'subjectivity' of Severian's examination of \nhis inner being, and its depicted development and growth, throughout the \nwork." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, yes. As I said, I don't intend the subject/object thing as an\nabsolute, but as a pointer regarding how the text is most \"usefully\"\nread. Note that even when we talk about Severian's personality we're\ninclined to talk about objective matters in relation to it: how the\nHieros (and others?) manipulate spacetime to shape him, for example.\nIn SF, the psyche itself often becomes an object, and projects itself\ninto the \"objective\" world of the text via \"psi\" powers and the like." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "The sentence discussed in detail above is one example." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes, but could one not, perhaps, equally say that a sentence such as: \"It \nwas a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen[,]\" \nwas achieving a similar effect of displacement through a similar device?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. One could and I would. NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, though not actually\nwritten in the SF domain*, is clearly written by someone who has at\nleast paid attention to the questions SF asks, and strives to perform\nsome of the same tasks. If some of it is a tad clumsy -- Orwell does\nindeed stop the book to exposit at times -- nonetheless it's a\nremarkable production, written before the Campbell-Heinlein had\nreally taken off in the domains of SF proper. Then, NINETEEN EIGHTY-\nFOUR is also very much concerned with objective, \"outer\" things --\nit isn't really about Winston Smith; it's about Ingsoc, its primary\nareas of concern are socioeconomic.\n\n-----\n* Incidentally, the fact that an \"outsider\" had written this text\n created a kind of resentment among some SF purists. A good, and\n somewhat funny, attempt to prove that NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR is not\n good SF at all can be found in ASIMOV ON SCIENCE FICTION.\n-----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Something like 3/4 of the way through the book, he briefly mentions, >in \npassing, the dark color of his skin." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Interesting...I missed that the first time around..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Many do; it's very casual indeed." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "That was precisely _not_ my point; the contrast between the worlds of Le \nGuin's novel is very much her own. It is the way in which the societies of \nthe world are made real that she borrows from the SF \ntradition-and-dialogue." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Ah, I understand you now! Thank you! But am I to further understand that \n(in saying that Le Guin \"borrows from the SF tradition-and-dialogue\") the \nimplication is that 'The Dispossessed' is _not_ an SF novel in your \nopinion? Or am I merely being obtuse again?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, I wrote badly. I should have said that Le Guin uses the tools\nof the SF t-and-d; THE DISPOSSESSED is very much part of that ongoing\nconversation. (Delany -- who _will_ keep popping up in my discussions\nof SF-as-genre -- deliberately set one of his novels in dialog with\nTHE DISPOSSESSED -- (TROUBLE ON) TRITON -- by giving it a subtitle\nwhich reflects Le Guin's; though it was mostly-written before he had\nread THE DISPOSSESSED, it addresses many of the same concerns, in a\nradically different way, and so forms part of the same \"thread.\")" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "the subjective as such disappears in Ballard's rhetoric. This, I >suggest, \nrepresents in essence an intensification and repurposeing of the \ntechniques of Campbell-Heinlein STFnal rhetoric." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I _did_ quote Ballard's assertion that the task of the author has become \n\"to invent the reality\". To me, this really summarises one of the reasons \nwhy I feel vaguely uncomfortable with the concept of SF as a 'genre' or \n'school' or 'style' or other category of literature. It would seem to me \nthat Ballard was both extremely astute and highly prophetic in making this \nstatement over thirty years ago. We are now surrounded in our daily lives \nby the effective impedimenta of what was once 'SF'; computers, spaceflight, \ninvasive monitoring for the dystopian-inclined..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. While SF is not oracular, it is prophetic. That is, it does not\n(except occasionally, and by accident) predict the specifics of the\nfuture (_nobody_ predicted the PC revolution), but it does \"speak\nforth\" the possibilities, probabilities, and dangers of the future.\nIn so doing, it addresses, not the future, but the here-and-now (and\n-- if the writer is good or lucky -- the eternal. Books of the hour,\nbooks for the ages). Every decade or so SF needs a kind of revolution,\nbecause many of the futures it's been talking about are no longer\nrelevant to the present world-that-is-the-case." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Speaking with my professed lack of expertise on the subject, might this not \npossibly mean that the present day has become science-fictional in its \nnature? (I mean in the terms of the dilating door, so to speak...)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I suggest reading Thomas M. Disch's excellent (if kind of pissy)\nnonfiction book THE DREAMS OUR STUFF IS MADE OF. He addresses this\nquestion far better than I can in the space of an email." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And cannot all contemporary MF literature be considered at least partly \nscience-fictional insofar as it deals with these developments?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Some does. Some doesn't. Romance novels, for example, generally\ndon't. Technothrillers -- what Crichton, really, writes -- generally\ndo. (An interesting read in this respect is Donna Harraway's essay\n\"A Manifesto for Cyborgs,\" in that it takes massive amounts of the\nmaterial of SF and repurposes it for the subject.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "If you don't derive pleasure from RAH, don't waste your time reading him." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "No, no: you have convinced me that I may be doing him an injustice. I will \npencil something of his other than 'Stranger' into my \nreading-list-after-the-current-twenty." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmm. Your choice. My own feeling is that you probably will have\nthe same experience; no writer is to everyone's taste, and RAH isn't\nto a lot of people's.\n\nTo follow the argument I've been making, you'd be best off with his\nSF of the '30s and '40s.\n\nGiven what I've gathered of your taste, though, I would expect that\nyou'd be most actually _enjoy_ (if you can get hold of it) the\npaperback collection variously titled 6 X H or THE UNPLEASANT PROFESSION\nOF JONATHAN HOAG. Failing that, its contents are, I believe, completely\nencapsulated in the larger and more recent FANTASIES OF RAH." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Not sure what it's \"suggestive\" of; even if Manson did in fact treat \nSTRANGER as an inspirational text, the only thing this suggests to me is \nthat a lunatic can find support for what he wants to do anyway in pretty \nmuch anything." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "What I meant was that it was suggestive, at least to me, that the book's \npernicious passages regarding sexuality as cited were unusually prone to \nabuse - in the hands of, as you so rightly say, a lunatic or at least a \npsychopath." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "OK, I can buy that. Power fantasies -- which STRANGER very much is\n(at least at some levels) -- tend to attract such people." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Lem clearly writes outside the dialog/tradition I'm speaking of, and in \nfact criticizes it as-a-whole (excepting, for reasons he makes clear in a \nfew essays, Philip K. Dick)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now I must confess my confusion again; are you saying that you consider Lem \nto not be a SF writer in your definition of the term?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, I'm not saying that, or not exactly. Back to the repeated use\nof \"fuzzily bounded\" in my original definition. Lem's in the fuzzy\narea. He has clearly read a lot of Anglo-American SF, and his\nparticipation in the \"dialog\" is as a kind of iconoclast who doesn't\naccept many of its terms." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Looking at BotNS, [...] I would guess that the story could still be told if \nmuch if not all of the actual advanced technology was omitted therefrom." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmm. I don't think that _this_ story could be told, but a story that\nwas pretty similar at the level of plot could be told in a purely\nfantastic realm, certainly. However, it would be very different indeed\nin its (as you rightly observe) ontological concerns. Because it takes\nplace in a possible future of our world -- as Wolfe calls it, the\n\"do-nothing\" future -- tBotNS exists in a particular kind of dialogic\ntension _with_ our world.\n\nTBotNS takes place, actually, in a very specific kind of possible\nfuture -- one that we might call \"the mythic future\" in the sense\nthat LORD OF THE RINGS and the Arthurian cycle take place in \"the\nmythic past,\" an ahistorical past whose relation to our present is\nepistemic rather than ontic, if you follow me. So too with the SUN\nfuture; we are, I believe, its \"mythic past.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Many of the concerns of the Book are philosophical and (pardon me) \nontological and theological and ethical; moreover, in one sense, the Book \ncould be argued to be founded on an illogical premise, inasmuch as \naccording to what is known of the theory of evolution, humanity might \nreasonably be expected to have evolved into an entirely new species by the \ntime the Urth reached the age given in the Book (as Olaf Stapledon \nsuggested in his works)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, some species stay (at least roughly) the same for a longish\ntime: cockroaches (h'mm, the blattidae seem to be coming up in this\nconversation today, don't they?), sharks, coelocanths, etc. In\naddition, given the genetic engineering hinted at in some of the\nrebuilt or recreated animals (arctothers, destriers, etc.), it's\nclear that, for a long time, humanity in the SUN future had serious\ncontrol of genetics, which would in turn imply the ability to control\nits own genetic destiny. Even in the decadent times of the Autarchy,\nbiological technology far beyond what we can do today is clearly\nstill possible to those with the will and the resources: viz.\nBaldanders. And since this _is_, as just noted, Wolfe's conception\nof the \"do-nothing\" future, it seems reasonable to supposse that\nhumanity, by and large, preserved its genetic identity rather than\nmucking about with it or letting evolution have its way.\n\nConclusion: I don't think the premise in question is particularly\nillogical, given the SUN world's deeper premises." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Of course, Mr. Wolfe does take care to explain that the _animals_, at \nleast, are very different to those of our day, even where they perform \nsimilar functions," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He also takes care to explain that many of them are human creations.\nSee above." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and on considering this possibility in the light of your postings I can see \nno very compelling reason to rule out the possibility that the 'humans' of \nSeverian's day are actually intended to be a different species to \nourselves..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is possible but kind of a \"so what?\" hypothesis. Since we have\nno specific differences to point at, they're human enough for purposes\nof psychological \"identification\" by the reader." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "provided we accept your theory that the inhabitants of the Jungle Garden \nare actually contemporary residents of Nessus who have been \nreprogrammed...as a theory, this only leaves Pa. Silk's sighting of the \noriginal Palm Sunday during his enlightenment to be explained...but perhaps \nthe physical changes are not profoundly obvious, especially from a \ndistance." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not just Palm Sunday. Didn't he also see the Crucifixion?\n\nActually, the later SUN books might benefit from us supposing that\nthe \"humans\" aboard the Whorl (and possibly on Urth) have been\ngenetically engineered in a way that makes them more subject to\ncertain kinds of intrusion by dictators -- that would give us at\nleast a vague way of explaining the uploading/downloading of\npersonalities thorugh the eyes!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At any rate, what I found when first reading BotNS was that I was \nexperiencing a suspension of disbelief...the work was not necessarily \nscientifically convincing, but I was not reading it with those questions \nuppermost in my mind." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmm. Really? I found that in my first reading I was _fascinated_\nby object-oriented questions, from the socioeconomics of the Guilds,\nthe Autarch, etc. -- regarding which, if I'm not mistaken, Wolfe\ngives us a tantalizingly brief appendix, or maybe it was a chapter\nin CASTLE OF THE OTTER? -- to the ...\n\nOh, hell. Here's a great example of the object level, and Wolfe's\nuse of STFnal language tricks: the Mountains. When Severian first\nspeaks of heading for \"the mountains,\" most readers will visualize\nsomething like the Andes, the Alps, or the Appalachians, no? Then\nas we learn about the depleted nature of the Urth, and Severian\nbegins to travel away from Thrax, we have the image of these huge\ntrash heaps. Finally, we get to the true \"Mountains,\" and they're\nbluidy fookin great monumental sculptures. Gaaaah! The point here\nis that we've been forced to radically revise our definition of\nwhat the word \"mountain\" means in this culture twice." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I find it interesting that the publicity for 'Shadow' attempts to liken it \nto the Gormenghast trilogy, among other works, which was written by a poet \nand artist who was not pursuing scientific authenticity as opposed to \nsuspension of disbelief." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "(Why is scientific authenticity opposed to suspension of disbelief?\nScientific authenticity is, rather, a tool in service of suspension\nof disbelief.)\n\nI don't recall those comparisons, but it's an interesting pairing.\nBoth deal with decadant societies in vast crumbling edifices, where\none's role is predetermined from birth, and feature principal\ncharacters who rebel against their roles. H'mmm." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Forgive me for ranting." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rant on, friend. This has been a most interesting conversation for\nme also, and apparently for several others who've jumped in." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jason Ingram", "address": "j_ingram at mac.com" }, "date": "2003-04-23T19:07:40+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think there are problems with fetishizing the \"real\" in this \nsense--reading old anthropology, or even contemporary historical \naccounts, presents interpretations of reality that are less true in \nsome respects than fiction. Fiction might provide a better account of \nsubjective experiences than the technical discursive style employed in \nmuch non-fictional writing (e.g. attempts to use stream of \nconsciousness writing to \"map\" the process of thought with more \nfidelity than journalistic descriptions or historical 'black box' \naccounts).\n\nOf course, fiction *is* fictional, and usually doesn't purport to be an \naccurate description of something that has actually happened, but I \ndon't think that positing the possibility of a one-to-one \ncorrespondence with some reality (whether transcendent or immanent) is \na good starting point.\n\nExamining the *function* of discourses might be helpful. Sorry if I'm \nbeing cryptic; I'm frantically trying to finish up a project.\n\n (I don't exactly have a dog in this fight, but I prefer \"speculative \nfiction\" as a designation. I would feel like Terry Eagleton does when \nhe tries to define \"literature\" were I to attempt to define SF.)\n\nSepia" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wednesday, April 23, 2003, at 09:29 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nMatthew inquires:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Is there a practical difference between a fictive universe which - \napart\nfrom the fictional narrative - maps exactly against the real and one \nthat\ndoes not?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Can you show me a fictive universe which maps exactly against the real?\n\nIf so, how can you know it does?\n\n(Note that I am, with courage and restraint, refraining from asking \njust\nwhat you mean by \"real\" anyway.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-23T19:44:14+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sepia writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think there are problems with fetishizing the \"real\" in this \nsense--reading old anthropology, or even contemporary historical accounts, \npresents interpretations of reality that are less true in some respects \nthan fiction. Fiction might provide a better account of subjective \nexperiences than the technical discursive style employed in much \nnon-fictional writing (e.g. attempts to use stream of consciousness writing \nto \"map\" the process of thought with more fidelity than journalistic \ndescriptions or historical 'black box' accounts)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "...taken to its (logical?) conclusion, this line of thought may\nlead us to conclude that _all_ texts are in some important sense\nfiction, that \"history,\" \"biography,\" \"corporate annual reports,\"\n\"scientific papers,\" etc., all describe fictive \"genres.\"\n\nIn the case of corporate reports, I'll gladly concede the point. 8*)\n\nWell: No text completely or perfectly reflects \"reality.\" The texts\nwe call nonfiction are perhaps more revealing in the (often relevant)\naspects of \"reality\" they omit than the ones they include. This is\nparticularly revelatory of the author's purpose or agenda.\n\nBut ... well, I just finished reading the two volumes (so far)\nof Morris' biography of Theodore Roosevelt. In what sense is this\n\"fiction?\" It selects details. It speculates, but attempts to make\nclear where speculation is taking place. I just don't know." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Of course, fiction *is* fictional, and usually doesn't purport to be an \naccurate description of something that has actually happened," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ummm. Not entirely true ... consider Proust again. Is _Remembrance\nof Things Past_ really more fictional than the average text of history\nor biography? Why or why not?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "but I don't think that positing the possibility of a one-to-one \ncorrespondence with some reality (whether transcendent or immanent) is a \ngood starting point." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A starting point for, uh, what?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Examining the *function* of discourses might be helpful." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think this is not entirely alien to my idea that suggestion (in\nNYRSF last year, and more than hinted at in this ongoing discussion)\nthat the most important difference between SF and MF is what the\nreader expects." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " (I don't exactly have a dog in this fight, but I prefer \"speculative \nfiction\" as a designation. I would feel like Terry Eagleton does when he \ntries to define \"literature\" were I to attempt to define SF.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is why I prefer the term SF. Like MF, it's ambiguous; it\ncan contain both \"science\" and \"speculative\" fiction ... not to\nmention San Francisco. 8*)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jason Ingram", "address": "j_ingram at mac.com" }, "date": "2003-04-23T20:33:48+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree with most of Blattid's response. A couple of clarifications:\n\nBlattid writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well: No text completely or perfectly reflects \"reality.\" The texts\nwe call nonfiction are perhaps more revealing in the (often relevant)\naspects of \"reality\" they omit than the ones they include. This is\nparticularly revelatory of the author's purpose or agenda.\n\nBut ... well, I just finished reading the two volumes (so far)\nof Morris' biography of Theodore Roosevelt. In what sense is this\n\"fiction?\" It selects details. It speculates, but attempts to make\nclear where speculation is taking place. I just don't know." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I would use a different metaphor than that of a mirror reflecting \nreality. Perhaps a lens or filter. I wouldn't say that biographies \nare necessarily fiction, but rather that they fail the (misleading) \ntest of \"correspondence with reality\" in *some* respects. For \ninstance: representation of thoughts, anachronistic terminology, \nsmoothing out the ambiguity facing historical agents. Not that lists \nof facts compiled into a coherent narrative progression and centered on \nthe life of an important individual lack value; far from it. But \nFernand Braudel writes history in a completely different vein; instead \nof arguing that his historical approach is more--or less--accurate, it \nseems more productive to focus on what useful aspects his approach \nreveals (as well as what it may conceal)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Ummm. Not entirely true ... consider Proust again. Is _Remembrance\nof Things Past_ really more fictional than the average text of history\nor biography? Why or why not?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I would guess that Proust's quasi-autobiogaphy does not present certain \ntruth claims characteristic of histories and autobiographies. These \nclaims are largely implicit and tacit; conventions differ. I wouldn't \nrate these differences along a continuum of \"more or less fictional.\" \nNaturalistic fiction might claim to be a \"more accurate\" depiction of \nreality than journalistic accounts; I think this is a useful \ndistinction that Blattid points to, and that I try to tap into by \ntalking about the function of discourses. A bit more on this below.\n\n(I write, and Blattid responds:)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "but I don't think that positing the possibility of a one-to-one \ncorrespondence with some reality (whether transcendent or immanent) \nis a good starting point." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A starting point for, uh, what?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Discussion and analysis. Although I probably should have avoided the \nlanguage of starting points and such. So: Starting out by classifying \ngenres in terms of their correspondence to truth may not be that useful \n(e.g. Math and propositional logic and Holy texts correspond most \nclosely to reality; economic texts and statistics and engineering \njournals are second in rank; history and travel guides and maps are \nthird; biology, philosophy and biography are fourth; news reports and \ndictionaries are fifth; MF sixth; SF seventh; political speeches \neighth; lovers' pleas and poetry last). It's not useless, but it \nadopts a problematic view of reality.\n\nAs I said, I think we essentially agree.\n\nSepia" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-23T22:12:45+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sepia ends by writing:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As I said, I think we essentially agree." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think you're right, and so will cut to a few points where ...\nwell, we don't necessarily _dis_agree but perhaps emphasize\ndifferent aspects. And I have some serious unanswered questions." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would use a different metaphor than that of a mirror reflecting reality. \nPerhaps a lens or filter." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Prism, mirror, lens. The apparently obligatory Delany reference for\nthis note." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I wouldn't say that biographies are necessarily fiction, but rather that \nthey fail the (misleading) test of \"correspondence with reality\" in *some* \nrespects." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmm. At this point I have to ask the questions I've been unasking\nthroughout this discussion. I don't like these questions, I suspect\nthem of being inherently unanswerable. But:\n\nCorrespondence with ... what?\n\nAnd what does \"correspond\" mean in this context?\n\nUnless and until someone answers those questions, which I don't\nsee anyone doing real soon, any \"correspondence with reality test\"\nseems to me not only misleading, but meaningless.\n\nThis isn't sophomore posing; I know intuitively what I mean when\nI talk about reality. Phil Dick probably had the best answer:\n\"What doesn't go away when I ignore it.\" (Or words pretty similar.)\nBut that's not particularly useful for testing against.\n\nA text is (must I really say this?) a shaped thing, shaped for\nsome purpose(s). A Republican and a Marxian could write histories\nof the same period, which would have almost nothing in common,\neach with the highest concern for \"accuracy\" and \"correspondence\nto reality.\" Each will doubtless consider the other to have written\ninaccurate histories with very little \"correspondence to reality.\"\nCan we actually say that either of them is \"right\"? (Well, yes, I\nsuppose we can, if we're Republicans or Marxians.) With the best\nintent, the two will write books about very different \"realities,\"\nbecause they _live_ in very different realities.\n\nH'mmm. Another disclaimer seems necessary here: I do in fact believe\nin an absolutely real, objective world. But I am quite certain that\nnone of us perceives it, as such. The Marxian and the Republican,\nhard-headed realists both, perceive it in such different terms that\nI can't believe either of them is \"right,\" and, alas, can't convince\nmyself that anyone else is either.\n\nAll of which is ... I think ... very relevant indeed to Wolfe and\nhis \"unreliable narrators.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would guess that Proust's quasi-autobiogaphy does not present certain \ntruth claims characteristic of histories and autobiographies." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think I agree with this. And would add that I think it makes\ncertain (implicit) truth claims _not_ characteristic of histories\nand (auto)biographies." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "These claims are largely implicit and tacit; conventions differ. I \nwouldn't rate these differences along a continuum of \"more or less \nfictional.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, not a linear continuum, anyway. I think it's \"continuous\"\nin that there isn't a quantized measure of \"fictionality,\" but\nnot linear in that there are multiple dimensions of truth/fictionality.\nAsking whether \"Temps Perdu\" is \"more\" fictional than, say, Carter's\nbiography of Proust is kind of like asking whether twenty kilograms\nis greater or less than five cubic meters.\n\nPerhaps it's time to introduce the distinction between the factual,\nthe real, and the true into the discussion? Anyone want to try to\nshave that particular barber?\n\n(Personally, I find \"fact/truth\" to be a particularly useful\ndistinction: e.g., I will happily call the Genesis accounts of\nCreation, with all their intercontradictions, _true_, but not by\nany means _factual_. But it's pointless to talk about whether\nthe account is \"real\" ... obviously, if accounts can be \"real,\"\nthen it's a \"real\" account. We can encounter it in the world.\n\nBut try _defining_ those terms usefully.)\n\n\n[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Starting out by classifying genres in terms of their correspondence to \ntruth may not be that useful [...] It's not useless, but it adopts a \nproblematic view of reality." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What view of \"reality\" is not problematic?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jason Ingram", "address": "j_ingram at mac.com" }, "date": "2003-04-24T00:33:36+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Blattid raises some good points. I'll try to address one.\n\nBlattid:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "H'mmm. At this point I have to ask the questions I've been unasking\nthroughout this discussion. I don't like these questions, I suspect\nthem of being inherently unanswerable. But:\n\nCorrespondence with ... what?\n\nAnd what does \"correspond\" mean in this context?\n\nUnless and until someone answers those questions, which I don't\nsee anyone doing real soon, any \"correspondence with reality test\"\nseems to me not only misleading, but meaningless." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If I say that Texas is smaller than Rhode Island, my statement doesn't, \non face, correspond with reality. Similarly, stating that water boils \nat 30 degrees Centigrade doesn't correspond with reality. This leaves \nunanswered the question of what \"reality\" is.\n\nI think it's meaningful, useful, and often necessary to talk about \nhistorical accuracy even though I would argue that perspective and a \nhost of other factors tend to make common-sense discussions of \n\"objective facts\" misleading, if not meaningless. Different levels of \nanalysis: objectivity is a myth, but I don't want news reporters to be \nexcessively biased.\n\nThe bogeyman of positivism lurks in the background, along with early \nattempts to come up with a neutral language that could allow \nunambiguous communication. The ideal was to develop a language with a \none-to-one correspondence between words and things. Possibly a \nstraw-dog.\n\nI think I lean closer towards a view of reality as a construction than \nI do towards a notion that there is a really real reality out there, \neven if we can't attain true knowledge of it (Kant's approach). So, \nI'm not partial to using \"correspondence with reality\" as a framework \nfor cataloguing writing. Prism/lens, I suppose.\n\nI'll defer discussion of how different conceptions of \"reality\" might \nbe more or less problematic. One small reason I like Wolfe so much is \nthat he leaves plenty of space open for interpretation, and yet also \ndoes a very good job of crafting a naturalistic style. Many \nprotagonists are also authors, who disseminate their work across the \nuniverse. Their styles differ, and are appropriate to the situation. \nHorn conceals some information from the reader because his papers might \nbe read by enemies, for instance.\n\nSepia" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "matthew.malthouse", "address": "matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk" }, "date": "2003-04-24T07:56:35+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 23/04/2003 17:29:07 Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nMatthew inquires:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Is there a practical difference between a fictive universe which - apart\nfrom the fictional narrative - maps exactly against the real and one\nthat\ndoes not?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Can you show me a fictive universe which maps exactly against the real?\n\nIf so, how can you know it does?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "When a character in a Ruth Rendell thriller walks a London street near my\nhome I can too. When Graves' Claudius refers to the Sybiline prophesies I\ncan recall the cave complex of the Cumean Sybil I visited in February.\nTaking a plane or driving car are possible.\n\nWhile character and narrative might in varying degrees be creations of the\nauthor their milieu is something we can experience.\n\nBut tracing Severian's walk through Nessus, buying a copy of A Lancre\nWitch's Cookbook direct from the Guild of Engravers, getting to work by\ntransporter or taking a holiday on a GSV... these are somewhat out of\nreach.\n\nWorlds with deliquescing doors and worlds with hinges.\n\nMatthew" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gareth Jelley", "address": "gjelley at btopenworld.com" }, "date": "2003-04-24T13:14:55+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \nCan you show me a fictive universe which maps exactly against the real?\n\nIf so, how can you know it does?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But there are differing degrees of 'mapping', if you see what I mean. I\nhighly 'realist' or 'naturalistic' narrative like an Old Norse saga is going\nto map its fictive world far more closely to what it knows as the 'real'\nworld than other narratives that have no interest in being at realistic or\nnaturalistic...\n\nClearly, you can never have a completely 'real' representation of a world in\na narrative (whether it be a fictional or non-fictional narrative for that\nmatter) because it will always be a 'representation' of the thing, not the\nthing itself; but clearly some fictions are trying far harder to map onto\nthe real world than others...\n\nBest Wishes,\n\nG." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-24T17:13:29+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Me:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Correspondence with ... what?\nAnd what does \"correspond\" mean in this context?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sepia:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If I say that Texas is smaller than Rhode Island, my statement doesn't, on \nface, correspond with reality. Similarly, stating that water boils at 30 \ndegrees Centigrade doesn't correspond with reality. This leaves unanswered \nthe question of what \"reality\" is." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Actually, I think what it fails to correspond with is fact. Reality,\ntruth, fact: three different concepts that need to be distinguished\nclearly.\n\nSomething that can be stated compactly sense and can be verified (or\nfalsified) by empirical means is fact (or fallacy). \"Water boils\nat 100C\" is a near-fact; it becomes a fact if you add some conditions\n-- for example, it's verifiable that water boils at 100C, in a\nstandard atmosphere, at sea-level pressure. \"Rhode Island is bigger\nthan Texas\" is a fallacy for most meanings of \"big,\" but it really\nwants a dimension: \"has a greater surface area,\" \"population,\" etc.,\nto make it verifiable/falsifiable.\n\nSomething that compactly states the experience of our existence is truth.\n\"Water boils at 100C\" isn't really a truth, we don't experience\nthings that way. \"Boiling water is hot enough to scald you\" is a\ntruth. The relative sizes of Rhode Island and Texas aren't really\nsomething most of us experience unless we're given to long road\ntrips, and have little to do with \"truth.\"\n\n\"Reality,\" now ... perhaps that's what you verify and falsify\nagainst, that's what we have experience of. Or do we? I have\nexperiences in a dream; are they experiences of \"reality\"? (Mind\nyou, I don't question whether they're \"real\" experiences.) How\ncan we classify such experiences -- if indeed we can at all?\n\nI suggest that \"reality\" falls under the ban of Wittgenstein's\nseventh proposition.\n\nLet's drag Wolfe back into this, shall we?\n\nIn the discursive world of tBotNS, these are facts: Severian is\npricked by a rose. He recognizes the thorn as the Claw. He has\ncertain insights. He takes his boots off and throws them into\nthe water.\n\nIn the same discursive world (and, I believe, in ours) this is\ntruth: Everything is sacred because it comes from the hand of\nthe Creator.\n\nBut what, in that discursive world, is _real_?\n\nWe get into a cateogry error when we use the concept of \"reality\"\nin discussing a fictional text -- that is, when we discuss any text\nat the level of fiction. The world of discourse is precisely _not_\n\"real\" -- though the text which embodies the discourse clearly is a\n\"real\" text. (But is the discourse, is any discourse, \"real?\" What\ndoes it mean to call a discourse \"real?\")\n\nOne difference between fact and truth is that you can alter fact\nat will in creating discursive worlds, and remain in good faith with\nthe text and the (hypothetical, hypostesized) reader; if you alter\ntruth, you enter into a condition of bad faith with the reader, the\ntext, or both." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think it's meaningful, useful, and often necessary to talk about \nhistorical accuracy even though I would argue that perspective and a host \nof other factors tend to make common-sense discussions of \"objective facts\" \nmisleading, if not meaningless." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Au contraire, I suggest that \"common sense\" is the only meaningful\nway to discuss \"fact.\" We can only speak of fact in the realm of the\nsensory, what we sense in common, what we can empirically test and\nagree on -- the consensual. Anything else fails the test of \"fact.\"\nPure \"objectivity\" may be a chimera, but we can choose to attend\nprimarily to the objective (or the subjective).\n\n\"Historical accuracy...\" in fiction? If a historical account is\nalways biassed, then how much more is history-in-acknowledge-fiction?\nFiction is not -- pace Gernsback -- a learning pill, we don't read or\nwrite it to learn or teach scientific or historical or other facts;\nit does however serve didactic purposes. If I read a novel where the\nHolocaust never happened, am I reading an alternate history, or a piece\nof MF written by someone who subscribes to the theories of Aryan Nation?\n\nHow can I know the difference?\n\n(Or: Might it be -- would it even be possible for someone to write --\nan intelligent and mature novel which is neither, a conspiracy novel\non the level of FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM or, less grandiosely, ILLUMINATUS!,\nwhich takes as its premise that the Holocaust _was_ a huge\nconspiratorial fraud?)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Different levels of analysis: objectivity is a myth, but I don't want news \nreporters to be excessively biased." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Since all reporters are, willy-nilly, biassed, I prefer a reporter\nwho is open about her bias." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The bogeyman of positivism lurks in the background, along with early \nattempts to come up with a neutral language that could allow unambiguous \ncommunication. The ideal was to develop a language with a one-to-one \ncorrespondence between words and things. Possibly a straw-dog." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Unless one were to create a language with an infinite vocabulary,\nit's not merely a straw-dog but a chimera. I have little truck with\npositivism, but that doesn't mean we need to throw objectivity out\nthe window. \"I cannot achieve perfection; but, I can choose to serve\nperfection.\" Similarly: I cannot achieve true objectivity in my\nutterances, but I can choose to direct my utterances to the object." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think I lean closer towards a view of reality as a construction" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I guess the question I want to ask of this view is, what was there\nbefore language existed to construct \"reality\" from?\n\nDoes (say) a dog not exist in a reality? A planarian?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "One small reason I like Wolfe so much is that he leaves plenty of space \nopen for interpretation, and yet also does a very good job of crafting a \nnaturalistic style." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Complete agreement." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Many protagonists are also authors, who disseminate their work across the \nuniverse." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "? ? ?\n\nSeverian does this. Who else? Well, Horn disseminates his work\nacross Blue, as do his sons; but Weer and Latro write purely for\nthemselves. Holly Hollander, I suppose, would like to disseminate\nhers." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Their styles differ, and are appropriate to the situation. Horn conceals \nsome information from the reader because his papers might be read by \nenemies, for instance." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think one of my favorite things about Wolfe is his tendency to\ninvent a new style for every novel. You'd never read a page of\nHeinlein and not know right away, \"This is Heinlein.\" When a\nnew Wolfe novel comes out I have to learn how to read him all\nover again." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-24T17:41:20+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Blattid:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Can you show me a fictive universe which maps exactly against the real?\nIf so, how can you know it does?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Matthew:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "When a character in a Ruth Rendell thriller walks a London street near my\nhome I can too. When Graves' Claudius refers to the Sybiline prophesies I\ncan recall the cave complex of the Cumean Sybil I visited in February.\nTaking a plane or driving car are possible.\n\nWhile character and narrative might in varying degrees be creations of the\nauthor their milieu is something we can experience." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It seems to me that you are saying here that persons (characters)\nand events (narrative) are not part of \"the real,\" but places\n(streets and caves) and inanimate objects (planes and cars) are.\nAm I understanding you correctly in this?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But tracing Severian's walk through Nessus, buying a copy of A Lancre\nWitch's Cookbook direct from the Guild of Engravers, getting to work by\ntransporter or taking a holiday on a GSV... these are somewhat out of\nreach.\n\nWorlds with deliquescing doors and worlds with hinges ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This reverts to the subect/object orientation of SF/MF. SF expends\nmuch of it discursive energy on the level of the object, creating\nand analyzing things that do not exist in the \"consensus\" world. MF\nneed not do this and uses more of its discursive energy creating\nand analyzing the subjectivity of characters. But the subjects of\nattention and analysis in MF are no more (or less) \"real\" than the\nobjects of attention and analysis in SF; though one could reasonably\nclaim, I suppose, that they represent a kind of thing that exists\nin the consensus world, where deliquescing doors and transporters\ndo not ..." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-24T17:45:37+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Me:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Can you show me a fictive universe which maps exactly against the real?\nIf so, how can you know it does?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Gareth (I reverse the order of your paragraphs to come to my point more\nquickly):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Clearly, you can never have a completely 'real' representation of a world \nin\na narrative (whether it be a fictional or non-fictional narrative for that\nmatter) because it will always be a 'representation' of the thing, not the\nthing itself; but clearly some fictions are trying far harder to map onto\nthe real world than others..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I suppose the word \"exact\" is what prompted my question. Obviously it\ndoes not mean that \"everything\" in the \"real\" (consensus) is reepresented\nin the text; that would require an infinite text. Does it mean perhaps\nthat everything described in the fictional text represents something that\nactually exists in the \"real\" world? And if so, just how exactly does it\nhave to represent that something in order to be an \"exact\" mapping? I\ndon't grok this." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But there are differing degrees of 'mapping', if you see what I mean. I\nhighly 'realist' or 'naturalistic' narrative like an Old Norse saga is \ngoing\nto map its fictive world far more closely to what it knows as the 'real'\nworld than other narratives that have no interest in being at realistic or\nnaturalistic..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Degrees of representation I have no problem with. It's this \"exact\" thing\nthat gave me heartburn." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Craig Brewer", "address": "cnbrewer at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2003-04-24T18:03:29+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I know this is a rather unphilosophical take on what\nis a fascinating issue, but it seems that the issue of\n\"real\" worlds in fiction is much more of a\nhistorically generic issue.\n\nI'm thinking particularly of the rise of the novel and\nits separation from medieval romance. One of the large\ndifferences between romance and novel was the issue of\nstory vs. allegory. Romance itself had always been\ncaught between the two and in the 17th and 18th\ncenturies, people would that they were writing\n\"novels\" rather than \"romances\" in the medieval sense\nlargely because of its associations with allegory. So\neven when you had early gothic novels like _The Castle\nof Otranto_, people would call it a novel rather than\n\"supernatural romance\" because it was more \"real\" than\nan allegory...even though it had ghosts and statues\ncoming to life, etc.\n\nMy point, with that one example, is that fiction\n(which is already \"false\" to the extent that it's\nintentionally made up) may find its degree of reality\nnot through correspondence to something \"out there\"\nbut by the way it corresponds to traditions of writing\nthat have their own assumptions about reality. That\nmay help explain why Vonnegut and W. Burroughs can get\naway with saying that they don't do sf when their\nalternate worlds are often more removed from \"everyday\nreality\" than a lot of, say, Ellison's work (imho).\nThey put (or are put) in a \"literary\" genre rather\nthan \"sf,\" both of which are genres with less than a\ncentury of history as individual genres themselves.\n\nCraig" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Craig Brewer", "address": "cnbrewer at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2003-04-24T18:15:34+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "More musings: If you've never read it, I highly\nsuggest Samuel R. Delany's \"The Jewel Hinged Jaw.\" I\ndon't know if it's still in print or not, but he has a\nfascinating discussion of what makes even a single\nsentence \"science fictioned\" rather than\n\"mainstreamed.\" He has a wonderful reading of the\nsingle sentence \"The red sun is high, the blue low\" in\nwhich he explains how sf forces the reader the create\nhis image of the world of the story, not necessarily\nfrom the ground up, by taking the stock of meanings\nand expectations we normally have and rearranging them\nin new and unexpected ways.\n\nWe could argue about whether such a method is distinct\nto sf (I doubt that it is), but it's always been a\nhelpful discussion for me to think of sf as a\nrearrangement of expectations/meanings which, real or\nnot, I've just become used to. The idea that each word\ncorrects my previous image has always been compelling.\nDelany puts it this way: \"A 60,000 word novel is one\npicture corrected 59,999 times.\" A catchy phrase." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Chris", "address": "rasputin_ at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-24T18:32:11+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From Blattid's excellent, intelligent, and well-written post I pick out only \nthe part I think I disagree with:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We get into a cateogry error when we use the concept of \"reality\"\nin discussing a fictional text -- that is, when we discuss any text\nat the level of fiction. The world of discourse is precisely _not_\n\"real\" -- though the text which embodies the discourse clearly is a\n\"real\" text. (But is the discourse, is any discourse, \"real?\" What\ndoes it mean to call a discourse \"real?\")" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I would say that this is not to be taken for granted. Philosophically \nspeaking the idea that the world is itself a type of text goes back quite a \nways; if you're a postmodernist, it's almost inescapable. I wish I were at \nhome to provide some examples, not because they're needed so much as that \nthey're simply beautiful and eloquent. My favorite is from Mallarme, but you \ncould as easily use an example from Wolfe himself: Horn, in IGJ (I think) \nhas the insight while the Outsider is standing behind him that, to the \noutsider, *everything he called \"real\" was a kind of story*.\n\nOf course, when Wolfe did that he's doing more than mentioning a \nphilosophical or religious outlook, he's also throwing in a \nmoebius-strip-of-a-plot-twist. I still have unresolved \"issues\" as far as \nthat whole chapter goes, but that's nothing new.\n\nIn any event, what I'm getting at is that you have to be able to treat a \ntextual object as \"real\" *within the bounds of the text*. When you're \nexamining the text as it would look from the inside, it seems as proper to \nuse the term \"real\" as it ever can be. Of course, there are other ways of \nlooking at texts than this, which we use more often than not (and are \ngenerally not consciously aware of the transition) - these are more akin to \nmetaphysics, and using the word \"real\" then becomes questionable." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "One difference between fact and truth is that you can alter fact\nat will in creating discursive worlds, and remain in good faith with\nthe text and the (hypothetical, hypostesized) reader; if you alter\ntruth, you enter into a condition of bad faith with the reader, the\ntext, or both." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "*Within the realm of the text*, you can't alter facts without altering the \ntruth. If you take this thread of conversation and apply it to Silkhorn, who \nis presented as being able to alter other people's stories *and his own*, \nyou get a monstrosity of logic that makes me want to stick my head in the \nmicrowave. The root of the problem, near as I can tell, is that the \nrelationship between reader and storyteller is unresolvable.\n\nI probably put that fairly obtusely. But I guess a good leading question to \nask is: in your opinion, if Silkhorn is in a condition of bad faith with his \nreader/text, does this mean that Wolfe is of necessity in a condition of bad \nfaith with his? If you say that it does not then it implies that there are \ndifferent layers of truth, not just fact, involved.\n\nAnother fun question, of course, is \"how many texts is the Book of the Short \nSun?\" Akin to \"How many Torahs are there?\"\n\nToo Much Coffee Chris" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mike Sakasegawa", "address": "john.saxon at verizon.net" }, "date": "2003-04-24T20:07:43+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Blattid wrote:\nThis reverts to the subect/object orientation of SF/MF. SF expends\nmuch of it discursive energy on the level of the object, creating\nand analyzing things that do not exist in the \"consensus\" world. MF\nneed not do this and uses more of its discursive energy creating\nand analyzing the subjectivity of characters. But the subjects of\nattention and analysis in MF are no more (or less) \"real\" than the\nobjects of attention and analysis in SF; though one could reasonably\nclaim, I suppose, that they represent a kind of thing that exists\nin the consensus world, where deliquescing doors and transporters\ndo not ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You talked about how an SF reader tends to decode the language used in different ways from an MF reader, and here you talk about the focus of the writer's discursive energy. I'm still not sure I comp\nI'm not an expert on genre criticism, especially in book form, but in film criticism, some critics define genres by the semantic and syntactic elements of the films which comprise it's body. The sema\nA lot of \"soft\" SF is mainly focused on the subjective experience and emotional state of the characters. For example, most of the works of Orson Scott Card. True, he does spend some portion of each f MF and for \"hard\" SF, but I'm not sure that it includes \"lighter\" works into each genre that should be included.\n\nUnfortunately, it seems that what constitutes a genre depends highly on who is asked, and should that be the case? To me, Vonnegut _has_ written SF, even if he doesn't think so, because he uses certa\nOn a completely unrelated note, I've decided on a Whorl-type name for myself. I picked the Japanese word for \"Sheep,\" as that is the Japanese zodiac sign for the year in which I was born. Thus:\n\n-Hitsuji" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-24T20:17:47+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Side note to Craig: Yes, THE JEWEL-HINGED JAW is excellent,\nas is its successor, STARBOARD WINE.\n\n\nChris writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "From Blattid's excellent, intelligent, and well-written post I pick out \nonly the part I think I disagree with:" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Goodness, how dare I argue after that flattery? 8*)\n\nBut I seem to be argumentative this week." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "We get into a cateogry error when we use the concept of \"reality\"\nin discussing a fictional text -- that is, when we discuss any text\nat the level of fiction. The world of discourse is precisely _not_\n\"real\" -- though the text which embodies the discourse clearly is a\n\"real\" text. (But is the discourse, is any discourse, \"real?\" What\ndoes it mean to call a discourse \"real?\")" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would say that this is not to be taken for granted. Philosophically \nspeaking the idea that the world is itself a type of text goes back quite a \nways; if you're a postmodernist, it's almost inescapable." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmm ... I don't consider myself a postmodernist, though I am\ncomfortable using some of the tools of the structuarlists and\npoststructuralists for my own purposes. How shall I say: my\nepisteme is not that of postmodernism, and _particularly_ in that\nI refuse to regard the world as constituted of text or discourse.\n\nTo consider it so is anthropocentric in the extreme; those who hold\nthis view need to ask themselves what there was before there were\nanimals capable of \"thinking discourse,\" and if they answer that there\nwas no \"world\" as such because \"worlds\" exist only with relation to\na subject then I throw up my hands in despair of communicating with\nsuch persons, because they've disappeared up their own, uh,\nidiosyncratic use of standard vocabulary.\n\nPerhaps some postmodernists do indeed live in worlds consituted from\ndiscourse and text. If so, I pity those persons. I live in one\nconstituted of things like rocks, air, wine, bread, pain and joy,\nwhich also (to my ongoing pleasure) contains many interesting texts.\n\nThe other option is to suppose that the world is a text (textus, web)\nconstituted of all these things as signifiers; but I'll just go all\nKantian on you then and insist that a rock exists in- and for-itself\nprior (both logically prior and chronologically prior) to any\nexistence it may have for-us as a signifier -- that its \nexistence-for-us-as-signifier is always already supplementary to\nits existence-as-such." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I wish I were at home to provide some examples, not because they're needed \nso much as that they're simply beautiful and eloquent. My favorite is from \nMallarme, but you could as easily use an example from Wolfe himself: Horn, \nin IGJ (I think) has the insight while the Outsider is standing behind him \nthat, to the outsider, *everything he called \"real\" was a kind of story*." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And... That we can perceive \"everything\" as a story speaks to\nour way of perceiving -- is pure subject -- not to the objects\nwe perceive. The danger (to me) of this way of thinking and\nspeaking is that it threatens to confuse our perceptions with\nthe things we perceive; BUT, a perception is always a signifier,\nand the word is not the thing, the map is not the territory.\nHorn is operating here at a very high level of abstraction.\n\nIn fact I also do conceive the world as a \"story,\" told from the\npoint of view of the Increate. But that's at a level where we\nare all absolutely objects as over against the Increate, Who is\npure subject.\n\n\n[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In any event, what I'm getting at is that you have to be able to treat a \ntextual object as \"real\" *within the bounds of the text*. When you're \nexamining the text as it would look from the inside, it seems as proper to \nuse the term \"real\" as it ever can be. Of course, there are other ways of \nlooking at texts than this, which we use more often than not (and are \ngenerally not consciously aware of the transition) - these are more akin to \nmetaphysics, and using the word \"real\" then becomes questionable." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I suppose my problem is that I don't exist \"within the bounds of\nthe text,\" I always am looking at the \"within\" of the text from\noutside." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "One difference between fact and truth is that you can alter fact\nat will in creating discursive worlds, and remain in good faith with the \ntext and the (hypothetical, hypostesized) reader; if you alter\ntruth, you enter into a condition of bad faith with the reader, the\ntext, or both." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "*Within the realm of the text*, you can't alter facts without altering the \ntruth." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, I'm not sure how that plays out, but that wasn't what I was\ntalking about to begin with; I was saying that, in creating a fictive\nworld for a text, the creator can make it false-to-fact with respect\nto the consensual world and still be in good faith, but if she\nfalsifies \"truth\" as I described it, she will be in bad faith. And\nthis is a matter of degree -- obviously if she changes the facts about\nhow hot boiling water is, or the sensitivity of human skin to heat,\nshe can change the very minor \"truth\" about it scalding you. If she\nmesses with more major truths, she will wind up in bad faith.\n\nIn other words, the fiction needs to remain \"true to\" the writer's\nexperienced truth, even if the events she writes about are not events\nthat she or anyone else has ever experienced. A failure of this is\na failure of faith." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If you take this thread of conversation and apply it to Silkhorn, who is \npresented as being able to alter other people's stories *and his own*, you \nget a monstrosity of logic that makes me want to stick my head in the \nmicrowave. The root of the problem, near as I can tell, is that the \nrelationship between reader and storyteller is unresolvable." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, I suppose it is in some ways. The story doesn't exist until\nsomeone reads it -- all that exists is marks on paper (or pixels,\nor whatever). So the reader is always in a sense the creator of what\nshe reads." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I probably put that fairly obtusely. But I guess a good leading question to \nask is: in your opinion, if Silkhorn is in a condition of bad faith with \nhis reader/text, does this mean that Wolfe is of necessity in a condition \nof bad faith with his? If you say that it does not then it implies that \nthere are different layers of truth, not just fact, involved." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmmm. Okay, let's say that the Narr is in bad faith, because he\nsuppresses or falsifies some facts and/or truths. Wolfe, though he\nwrites exactly the same words the Narr writes is nonetheless _not_\ntelling the same story that the Narr is telling; Wolfe is telling the\nstory of the Narr telling that story. For him to directly reveal what\nthe Narr conceals would itself be a falsification of the story Wolfe\nis telling.\n\nThen for Wolfe to write in good faith with his readers directly\ninvolves the Narr being in bad faith with his; if Wolfe does not\naccurately (truthfully) present the Narr's bad faith, then Wolfe acts\nin bad faith. However, the Narr does _not_ act in bad faith with _us_,\nbecause we do not read his narrative; we read Wolfe's.\n\nDoes anyone's head hurt yet?\n\nThe point here is that the truths the Narrator seeks to tell or\nsuppress or falsify are not the truths that Wolfe seeks to tell\n(leave it at that, because I am assuming Wolfe to act in good\nfaith), because the truths Wolfe seeks to tell are precisely\n_about_ the Narr's telling, suppressing, and falsifying.\n\nOne can call this \"different layers of truth.\" But it seems to me\nthat Wolfe has to deal with the Narr's truths as well as his own,\nwhich creates an asymmetric relation in that the Narr doesn't have\nto deal with Wolfe's. Further, Wolfe has to deal with the Narr's\ntruths as honestly as he does with his own, in order to accurately\ntell about the Narr's suppressing and falsifying them.\n\nI conclude then that there is only one level of truth in the\ntextual world, in that the Narr is not aware of the Lupine layer.\n\nI conclude also that, though there are (at least) two layers of\ntruth in the consensual world, Wolfe must treat both layers with\nintegrity in order to remain in good faith with the text and the\nreader." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Another fun question, of course, is \"how many texts is the Book of the \nShort Sun?\" Akin to \"How many Torahs are there?\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Or, \"Is Pierre Menard's DON QUIXOTE a different text from Cervantes'\"?\n\nOr, \"Is Chris's SHORT SUN different from Blattid's?\"" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-24T20:19:47+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hitsuji,\n\nThis looks like an interesting post. Alas, the lines are truncated\nsufficiently to make it unreadible. I believe this is a \"feature\"\nof the list reflector. Can you repost with carriage returns breaking\nthe lines?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: Mike Sakasegawa \nReply-To: urth at urth.net\nTo: \nSubject: Re: (urth) Generic Considerations\nDate: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 13:07:43 -0700\n\nBlattid wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "This reverts to the subect/object orientation of SF/MF. SF expends\nmuch of it discursive energy on the level of the object, creating\nand analyzing things that do not exist in the \"consensus\" world. MF\nneed not do this and uses more of its discursive energy creating\nand analyzing the subjectivity of characters. But the subjects of\nattention and analysis in MF are no more (or less) \"real\" than the\nobjects of attention and analysis in SF; though one could reasonably\nclaim, I suppose, that they represent a kind of thing that exists\nin the consensus world, where deliquescing doors and transporters\ndo not ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You talked about how an SF reader tends to decode the language used in \ndifferent ways from an MF reader, and here you talk about the focus of the \nwriter's discursive energy. I'm still not sure I comp\n\nI'm not an expert on genre criticism, especially in book form, but in film \ncriticism, some critics define genres by the semantic and syntactic \nelements of the films which comprise it's body. The sema\n\nA lot of \"soft\" SF is mainly focused on the subjective experience and \nemotional state of the characters. For example, most of the works of Orson \nScott Card. True, he does spend some portion of each\nf MF and for \"hard\" SF, but I'm not sure that it includes \"lighter\" works \ninto each genre that should be included.\n\nUnfortunately, it seems that what constitutes a genre depends highly on who \nis asked, and should that be the case? To me, Vonnegut _has_ written SF, \neven if he doesn't think so, because he uses certa\n\nOn a completely unrelated note, I've decided on a Whorl-type name for \nmyself. I picked the Japanese word for \"Sheep,\" as that is the Japanese \nzodiac sign for the year in which I was born. Thus:\n\n-Hitsuji\n\n\n--" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mike Sakasegawa", "address": "john.saxon at verizon.net" }, "date": "2003-04-24T21:05:40+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Blattid wrote:\nThis looks like an interesting post. Alas, the lines are truncated\nsufficiently to make it unreadible. I believe this is a \"feature\"\nof the list reflector. Can you repost with carriage returns breaking\nthe lines?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Many apologies! I'm still getting used to the quirks of this place.\n\nUnfortunately, I didn't save a local copy, but here is an attempt:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Previously, Blattid wrote:\nThis reverts to the subect/object orientation of SF/MF. SF expends\nmuch of it discursive energy on the level of the object, creating\nand analyzing things that do not exist in the \"consensus\" world. MF\nneed not do this and uses more of its discursive energy creating\nand analyzing the subjectivity of characters. But the subjects of\nattention and analysis in MF are no more (or less) \"real\" than the\nobjects of attention and analysis in SF; though one could reasonably\nclaim, I suppose, that they represent a kind of thing that exists\nin the consensus world, where deliquescing doors and transporters\ndo not ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You talked about how an SF reader tends to decode the language used\nin different ways from an MF reader, and here you talk about the\nfocus of the writer's discursive energy. I'm still not sure I \ncompletely agree with your characterization of SF.\n\nI'm not an expert on genre criticism, especially in book form, but\nin film criticism, some critics define genres by the semantic and\nsyntactic elements of the films which comprise it's body. The \nsemantic elements are the individual story items whereas the \nsyntactic elements are the structure and themes of the story. To\nuse Westerns as an example, some semantic elements are the Western\nlandscape, cowboy hats, six-shooters and horses. Some syntactic \nelements are the struggle between law and chaos and the journey\nof a solitary hero. It's important to note, of course, that not\nevery work representative of the genre will include all of the\nelements, merely that they will draw from the pool of elements\ntypical to the genre.\n\nA lot of \"soft\" SF is mainly focused on the subjective experience\nand emotional state of the characters. For example, most of the\nworks of Orson Scott Card. True, he does spend some portion of \neach story explaining the SFnal semantic elements it includes, but\nthe vast majority of the text is concerned with the subjective\nexperience of the characters and the ways in which their situations\naffect them. How different, then, is an SF writer like Card from,\nsay, John Irving? Card spends a certain amount of energy explaining\nthe futuristic technologies and exotic settings in his stories, but\nno more so than Irving spends discussing the history of certain\nsmall New England towns in his. But that exposition is not the \npoint or main thrust of either narrative, rather, it is merely the\nsetting or external actions that influence the characters. Both\nwriters are far more concerned with the actions and emotions of the\ncharacters than anything else. Syntactically, \"soft\" SF has a lot \nin common with a lot of the more plot-driven MF out there. I think\nthat your characterization seems very appropriate for the more \n\"high-brow\" parts of MF and for \"hard\" SF, but I'm not sure that \nit includes \"lighter\" works into each genre that should be included.\n\nUnfortunately, it seems that what constitutes a genre depends\nhighly on who is asked, and should that be the case? To me,\nVonnegut _has_ written SF, even if he doesn't think so, because he\nuses certain semantic elements that are a part of the SF genre.\nMarketing differences and the disdain of certain critics for\ngenre fiction should not be the defining characteristics of the\ngenre. Thus I consider people like Vonnegut and Crichton to be\nSF writers.\n\n-Hitsuji" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-25T00:03:44+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Me:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "This reverts to the subect/object orientation of SF/MF. SF expends\nmuch of it discursive energy on the level of the object, creating\nand analyzing things that do not exist in the \"consensus\" world. MF\nneed not do this and uses more of its discursive energy creating\nand analyzing the subjectivity of characters. But the subjects of\nattention and analysis in MF are no more (or less) \"real\" than the\nobjects of attention and analysis in SF; though one could reasonably\nclaim, I suppose, that they represent a kind of thing that exists\nin the consensus world, where deliquescing doors and transporters\ndo not ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hitsuji:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You talked about how an SF reader tends to decode the language used\nin different ways from an MF reader, and here you talk about the\nfocus of the writer's discursive energy. I'm still not sure I\ncompletely agree with your characterization of SF." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A fussy point: Actually, I didn't say anything about the \"writer's\"\ndiscursive energy. If you recall, I put some emphasis on the expectations\na reader brings to a text based on genre. The energy of the discourse\nis provided, not by the writer, nor by the text, but by the reader.\nAs I said: The story doesn't exist unless someone reads it. A writer's\nskill is to produce a text with which a skilled reader can interact to\nproduce an interesting-to-the-reader discourse. This means that the\ntext provides direction to the reader's energy.\n\nOne example of this skill is efficiency: a writer who says something\nthing in fewer and less complex words will generally provide more\npleasure to more readers than a writer who says \"the same thing\" in\nmore and more complex words -- a wellknown principle, best and most\noften summed up in Strunk's Rule Seventeen (\"Omit needless words\").\nThis is a simple economic rule, which works as it does because the\nreader expends a certain amount of energy decoding each word and\nfitting it into the textus/web/discourse of the read text; more words,\nand more difficult words, mean more energy expended.\n\nThis doesn't mean that a complex or ornate style is necessarily bad,\nbut that there has to be a commensurate payoff for it - if the\ncomplexity doesn't add some pleasure to the discourse, the reader\ngets less for her investment of time and energy. (Note that style\ncan itself be a source of pleasure for some readers, but in today's\nworld, where most readers are harrassed workers [including middle-\nclass workers], rather than the leisure class, relatively few readers\never learn to enjoy the pleasure of style as such -- which is, among\nother things, one reason why modern poetry and the \"average\" reader\nhave become more and more alienated from each other. It is also why\nGene Wolfe wins the occasional Nebula and WFA but no Hugoes. His\nfiction is too much _work_ for a significant fraction of the SF\nreadership.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm not an expert on genre criticism, especially in book form, but\nin film criticism, some critics define genres by the semantic and\nsyntactic elements of the films which comprise it's body. The\nsemantic elements are the individual story items whereas the\nsyntactic elements are the structure and themes of the story. To\nuse Westerns as an example, some semantic elements are the Western\nlandscape, cowboy hats, six-shooters and horses. Some syntactic\nelements are the struggle between law and chaos and the journey\nof a solitary hero. It's important to note, of course, that not\nevery work representative of the genre will include all of the\nelements, merely that they will draw from the pool of elements\ntypical to the genre." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is rather different from the linguistic conception of semantics\nand syntax. I think it would take a while for me to wrap my head\naround it.\n\n(On the other hand, they come close to what I would think of as\nparadigmatic and syntagmatic...)\n\nAt any rate, you're describing a labeling of genres by manifest\ncontent. This is possible but problematic. But then, every attempt\nto define genre, that I know of, turns out to be problematic;\nwhich is why I suggested, early in this conversation, that a\ngenre (and particularly SF) is best described as a fuzzily-bounded\ngroup of texts produced by a fuzzily-bounded set of writers, working\nin awareness of each other so as to produce a metatextual tradition\nand dialog.\n\nTwo simple and fairly well-known examples of such dialog:\n\no THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN is clearly written as part of a dialog\n that also features Jack Vance's \"Dying Earth\" stories.\no Joe Haldeman's THE FOREVER WAR is an explicit and radical reply\n to Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS.\n\nThis is not to say that SF speaks only to other SF. It speaks to SF\nreaders, and it speaks to the \"real\" (consensual) world." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A lot of \"soft\" SF is mainly focused on the subjective experience\nand emotional state of the characters. For example, most of the\nworks of Orson Scott Card. True, he does spend some portion of\neach story explaining the SFnal semantic elements it includes, but\nthe vast majority of the text is concerned with the subjective\nexperience of the characters and the ways in which their situations\naffect them. How different, then, is an SF writer like Card from,\nsay, John Irving?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I would say, radically different. Taking a \"best-known\" work of\neach of them:\n\nENDER'S GAME is a war story. (As such, it's also in dialog with\n-- fairly explicitly -- STARSHIP TROOPERS, but that's a side point.)\nIt does, yes, deal with the subjective experience of Andrew Wiggen.\nBut the focus of the text is not on Ender's subjective states, but\non the objective occurrences in his world. In fact, the principal\nirony of the story -- and I do hope everyone's read it, because I'm\nblowing off the ending for anyone who hasn't -- is that his subjective\nexperience is falsified. He is led to believe that he's playing war\ngames, practicing, but in objective fact, he's delivering a fatal blow\nto an entire alien race. ENDER'S GAME -- like much \"soft\" SF --\ndeals with the play of the subjective and the objective.\n\nTHE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP is an absurdist mock biography. I think\nof Irving as an existential humorist. A number of Bad Things happen\nto Garp and those around him in the course of the story, but the\nfocus of the book is on what they mean to him and what they make\nhim -- it's kind of a bildungsroman in that sense -- and how, in the\nend, it don't mean sheeyit. The objective events in the story have\nan odd, almost mechanistic, feeling of fatalism: you can trace a line\nof cause and effect, but it has nothing to do with desert. Shit just\nhappens." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Card spends a certain amount of energy explaining\nthe futuristic technologies and exotic settings in his stories, but\nno more so than Irving spends discussing the history of certain\nsmall New England towns in his. But that exposition is not the\npoint or main thrust of either narrative, rather, it is merely the\nsetting or external actions that influence the characters. Both writers are \nfar more concerned with the actions and emotions of the characters than \nanything else." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This implies a misunderstanding of what I mean by subject-orientation\nand object-orientation.\n\nIrving uses objective events to trigger and validate Garp's\nsubjective reactions and realizations that are the principal focus\nof his story, what he analyzes.\n\nCard uses Ender's subjective reactions and realizations to valorize\nand intensify the objective events that are the focus of his story,\nwhat he analyzes.\n\n(Ender's emotions serve, in part, to present Card's analysis of the\nobjective events. Irving doesn't use Garp's emotions this way.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Syntactically, \"soft\" SF has a lot\nin common with a lot of the more plot-driven MF out there. I think\nthat your characterization seems very appropriate for the more\n\"high-brow\" parts of MF and for \"hard\" SF, but I'm not sure that\nit includes \"lighter\" works into each genre that should be included." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Perhaps I've given the impression that I'm considering this as a\nbinaristic opposition. I don't mean it that way. The discourse of\nmost (all?) fiction plays back and forth between the object and the\nsubject. Sometimes the subject is emphasized to the point where the\nobject becomes insignificant, as in Kafka; sometimes the object is\nemphasized similarly, as in Clarke.\n\nIn MF, and especially of the \"literary\" variety, the focus and\nanalysis tend to privilege the subject; in SF, and especially hard\nSF, they tend to privilege the object. The rhetoric of each has\ndeveloped accordingly.\n\nOne could draw a sort of spectrum. Taking some of the writers\nwho've been mentioned in this discussion as data points:\n\nPRIVILEGED OBJECT\n\nClarke\nAsimov\nCard\nClancy\nWolfe\nCrichton\nIrving\nProust\n(Nabokov?)\nVonnegut\nKafka\n\nPRIVILEGED SUBJECT" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Unfortunately, it seems that what constitutes a genre depends\nhighly on who is asked, and should that be the case?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Again, very much so - in my first or second post in this thread,\nI pointed out that \"genre\" means very different things to a reader,\na critic, a publisher, and a bookseller." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "To me, Vonnegut _has_ written SF, even if he doesn't think so, because he \nuses certain semantic elements that are a part of the SF genre." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He published some of his early work in SF magazines. That's the\nother thing I keep trying to emphasize: a genre isn't noun or\npigeonhole; it's an adjective, and can be combined with other\nadjectival genres to describe the same text. Nora Roberts, as\nJ.D. Robb, writes a series of novels that fit any reasonable\nreader's generic expectations for at least four genres: \"Hot\nromance,\" \"Social SF,\" \"Suspense thriller,\" \"Police-procedural\nmystery.\"\n\nWe have this particular prejudice, where we want to place SF\nin a binaristic opposition with MF. I don't think it quite\nworks that way. (ARROWSMITH, anyone? MAROONED? THE ANDROMEDA\nSTRAIN?)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Marketing differences and the disdain of certain critics for\ngenre fiction should not be the defining characteristics of the\ngenre. Thus I consider people like Vonnegut and Crichton to be\nSF writers." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I consider them writers. I consider some of their texts to be\ndescriptable as SF -- not all. (MOTHER NIGHT, possibly Vonnegut's\nfinest novel, has absolutely no element that anyone could plausibly\nlabel STFnal; ditto for GOD BLESS YOU, MISTER ROSEWATER and a number\nof short stories. Crichton has written several such books also.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mike Sakasegawa", "address": "john.saxon at verizon.net" }, "date": "2003-04-25T01:14:34+00:00", "subject": "Re: Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Blattid:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A fussy point: Actually, I didn't say anything about the \"writer's\"\ndiscursive energy. If you recall, I put some emphasis on the expectations\na reader brings to a text based on genre. The energy of the discourse\nis provided, not by the writer, nor by the text, but by the reader.\nAs I said: The story doesn't exist unless someone reads it. A writer's\nskill is to produce a text with which a skilled reader can interact to\nproduce an interesting-to-the-reader discourse. This means that the\ntext provides direction to the reader's energy." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ah, I misunderstood. In this case, then, isn't it kind of difficult to\ndefine a body of literature by the experience of the reader? After all,\neach reader will have a different experience of each work, many differing\nquite wildly from each other. Still, I suppose it could be argued that \nthere will be enough similarities between the experiences of many readers\nthat such a definition will be possible." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At any rate, you're describing a labeling of genres by manifest\ncontent. This is possible but problematic. But then, every attempt\nto define genre, that I know of, turns out to be problematic;" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "which is why I suggested, early in this conversation, that a\ngenre (and particularly SF) is best described as a fuzzily-bounded\ngroup of texts produced by a fuzzily-bounded set of writers, working\nin awareness of each other so as to produce a metatextual tradition\nand dialog." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is a quibble, but need they be aware of each other? Mostly likely,\nmost, if not all, modern SF writers are aware of each other and the\nvarious historical figures in the genre, but what about those writers \nwho began the tradition?\n\nAs I said, just a quibble." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This implies a misunderstanding of what I mean by subject-orientation\nand object-orientation.\n\nIrving uses objective events to trigger and validate Garp's\nsubjective reactions and realizations that are the principal focus\nof his story, what he analyzes.\n\nCard uses Ender's subjective reactions and realizations to valorize\nand intensify the objective events that are the focus of his story,\nwhat he analyzes.\n\n(Ender's emotions serve, in part, to present Card's analysis of the\nobjective events. Irving doesn't use Garp's emotions this way.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think we have come away from \"Ender's Game\" with different interpretations.\nI understood the story to be primarily concerned with, not the war and the\nBattle School themselves, but the ways in which they affected the people\ninvolved, Ender in particular. In fact, in a writing article of his, Card\npretty much says the same thing. The war with the Buggers is important to\nEnder, but not as much to us. Rather, it is the moral, motivational and\nemotional consequences that these events have for the characters that is\nmost important. \n\nOf course, as you pointed out, the energy for the discourse is provided by\nthe reader. Each reader will approach the text with a different set of \nassumptions. Thus, your reading of \"Ender's Game\" is every bit as valid\nas mine or Card's." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Perhaps I've given the impression that I'm considering this as a\nbinaristic opposition. I don't mean it that way. The discourse of\nmost (all?) fiction plays back and forth between the object and the\nsubject. Sometimes the subject is emphasized to the point where the\nobject becomes insignificant, as in Kafka; sometimes the object is\nemphasized similarly, as in Clarke." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good point. The problem with hard, and especially with binary,\ndefinitions is that there are no rules for literature. A better \napproach might be using a statistical analogy. For any set there \nwill be items that deviate from the mean, but there are still\nidentifiable trends." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In MF, and especially of the \"literary\" variety, the focus and\nanalysis tend to privilege the subject; in SF, and especially hard\nSF, they tend to privilege the object. The rhetoric of each has\ndeveloped accordingly.\n\nOne could draw a sort of spectrum. Taking some of the writers\nwho've been mentioned in this discussion as data points:\n\nPRIVILEGED OBJECT\n\nClarke\nAsimov\nCard\nClancy\nWolfe\nCrichton\nIrving\nProust\n(Nabokov?)\nVonnegut\nKafka\n\nPRIVILEGED SUBJECT" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I like your idea of a spectrum, but your placement of the authors\npoints out a big difference in the way the two of us perceive \nthem. This may be due to a lack of understanding on my part. It\nseems to me that, in general, what you've described as object-\noriented stories tend to be those that concentrate on either the\nplot or idea (that is, ideas that don't relate to things like \nemotion, morals, etc), while subject-oriented stories tend to \nfocus on the experience of one of more characters. \n\nCrichton, then, seems to have a lot more in common with Clarke than\nwith Irving. Whether it's \"Jurassic Park\" or \"Congo\" or \"Eaters of\nthe Dead,\" the focus is on the events of the story. The characters,\nwhile believable, are really important only insofar as they\nadvance the plot. \"Jurassic Park\" isn't really about how Grant feels,\nit's about the idea of a dinosaur theme park. We don't spend very\nmuch time in his head, and he doesn't tend to think much about things\nother than what's going on. Contrast this with \"Ender's Game,\" in\nwhich the title character spends an incredible amount of time on\nintrospection.\n\nI just don't feel that object-oriented vs. subject-oriented is enough\nto distinguish SF. Even leaving out what you call MF, what about \nfantasy? We would never confuse Tolkien with Benford, and yet both\nare much more concerned with the worlds and concepts they portray\nthan with individual characters.\n\nI agree that defining genres by content can be problematic, but I \nthink it is easier to do so. In fact, I'd argue that most readers\nprobably do so as well. A person who is looking for a story with\nlasers and black holes reaches for an SF novel. Someone who wants\nthrusting loins and heaving breasts goes for the romance novel. \nThese differences have just as much to do with the reader's \nexpectations and seem easier to sort out.\n\nOf course, it might be even better to try incorporating both ideas\ninto a larger whole. Especially since I find your ideas much more\nerudite than my own." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jason Ingram", "address": "j_ingram at mac.com" }, "date": "2003-04-25T02:58:25+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't recognize many of my opinions in the arguments against which \nBlattid responds. Perhaps that's because I was unclear and hasty in my \nearlier posts. Rather than exacerbating the risk of seriously \nmisunderstanding each other's positions, I'll try to present a general \nresponse.\n\nWe're using ambiguous terms (reality, truth, fact) to distinguish other \nambiguous terms (fiction, ?, ). I like ambiguity, and don't \nparticularly want to draw clear delineations between fact and reality. \nBlattid's distinctions make sense--but there's also some slippage. \nDelirium, for instance, is a fact that expresses truths but is also a \nfiction that expresses falsehoods: delirious visions are subjectively \nreal, and are factual occurrences, but their contents are fictitious \nand non-factual.\n\nEmpirical verifiability is nice, and can challenge common sense (e.g. \ndropping an apple and a ball of iron to see which falls faster). \nFetishizing empirical verifiability is, to be simplistic, bad. So far \nI don't think Blattid would disagree. Fact, truth, reality . . . ok; \nwhichever is fine with me.\n\nI'm comfortable remaining silent about that which we cannot speak.\n\nTo extend the Wittgensteinian trope, Wolfe's characters present a \nvariety of language-games that challenge defenders of a continuum of \nobjectivity. That is, the indeterminacy of the gaps in Latro's \nnarratives aspire to different ideal of objectivity (this terminology \nis an arbitrary imposition) than the objectivity at issue with Horn or \nthe text of 5HC. Objectivity could mean, to use what I interpret to be \nBlattid's terminology, \"truthfulness\" for some, \"factualness\" for \nothers, and \"realness\" for a third group. Each should aspire to attain \ntheir ideals of objectivity, but each will be playing a different \nlanguage-game with different standards.\n\nThree specific replies:\n\n[Blattid]:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Since all reporters are, willy-nilly, biassed, I prefer a reporter\nwho is open about her bias." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "yes, I agree, and I think this is perfectly consistent with my earlier \nviewpoint. Apologies if I was misleading in my exposition.\n\n[Blattid]:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Unless one were to create a language with an infinite vocabulary,\nit's not merely a straw-dog but a chimera. I have little truck with\npositivism, but that doesn't mean we need to throw objectivity out\nthe window." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The problems with positivism are even more serious than that; see the \nabove on objectivity.\n\n[Blattid]:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I guess the question I want to ask of this view is, what was there\nbefore language existed to construct \"reality\" from?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Flippant answer: Severian\n\nSerious answer: Silence\n\nAcademic answer: It's hard to talk about the non-discursive. I think \nthere are problems with Kantian approaches to reality (there is a \nreally real real out there, but we can't know anything for certain \nabout it; we can only know about the conditions of possibility of \nknowledge and sense-perception), but don't want to get into that \ndiscussion. It's not so much *language* as *subjects* that construct \nrealities. This doesn't mean that anything and everything is up for \ngrabs; there are always constraints. However, absent foundationalist \narguments, it's hard to specify what those constraints are. Solution: \nExperimentation to test limits?\n\nCordially,\n\nSepia" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "matthew.malthouse", "address": "matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk" }, "date": "2003-04-25T08:47:33+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 24/04/2003 18:41:20 Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nBlattid:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Can you show me a fictive universe which maps exactly against the\nreal?\nIf so, how can you know it does?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Matthew:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "When a character in a Ruth Rendell thriller walks a London street near\nmy\nhome I can too. When Graves' Claudius refers to the Sybiline prophesies\nI\ncan recall the cave complex of the Cumean Sybil I visited in February.\nTaking a plane or driving car are possible.\n\nWhile character and narrative might in varying degrees be creations of\nthe\nauthor their milieu is something we can experience." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It seems to me that you are saying here that persons (characters)\nand events (narrative) are not part of \"the real,\" but places\n(streets and caves) and inanimate objects (planes and cars) are.\nAm I understanding you correctly in this?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Substitute observable, or perhaps experiential, for \"real\".\n\nMatthew" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Phoebe Davis", "address": "meezer_gal at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2003-04-25T15:42:16+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This has been a fantastic line of posts. Thanks to one and all. \n\nI would like to add this: to the best of my knowledge Kurt Vonnegut publically stated\nthat he did write science fiction. My memory is that it was 10 or more years ago while\nhe was speaking at an American Booksellers Association meeting. He something akin to: Of\ncourse I write science fiction, I've always written science fiction. But if I'd let\nanyone call it science fiction when I started to write, no one would have reviewed my\nbooks, bought my books, or reviewed my books. \n\nI would like this to be true on several levels and for several reasons - most importantly\nI thought it a positive sign that the 60's ghetto walls were finally down, and that this\nguy was finally coming clean after so many years. It obviously could only have happened\nseveral years after his urinal quote from Wampeters. I'll see if I can track down the\nreference. Perhaps its only a rumor or my faulty memory? I wondered if anyone else had\nheard this?\n\nPhoebe " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-25T16:13:40+00:00", "subject": "Re: Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "All:\n\nI have to back off from this discussion for now. It's been taking up a huge\namount of my time, and, as my work is getting into project-crunch mode, I\nneed that time for now.\n\nMy apologies to anyone to whom I \"owe\" a response. Acknowledging that there\nis no real _obligation_ there, I still feel that it's rude to just cut off\nlike this, and that an explanation and an apology are in order." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gareth Jelley", "address": "gjelley at btopenworld.com" }, "date": "2003-04-25T19:57:04+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Jason Ingram\" \nAcademic answer: It's hard to talk about the non-discursive. I think\nthere are problems with Kantian approaches to reality (there is a\nreally real real out there, but we can't know anything for certain\nabout it; we can only know about the conditions of possibility of\nknowledge and sense-perception), but don't want to get into that\ndiscussion. It's not so much *language* as *subjects* that construct\nrealities. This doesn't mean that anything and everything is up for\ngrabs; there are always constraints. However, absent foundationalist\narguments, it's hard to specify what those constraints are. Solution:\nExperimentation to test limits?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A very interesting post, and if anyone else is often perplexed by your\nKants, your Kierkgaards, and your Wittgensteins I recommend the brilliant\n'Very Short Introductions' series of books from the Oxford University\nPress - they are all about 120-140pp, and they cover a huge range of\nsubjects (there is one on 'Post-Structualism' and another on 'Quantum\nTheory', to give to recent examples...)\n\nMe chipping in again :o)\n\nBest,\n\nGareth." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gareth Jelley", "address": "gjelley at btopenworld.com" }, "date": "2003-04-25T20:16:42+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Gareth Jelley\" \nA very interesting post, and if anyone else is often perplexed by your\nKants, your Kierkgaards..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Or Kierk*e*gaard :o)\n\nAnon,\n\nG." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "katbarx at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2003-04-25T21:39:40+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Gareth writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A very interesting post, and if anyone else is often perplexed by your\nKants, your Kierkgaards, and your Wittgensteins I recommend the brilliant\n'Very Short Introductions' series of books from the Oxford University\nPress - they are all about 120-140pp, and they cover a huge range of\nsubjects (there is one on 'Post-Structualism' and another on 'Quantum\nTheory', to give to recent examples...)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Also good are the \"...for Beginners\" series from Writers and Artists.\nTheir \"Kierkegaard for Beginners\" that gave me entree to a thinker\nwhose prose I had previously found opaque and murky. They're somewhere\nbetween books and info-comics: heavily (and humorously) illustrated,\nand run about the same length as the OUP books Gareth mentions --\nheck, since I've never seen those, they may for all I know be British\neditions of the same series." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Thomas Bitterman", "address": "tom at bitterman.net" }, "date": "2003-04-26T01:08:56+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nH'mmm. At this point I have to ask the questions I've been unasking\nthroughout this discussion. I don't like these questions, I suspect\nthem of being inherently unanswerable. But:\n\nCorrespondence with ... what?\n\nAnd what does \"correspond\" mean in this context?\n\nUnless and until someone answers those questions, which I don't\nsee anyone doing real soon, any \"correspondence with reality test\"\nseems to me not only misleading, but meaningless.\n\nAll of which is ... I think ... very relevant indeed to Wolfe and\nhis \"unreliable narrators.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I've always seen Wolfe's work as an impassioned fight against this\nline of thought. Wolfe likes puzzles, and tosses them all over.\n\nThe problem with theories that \"the reader brings their own meaning\nto the text\", \"the meaning of the text is socially constructed\", and\nother vaguely postmodern-type-stuff is that it would be impossible to\nhave puzzles if books were like that.\n\nConsider the puzzle posed in _Lexicon Urthus_: \"Who (or what) is the\nintelligence in the depths of the mine at Saltus?\". Many hours have\nbeen spent poring over the text and thinking about what it could be.\nIf the meaning of the text were socially constructed it wouldn't be\nsuch a big deal - any answer you could get people to agree on would\nbe fine. I hereby start the group that believes it to be a giant\npotato. It's favorite song is \"The Eyes of Texas are Upon You\" and\nit plans to cover the world in JuJuBees.\n\nThat's a stupid theory. I know it, you know it, and Wolfe knows it.\nThat's the point. Wolfe puts puzzles in to show that _the meaning\nis in the text_. He believes very strongly in the truth of a text.\nThe Truth. The Text. If the truth-value of every text is radically\nindeterminate, why believe?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--Blattid" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Tom" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tami Whitehead", "address": "razorkittee at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2003-04-26T16:01:35+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That's the point. Wolfe puts puzzles in to show\nthat _the meaning\nis in the text_. He believes very strongly in the\ntruth of a text.\nThe Truth. The Text. If the truth-value of every\ntext is radically\nindeterminate, why believe?\n\n >--Blattid" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I rarely poke my head out, but have to agree with\nBlattid, that Wolfe does indeed use puzzles and other\n'tricks' to illustrate this deeply held conviction of\nthe Truth of the Text. \n\nIn the discussion of other authors, I didn't see\nRobert Graves addressed, but his viewpoint was\nsimilar, and to an extent broader, in that in included\nTruth in Texts not only of his novels and poetry, but\nhow he read other works, particularly those dealing\nwith ancient history or classical mythology. His take\non myth and history was contested largely by those who\ntake the 'social construction' theory--what the group\nagrees upon as the interpretation is more valid than\nwhat the writer was intending to convey, or worse,\nthat what the writer was trying to convey is\nmeaningless until and unless we as a society give it\nmeaning, or worth. Any interpretation is suspect until\nratified by a formless, shifting gerrymander type\ngroup. Bleh! \n\nParicularly in the Soldier books, Graves' influence on\nWolfe's work is 'in your face.' Arcane practices are\ngiven a practical interpretation, names and words are\nmisused in the way they were misused *at the time*\nillustrating just how misconceptions arose, and\noutright manipulation of the facts and propanganda\nmachines of the Spartans and Persians take care of the\nrest. Wolfe clearly has seen past the 'psychological\nmanifest' of the contemporary interpratation of myth\nand history, making it not the dry study of Xenophon\nand his horsemanship, nor a couch trip of social\npsycho-analysis, but a living and breathing Life that\nwas Lived by Real People, complete with gods and\ngoddesses and wights and all manner of beasties that,\nnot as a type of zeitgeist, but as real entities with\ntheir own agendas, lived in the world with men. \n\nSo. An exercise in critical thought? A longing for the\nreturn of impassioned scholarship? I have no way of\nknowing why Wolfe feels this strongly and demostrates\nthis feeling in his works, but there it is. And I am\ntickled to death that he does so, that his worlds are\ncomplete and intact and completely open to us, if we\nonly look. Bless his pea-pickin' heart. \n\nrazorkittee" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice K. Turner", "address": "aturner6 at nyc.rr.com" }, "date": "2003-04-27T13:47:09+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Generic Considerations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "From: \"Tami Whitehead\" \nTo: \nThat's the point. Wolfe puts puzzles in to show\nthat _the meaning\nis in the text_. He believes very strongly in the\ntruth of a text.\nThe Truth. The Text. If the truth-value of every\ntext is radically\nindeterminate, why believe?\n\n >--Blattid" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I rarely poke my head out, but have to agree with\nBlattid, that Wolfe does indeed use puzzles and other\n'tricks' to illustrate this deeply held conviction of\nthe Truth of the Text.\n\nIn the discussion of other authors, I didn't see\nRobert Graves addressed, but his viewpoint was\nsimilar, and to an extent broader, in that in included\nTruth in Texts not only of his novels and poetry, but\nhow he read other works, particularly those dealing\nwith ancient history or classical mythology. His take\non myth and history was contested largely by those who\ntake the 'social construction' theory--what the group\nagrees upon as the interpretation is more valid than\nwhat the writer was intending to convey, or worse,\nthat what the writer was trying to convey is\nmeaningless until and unless we as a society give it\nmeaning, or worth. Any interpretation is suspect until\nratified by a formless, shifting gerrymander type\ngroup. Bleh!\n\nParicularly in the Soldier books, Graves' influence on\nWolfe's work is 'in your face.' Arcane practices are\ngiven a practical interpretation, names and words are\nmisused in the way they were misused *at the time*\nillustrating just how misconceptions arose, and\noutright manipulation of the facts and propanganda\nmachines of the Spartans and Persians take care of the\nrest. Wolfe clearly has seen past the 'psychological\nmanifest' of the contemporary interpratation of myth\nand history, making it not the dry study of Xenophon\nand his horsemanship, nor a couch trip of social\npsycho-analysis, but a living and breathing Life that\nwas Lived by Real People, complete with gods and\ngoddesses and wights and all manner of beasties that,\nnot as a type of zeitgeist, but as real entities with\ntheir own agendas, lived in the world with men.\n\nSo. An exercise in critical thought? A longing for the\nreturn of impassioned scholarship? I have no way of\nknowing why Wolfe feels this strongly and demostrates\nthis feeling in his works, but there it is. And I am\ntickled to death that he does so, that his worlds are\ncomplete and intact and completely open to us, if we\nonly look. Bless his pea-pickin' heart.\n\nrazorkittee" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is from the FAQ of alt.mythology. I wrote it. Don't subscribe to\nalt.mythology; it has been hijacked by thugs. I could not be sorrier to say\nso; it was once an enchanting newsgroup.\n\n-alga\n\nRobert Graves (1895 - 1985)Graves, a considerable poet, essayist and\nnovelist, wrote two books that have had a great influence on the modern\nstudy of mythology. The first is The Greek Myths, published sometimes in two\nvolumes, also, more usefully, in one. This is probably the handiest\nreference guide to any mythology ever compiled.* (It is not the one to get\nif you just \"want the story.\") Graves, also a learned classicist, in effect\ninvented a form of hypertext for the printed page many decades before html\nwas ever dreamed of. The brief chapters are first divided into alphabetized\nparagraphs which tell all or part of a myth (subsequent chapters continue\nit). Each paragraph is end-noted to its source(s) from Greece or Rome (Roman\nauthors are sourced, but only Greek mythology is considered). Following\nthat, brief numbered paragraphs give Graves's explanations and\ninterpretations of the text. At the end of the book is an index of names,\ngiving pronunciation, translation of meaning (when applicable) and all\ncitations. Hebrew Myths, written with Raphael Patai, uses the same\nwonderfully flexible format, but can't be said to be so influential,\npossibly because the Bible, for many people, is inadmissible as mythology.\nGraves's other big book, The White Goddess, may be the most eccentric\nnon-fictional work ever written by a classicist. Its influence on the\npopular perception of mythology, both Greek and Northern European, has been\nenormous, not necessarily a good thing, but certainly an interesting one.\nThe book has been hard-wired into 20th-century cultural history despite\nbeing almost entirely romantic (or poetic) personal theory. Its theories\nunderwrite modern neo-paganism, and, even more, have promoted or anointed\nthe concept of the Triple Goddess to a point past common sense--and\nscholarly protest. Otherwise hardheaded people, with a nose for hokum, can\nlove The White Goddess--its charms are many--without necessarily embracing\nit, or is that her? Beware, she's dangerous.\n\nA number of Graves's novels may be of interest to alt.mythology readers:\nHercules, My Shipmate; Homer's Daughter; King Jesus; his translation of\nApuleis's Latin novel The Golden Ass; and the two non-mythological novels\nabout the Emperor Claudius that are the basis for TV's great mini-series,\n\"I, Claudius.\"\n\n* If you know how to read it, that is. It is important, but easy, to learn\nhow to read Graves as a solid reference tool. Take all the alphabetized\nmaterial, the footnotes and the index as gospel -- he's completely reliable\nthere. Take the numbered material (the interpretations) with a great big\npinch of salt (remembering, however, that he was a learned, cultured and\nwell-traveled man, also that he respected the reader enough to keep his\nopinions separate from the facts). Keep in mind that the poetic mind does\nnot work quite as other minds do. If you doubt that, read The White Goddess." } ] } ] }