"Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe

Bruce Hayles · 30 Apr 2011, 02:15 · from 2011-April.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: brucehayles at gmail.com (Bruce Hayles)
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:15:48 -0400
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <4DBB3F16.4000500 at gmail.com>
References: <4DBB1060.1020105 at gmail.com>
	<794632.94323.qm at web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
	<BANLkTinVfFohh9fu7VwbgjSKKOfv2Bg-0Q at mail.gmail.com>
	<4DBB3F16.4000500 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <BANLkTikERbP9OsLJArNvPEp1PScccdP1SA at mail.gmail.com>

*See http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfeint.html*

*Q:* *What's available to an adult, adventurous reader in science fiction?
Why should they read that genre? Why should they move past realism?*

*GW:* The adventurous reader has probably already moved past realism. I
realize that sounds like a smart remark, but I mean past the kind of fiction
that is called "realism" as a literary genre, and that's what it is: a
literary genre. It is archtypically the story about the college professor
who is married to the other college professor.

Did you read Ursula K. LeGuin's <http://www.uic.edu/~lauramd/sf/leguin.html>
 novel, *The Dispossessed<http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/science_fiction/dispossessed.html>
*? It was about the college professor who's married to a college professor,
only science fiction, and this planet is Russia and this planet is the
United States. When I read it I was so disappointed. I'd had a dozen people
tell me how wonderful it was.

*Q:* *Yeah, I heard that too. Then I read it.*

*GW:* I've read that book before; I've read it as realism many a time. It's
a John Updike kind of book. I've read that story so many times ... now I
read a book until I can recognize the story, and say, "This is what it is,"
and that's as far as it goes, since I have no urge to finish it. I'm long
past feeling so guilty that I have to finish everything I start. I don't
finish ninety percent of what I start.

Look, the reason someone should go past that sort of realism is that it is
narrow, stultifying and ultimately false.

*Q:* *And the fantastic genres aren't?*

*GW:* No, not the better stuff. We're dealing with the truth of the human
experience, as opposed to what we are willing to accept from other people.

*Q:* *Wait, I don't see that distinction. The truth of experiences versus
other people's experiences?*

On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 6:43 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Well, I understand that Wolfe is saying, among other things, that
> Naturalism and Realism address solely what *is* as opposed to What Might
> Have Been and therefore cannot state authoritatively "Why What Is Is". You
> can't address the nature of Identity in Realistic fiction. You can't take
> seriously mythology, miracles, magic or ghosts (even though people REALLY
> act as though such things are true, and some claim experiences that confirm
> it).
>
> Still, it's quite a thing to say for an author who typically stops the
> narrative just when a big (apparently important) action scene is about to
> occur-- a writer who creates vast worlds and has the reader look at it
> through a paper towel tube.
>
> J.
>
> On 4/29/2011 4:50 PM, Daniel Petersen wrote:
>
> 'I do think he is saying realistic fiction leaves out the unexplained
> mystery of life, the majestic grace of the impossible that creeps into our
> everyday, that ignores things that are beyond the rational and explicable
> laws of the commonly perceived reality and fiction'
>
>  Yes.  So, no.  I don't think it's the pot/kettle scenario.
>
>  DOJP
>
> On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>> Some of Wolfe's interviews are priceless for that quality.  "Looking for
>> the thumb print under the lily"?  Oh, it was a lily, huh?
>>
>> Anybody read his contribution to Last Drink Bird Head?  I feel like that
>> little exercise is SO classic Wolfe.  Sets up a scenario, throws in a random
>> plastic toy, and then leaves us to figure out how the concluding event went
>> down.  I think it is not necessarily an impossible task, but it sure is a
>> bit inscrutable to fully "get" that conclusion. (Did Damon Knight get really
>> mad? What happened to the toy?  why is the unconscious guy back there at the
>> end of the bar?  Is that his toy bird?)
>>
>> I do think he is saying realistic fiction leaves out the unexplained
>> mystery of life, the majestic grace of the impossible that creeps into our
>> everyday, that ignores things that are beyond the rational and explicable
>> laws of the commonly perceived reality and fiction, (but we all know what he
>> was really saying, anyway).
>>
>> --- On Fri, 4/29/11, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
>> > Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
>> > To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>> > Date: Friday, April 29, 2011, 12:24 PM
>>  > I just read this quote by Wolfe.
>> >
>> > Irony? Pot-Meet-Kettle?
>> >
>> > J
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Urth Mailing List
>> > To post, write urth at urth.net
>> > Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> Urth Mailing List
>> To post, write urth at urth.net
>> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20110429/834bfdfd/attachment-0001.htm>

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net