Like China
Sorry for the Phil Collins reference, but hey, it's Friday so there you go.
Last night I attended a very scholarly lecture on “Cognition as Ideology: A Dialectic of Science-Fiction Theory" given by author China Mieville (Perdido Street Station).
Alternately nervous and professorial, Mieville acknowledged that anything he had to say on the subject had likely been said before and elsewhere but his contribution to the scholarly discussion was probably a simple rearrangement of the ideas. The ideas are anything but simple. I took four pages of notes and I'm still processing 90% of what he said.
The big thing that I feel like I have to explore to some degree is his argument that H.P. Lovecraft's work is "directly related" to James Joyce's. They were trying to "do the same things" with very different approaches. Or not. That's what I have to figure out for myself.
What I'm waking up to are these things that he said last night that I have known to be true, but it was nice to hear them from an author of his stature:
* Writers have to read across genres.
* The Writer has to believe in the world he's writing about.
* The Writer must convince himself of his own narrative; he must commit to and inhabit his vision.
While "all pigeonholes have gray areas" is true, it's also true that there are dozens, hundreds of "strategies for negotiation" to accomplish the telling of a story. This is why the Lovecraft/Joyce riff is so intriguing to me. Mieville believes that good writing "takes the totality of Culture seriously". He appreciates the "radical estrangement" of a character or story, the break in the every day.
I've never heard it put quite that way, but it makes sense to me. These are things that seem sensible, common sensible, I suppose.
Anyway, I'm still processing all this and more. I have research to do, but I came away from the lecture last night feeling energized, ready to write and anxious to do so.
While he was signing my copy of The City and The City I told him how Perdido Street Station inspired me to teach guest services at work (yeah, isn't that odd) and he seemed genuinely touched. If you get the chance to hear him speak, to meet him you should go. If you don't get that chance, you should read his books.
Last night I attended a very scholarly lecture on “Cognition as Ideology: A Dialectic of Science-Fiction Theory" given by author China Mieville (Perdido Street Station).
Alternately nervous and professorial, Mieville acknowledged that anything he had to say on the subject had likely been said before and elsewhere but his contribution to the scholarly discussion was probably a simple rearrangement of the ideas. The ideas are anything but simple. I took four pages of notes and I'm still processing 90% of what he said.
The big thing that I feel like I have to explore to some degree is his argument that H.P. Lovecraft's work is "directly related" to James Joyce's. They were trying to "do the same things" with very different approaches. Or not. That's what I have to figure out for myself.
What I'm waking up to are these things that he said last night that I have known to be true, but it was nice to hear them from an author of his stature:
* Writers have to read across genres.
* The Writer has to believe in the world he's writing about.
* The Writer must convince himself of his own narrative; he must commit to and inhabit his vision.
While "all pigeonholes have gray areas" is true, it's also true that there are dozens, hundreds of "strategies for negotiation" to accomplish the telling of a story. This is why the Lovecraft/Joyce riff is so intriguing to me. Mieville believes that good writing "takes the totality of Culture seriously". He appreciates the "radical estrangement" of a character or story, the break in the every day.
I've never heard it put quite that way, but it makes sense to me. These are things that seem sensible, common sensible, I suppose.
Anyway, I'm still processing all this and more. I have research to do, but I came away from the lecture last night feeling energized, ready to write and anxious to do so.
While he was signing my copy of The City and The City I told him how Perdido Street Station inspired me to teach guest services at work (yeah, isn't that odd) and he seemed genuinely touched. If you get the chance to hear him speak, to meet him you should go. If you don't get that chance, you should read his books.