GenreWatching
Atwood- and genre-related quotes of the day, from TIME:
Literary fiction is all about nuance. Science fiction is an open invitation to moralizing. In a genre that lets you create your own world, who can resist the temptation merely to blow it all up while shaking a head at what fools these mortals be? Not Atwood. What's missing here is the emotional sinew of Cat's Eye, the complex mortifications of Alias Grace.
And from the New York Times:
I am going to stick my neck out and just say it: science fiction will never be Literature with a capital 'L,' and this is because it inevitably proceeds from premise rather than character. It sacrifices moral and psychological nuance in favor of more conceptual matters, and elevates scenario over sensibility. Some will ask, of course, whether there still is such a thing as 'Literature with a capital 'L.'' I proceed on the faith that there is. Are there exceptions to my categorical pronouncement? Probably, but I don't think enough of them to overturn it.
Is Margaret Atwood's new novel, Oryx and Crake, science fiction? Insofar as the term has any practical meaning, yes.
Yes, the implied assumption in the second of those is that 'psychological nuance' is inherently superior to, and more worthy of exploration than mere 'conceptual matters'. Forget objectivity; subjectivity is what counts. Sheesh.
Literary fiction is all about nuance. Science fiction is an open invitation to moralizing. In a genre that lets you create your own world, who can resist the temptation merely to blow it all up while shaking a head at what fools these mortals be? Not Atwood. What's missing here is the emotional sinew of Cat's Eye, the complex mortifications of Alias Grace.
And from the New York Times:
I am going to stick my neck out and just say it: science fiction will never be Literature with a capital 'L,' and this is because it inevitably proceeds from premise rather than character. It sacrifices moral and psychological nuance in favor of more conceptual matters, and elevates scenario over sensibility. Some will ask, of course, whether there still is such a thing as 'Literature with a capital 'L.'' I proceed on the faith that there is. Are there exceptions to my categorical pronouncement? Probably, but I don't think enough of them to overturn it.
Is Margaret Atwood's new novel, Oryx and Crake, science fiction? Insofar as the term has any practical meaning, yes.
Yes, the implied assumption in the second of those is that 'psychological nuance' is inherently superior to, and more worthy of exploration than mere 'conceptual matters'. Forget objectivity; subjectivity is what counts. Sheesh.