loosely-related literary ideas that have been bouncing around in my head lately
1)
This past weekend I read James Joyce's "The Dead," allegedly one of the best short stories of all time. Spoilers: it isn't.
Oh, I see what it was trying to do. Like a good neurotic overachiever I've now read five essays on the damn story, to make sure I didn't miss anything.
But the great "twist" at the end, which the whole story hinges on (has to hinge on, due to how little motion there is elsewhere), just fell utterly flat.
Here's your situation.
Your wife, who you've been married to for years and years, who you have a child with, tells you that the last song she heard at the party tonight reminded her of a boy who died young. She tells you this in the darkness of your bedroom, close to tears. She says he was seventeen, and he sang love songs outside her window. What do you do?
You may be a little startled-this is something new, something you hadn't known before. But that's what I love about people; they never stop surprising me, no matter how grouchy and jaded I get. Maybe you're a little sad, wondering why your wife never shared this with you before. Maybe you ruminate a bit on life and death. Certainly I hope you hug her.
Joyce's protagonist, instead, feels a sharp flash of jealousy-I'm younger than the protagonist, and even I can't imagine feeling anything like jealousy over something that happened in my partner's life when they were seventeen; that's so damn long ago. And then the narrator ruminates wistfully that he's just never loved as passionately as a seventeen-year-old kid, and thinks about the way the memories of the dead haunt us living souls, and then the story... tapers out.
It's not awful, but I couldn't help wondering: does this husband talk to his wife? does he know anything about her? does he care? (Maybe that's Joyce's point; the protagonist is meant to be a bit of a loser. But the story gives him the last thought, gives him just a little too much weight, if it's meant to be a subversive thing.)
And now for the very personal jab-to some extent I think all criticism is about the very personal things, is about that finicky question of, does this story affirm the kind of world I believe in? And, no, it doesn't. Again, it's not awful-the final image of the story is very beautiful, and I think meditating on how much the dead live among us and influence our lives is quite wonderful. But the professor takes this revelation and responds with strange resignation. He thinks how he has never loved anyone as passionately as that seventeen-year-old kid-but neither does he see any virtue of his own quieter life, or any impetus to change, he just takes it as an excuse to... continue, as a passenger in his own life.
You can tell it's personal because I'm being unfair. Not everyone can be gung-ho and finnicky and relentless as you, Lua. But still, it doesn't work for me. O how I wish he'd hugged his wife at the end, and held her as she went to sleep. That would've felt like an affirmation of something. Instead we've just got the snow, general all over Ireland, and it's very pretty but that's all it is.
2)
I went to a writing seminar recently, led by a rather popular YA author. The seminar was about writing novels in general, but someone raised their hand and asked if there was any advice specific to writing YA novels.
The author's response was interesting-she asked what she meant by YA, exactly? Because nineteen-year-old protagonists don't count as YA just because they happen to be teenagers.
She said something strange has happened to YA lately: adults started reading it, because YA was offering a more positive and optimistic attitude toward(, paradoxically), adulthood and responsibility, and that was something people were craving, that adult fiction didn't have. YA was also more willing to blend genre and literary sensibilities, another thing people were craving. So "YA" as in, YA aimed at twentysomethings, has blown up hugely, but it's left a bit of a void for twelve-to-fourteen year olds, and the author concluded something's going to have to fill that vacuum, and we're going to end up talking about not a YA market but which YA market.
I wouldn't consider myself especially fixated with YA, but I do read it some, and that resonated with me-modern YA often leaves a good feeling because you're hype about the kind of adults the kids will become. Contrast this with, damn, is it too much of a potshot to say "any John Updike protagonist?"
Or contrast it with "The Dead." Not as mortal of an offender, but still-it couldn't even give us two people holding each other in the end. How's that story supposed to hold me, in either sense of the word?
3)
Science fiction's another interesting case. Despite occasional yeast infections like the Sad Puppies, I'd argue that scifi's general tendency is toward progressivism and optimism, due to the nature of the genre. Yes, there's plenty of dreary dystopias to be found, and yes, there's plenty of tiresome alpha males shooting lasers. But thinking seriously about the future, about story-experiments, requires thinking fully about the future, endeavoring to embrace every possible worldview, or at least understand it.
I've heard the argument that fantasy is inherently a bit conservative, for similar reasons. A great deal of its magic relies on harking back to long ago, traditions, remember-whens, and all that.
4)
An aside: I find Ender's Game interesting because so many people read it in middle school, at an age when one's tastes are both still-forming and undeniable. You'd swallow the whole book in one night without a single thought for whether it was cool, or classic, or proto-fascist or whatever; you just knew it was a hell of a banger.
Most people I know nowadays are a little embarrassed to have liked Ender's Game once upon a time; their tastes are more literary nowadays, and the page-turner revenge fantasy doesn't fit into that palate, let alone a page-turner revenge fantasy written by a homophobe. A few wonderful, insufferable hipsters will profess a love for Speaker of the Dead over Ender's Game. There's plenty of tech nerds who don't follow io9 and still think the nerd revenge fantasy is fucking kickass thank you very much.
As for me?
It was a banger. I don't think I thought about it overmuch, past the page-turner-y thrill, and I haven't read it since.
But the one scene that's stuck in my memory clearly all those years is when Ender's finally, finally reunited with his friends, leading with one of the few decent kids in the novel: "Salaam," said a whisper in his ears, and oh my god it's Alai! Alai, who was my favorite; Alai, who I suspected was the cutest. And all the rest, hand-in-hand, kiddos from all over joining forces to save earth.
Yeah. That shit appealed to my Girl-Scout-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbayah sensibilities.
5)
My parents saw Green Book and loved it.
I didn't have to get more than two sentences into the description before rolling my eyes. Some generic Oscarbait white savior film. I actually hate most movies so it takes hardly anything to make me not see one, but still.
I'm sure my parents thought it was very heartwarming, probably progressive, even. I'm sure the fancy movie executives, around their age, thought similarly when casting their votes.
Meanwhile my city, which is known for trending very young and very progressive, convinced the local cinema to pull their previously-planned "Oscar-winning-movie" showing for, uh, literally anything else, because I guess there's a bunch more people than me rolling their eyes here.
6)
Coupland: "Whatever happened to books? Suddenly everybody's talking about these 100-hour movies called Breaking Bad. People are talking about TV the same way they used to talk about novels back in the 1980s. I like to think I hang out with some pretty smart people, but all they talk about is Breaking Bad."
7)
We've strayed a bit.
I saw a thread on Twitter the other day, where someone was getting irked by "adults transparently writing YA fiction for other adults," saying it's creepy/weird/stunted.
I kind of get where she's coming from. I don't want saccharine bullshit in my fiction. Or, worse, recycled and tedious and shallow fiction.
But look at the recycled and tedious and shallow shit that gets churned out for adults all the time. Green Book. Urgh. Actually, let's take a potshot at one I've actually seen: Shawshank Redemption. Fuck that movie. And it's #1 on IMDB! (The #2 film is good, at least-The Godfather holds up well. But gosh, you can tell how much I don't like movies, can't you.)
8)
There's no summary here that wouldn't be trite, or overgeneralizing, so I'll leave with this: right after finishing "The Dead", I popped open a book of Lu Xun short stories, written right around the same time as Joyce, and damn are they charming the hell out of me. "A Madman's Diary" was creepy as hell to read before bed, and I ached for Kong Yiji.
Who knew, after reading a flurry of milquetoast-progressive short stories from Tor, and that disappointing story from Joyce, that I was going to find all my delightful short reads in a volume I was planning to just read for research purposes. Well, now it's for pleasure, too, and I can't wait to share what I find.
This past weekend I read James Joyce's "The Dead," allegedly one of the best short stories of all time. Spoilers: it isn't.
Oh, I see what it was trying to do. Like a good neurotic overachiever I've now read five essays on the damn story, to make sure I didn't miss anything.
But the great "twist" at the end, which the whole story hinges on (has to hinge on, due to how little motion there is elsewhere), just fell utterly flat.
Here's your situation.
Your wife, who you've been married to for years and years, who you have a child with, tells you that the last song she heard at the party tonight reminded her of a boy who died young. She tells you this in the darkness of your bedroom, close to tears. She says he was seventeen, and he sang love songs outside her window. What do you do?
You may be a little startled-this is something new, something you hadn't known before. But that's what I love about people; they never stop surprising me, no matter how grouchy and jaded I get. Maybe you're a little sad, wondering why your wife never shared this with you before. Maybe you ruminate a bit on life and death. Certainly I hope you hug her.
Joyce's protagonist, instead, feels a sharp flash of jealousy-I'm younger than the protagonist, and even I can't imagine feeling anything like jealousy over something that happened in my partner's life when they were seventeen; that's so damn long ago. And then the narrator ruminates wistfully that he's just never loved as passionately as a seventeen-year-old kid, and thinks about the way the memories of the dead haunt us living souls, and then the story... tapers out.
It's not awful, but I couldn't help wondering: does this husband talk to his wife? does he know anything about her? does he care? (Maybe that's Joyce's point; the protagonist is meant to be a bit of a loser. But the story gives him the last thought, gives him just a little too much weight, if it's meant to be a subversive thing.)
And now for the very personal jab-to some extent I think all criticism is about the very personal things, is about that finicky question of, does this story affirm the kind of world I believe in? And, no, it doesn't. Again, it's not awful-the final image of the story is very beautiful, and I think meditating on how much the dead live among us and influence our lives is quite wonderful. But the professor takes this revelation and responds with strange resignation. He thinks how he has never loved anyone as passionately as that seventeen-year-old kid-but neither does he see any virtue of his own quieter life, or any impetus to change, he just takes it as an excuse to... continue, as a passenger in his own life.
You can tell it's personal because I'm being unfair. Not everyone can be gung-ho and finnicky and relentless as you, Lua. But still, it doesn't work for me. O how I wish he'd hugged his wife at the end, and held her as she went to sleep. That would've felt like an affirmation of something. Instead we've just got the snow, general all over Ireland, and it's very pretty but that's all it is.
2)
I went to a writing seminar recently, led by a rather popular YA author. The seminar was about writing novels in general, but someone raised their hand and asked if there was any advice specific to writing YA novels.
The author's response was interesting-she asked what she meant by YA, exactly? Because nineteen-year-old protagonists don't count as YA just because they happen to be teenagers.
She said something strange has happened to YA lately: adults started reading it, because YA was offering a more positive and optimistic attitude toward(, paradoxically), adulthood and responsibility, and that was something people were craving, that adult fiction didn't have. YA was also more willing to blend genre and literary sensibilities, another thing people were craving. So "YA" as in, YA aimed at twentysomethings, has blown up hugely, but it's left a bit of a void for twelve-to-fourteen year olds, and the author concluded something's going to have to fill that vacuum, and we're going to end up talking about not a YA market but which YA market.
I wouldn't consider myself especially fixated with YA, but I do read it some, and that resonated with me-modern YA often leaves a good feeling because you're hype about the kind of adults the kids will become. Contrast this with, damn, is it too much of a potshot to say "any John Updike protagonist?"
Or contrast it with "The Dead." Not as mortal of an offender, but still-it couldn't even give us two people holding each other in the end. How's that story supposed to hold me, in either sense of the word?
3)
Science fiction's another interesting case. Despite occasional yeast infections like the Sad Puppies, I'd argue that scifi's general tendency is toward progressivism and optimism, due to the nature of the genre. Yes, there's plenty of dreary dystopias to be found, and yes, there's plenty of tiresome alpha males shooting lasers. But thinking seriously about the future, about story-experiments, requires thinking fully about the future, endeavoring to embrace every possible worldview, or at least understand it.
I've heard the argument that fantasy is inherently a bit conservative, for similar reasons. A great deal of its magic relies on harking back to long ago, traditions, remember-whens, and all that.
4)
An aside: I find Ender's Game interesting because so many people read it in middle school, at an age when one's tastes are both still-forming and undeniable. You'd swallow the whole book in one night without a single thought for whether it was cool, or classic, or proto-fascist or whatever; you just knew it was a hell of a banger.
Most people I know nowadays are a little embarrassed to have liked Ender's Game once upon a time; their tastes are more literary nowadays, and the page-turner revenge fantasy doesn't fit into that palate, let alone a page-turner revenge fantasy written by a homophobe. A few wonderful, insufferable hipsters will profess a love for Speaker of the Dead over Ender's Game. There's plenty of tech nerds who don't follow io9 and still think the nerd revenge fantasy is fucking kickass thank you very much.
As for me?
It was a banger. I don't think I thought about it overmuch, past the page-turner-y thrill, and I haven't read it since.
But the one scene that's stuck in my memory clearly all those years is when Ender's finally, finally reunited with his friends, leading with one of the few decent kids in the novel: "Salaam," said a whisper in his ears, and oh my god it's Alai! Alai, who was my favorite; Alai, who I suspected was the cutest. And all the rest, hand-in-hand, kiddos from all over joining forces to save earth.
Yeah. That shit appealed to my Girl-Scout-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbayah sensibilities.
5)
My parents saw Green Book and loved it.
I didn't have to get more than two sentences into the description before rolling my eyes. Some generic Oscarbait white savior film. I actually hate most movies so it takes hardly anything to make me not see one, but still.
I'm sure my parents thought it was very heartwarming, probably progressive, even. I'm sure the fancy movie executives, around their age, thought similarly when casting their votes.
Meanwhile my city, which is known for trending very young and very progressive, convinced the local cinema to pull their previously-planned "Oscar-winning-movie" showing for, uh, literally anything else, because I guess there's a bunch more people than me rolling their eyes here.
6)
Coupland: "Whatever happened to books? Suddenly everybody's talking about these 100-hour movies called Breaking Bad. People are talking about TV the same way they used to talk about novels back in the 1980s. I like to think I hang out with some pretty smart people, but all they talk about is Breaking Bad."
7)
We've strayed a bit.
I saw a thread on Twitter the other day, where someone was getting irked by "adults transparently writing YA fiction for other adults," saying it's creepy/weird/stunted.
I kind of get where she's coming from. I don't want saccharine bullshit in my fiction. Or, worse, recycled and tedious and shallow fiction.
But look at the recycled and tedious and shallow shit that gets churned out for adults all the time. Green Book. Urgh. Actually, let's take a potshot at one I've actually seen: Shawshank Redemption. Fuck that movie. And it's #1 on IMDB! (The #2 film is good, at least-The Godfather holds up well. But gosh, you can tell how much I don't like movies, can't you.)
8)
There's no summary here that wouldn't be trite, or overgeneralizing, so I'll leave with this: right after finishing "The Dead", I popped open a book of Lu Xun short stories, written right around the same time as Joyce, and damn are they charming the hell out of me. "A Madman's Diary" was creepy as hell to read before bed, and I ached for Kong Yiji.
Who knew, after reading a flurry of milquetoast-progressive short stories from Tor, and that disappointing story from Joyce, that I was going to find all my delightful short reads in a volume I was planning to just read for research purposes. Well, now it's for pleasure, too, and I can't wait to share what I find.