When Non-fiction Breaks Down

I read a rather odd article from The Telegraph the other day, When fiction breaks down. The author, John Lanchester, seems to argue that things like the recent financial meltdown or an explanation of the difference between driving on the left or right hand side of the road couldn't be written about in a work of fiction, at least not one that anyone would want to read. Fiction, he seems to argue, cannot contain such things because they are too "interesting" and too "unlikely."

But that's not all...

The novel is the worldliest of the great artistic forms: you can ignore the world in a painting, or a symphony, or a ballet, or a sculpture, but you can’t in a novel — not one that would be worth reading. But the worldliness of the novel is qualified, and there are things it doesn’t do, or doesn’t do well. Unlikeliness is one of them, and another, I’ve noticed, is work. The world of work, especially of modern work, is significantly under-represented in fiction.

[...]most of the great books that describe work were written in the 19th century: Zola’s novels, or Dickens’s, or Moby-Dick (which among other things is a great novel about the job of whaling).

[...]
The modern world of work, however, is much less well-represented in fiction; startlingly so, given how many people define themselves through work and how central work is to so many people’s self-description. In modern literary fiction, in particular, a job tends to be as much a marginal detail of a character’s life as her hair colour.

Ahh, now I see where he's going! "In modern literary fiction"...

[...]
Contemporary genre fiction does better with work, but only with more ostensibly glamorous jobs; the central appeal of the police procedural genre...

"Contemporary genre fiction"... Lanchester gives several examples to support his "argument."

But what is his argument? It seems he wants to maintain some sort of false distinction between "literary" fiction and "genre" fiction. I say it's false because it either is fiction or it ain't. (I'd be happy to concede that there is "good" and "bad" fiction.) Certainly it's useful put things into categories (or genres) in order to describe them to somebody. But in that case, what work of fiction doesn't fall into some genre or another?

To be fair, Lanchester doesn't come right out and say that he thinks literary fiction is superior to genre fiction. And I suppose it's just as well, because if genre fiction can do something that literary fiction can't (represent "work," explain stuff, etc.), then it must actually be superior. In fact, so-called "genre fiction" has no limits. None.

Excuse me, I've got this Neal Stephenson novel to finish...

People Who Died

On Music

I caught a few minutes of High Fidelity on TV the other day. I'd seen this movie before, and it's OK, but I thought Nick Hornby's book was much funnier (and more honest). In both cases I found myself identifying pretty strongly with the main character. Really, how can you guys listen to that shit?

The Funniest Thing I've Read Today

A couple of excerpts from Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis:

She sat across the desk from him. She appeared casual but confident, a slim body with rounded shoulders like an exquisitely engineered truss. How he hated his debased need for her, he who loathed self-sacrifice but would give up everything he valued to get in her pants ... Did she know?

--------------------

"And that's why I created the financial plan you found. It's true, it works. But it is not sustainable. It will ruin this country's financial system, and then we'll see how those who despise us prosper when their lenders and investors refuse to invest or lend." He laughed joylessly. "Funny, isn't it? I must destroy the very thing I love in order to save it."

"Just to avoid paying taxes?"

"I do not compromise my beliefs, and I will kill anyone who asks me to!"

Great stuff!

[Via: Cynical-C]

I Think My Head Is Going to Explode

Chris Kelly at The Huffington Post entertains with an interesting post about a book found by the FBI among the possessions of Bruce Ivins (the anthrax suspect).

Short version: The FBI found a copy of The Plague by Albert Camus (who was born in Algeria...). But "the plague" of The Plague is actually just life. One of the characters of The Plague is "misreading" Kafka's The Trial (he thinks it's a murder mystery), which seems to be about a man who is put on trial for unclear reasons...

2001: Clarke and Kubrick

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

Arthur C. Clarke died today, and I was reminded of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke wrote the novel, which was based on an earlier story of his, The Sentinel; both Clarke and Stanley Kubrick are credited for the screenplay of Kubrick's movie. Clarke, perhaps feeling like most of us, has said that he wasn't quite sure what Kubrick was up to in the movie's ending. I have a very clear memory of sitting in a movie theater and watching 2001 when I was 11 or 12 years old. I had thought that I was going to see a "science fiction" movie (you know, space ships, adventure, and stuff). I understand now that the movie I watched then was, indeed, a science fiction movie. At the time, though, it was all I could do simply to sit and be bombarded by the stunning images on the screen which, by the movie's end, left me feeling a bit shell-shocked. I don't mean this in a negative way at all. No. I had no idea what this movie was about and I couldn't give a coherent account of it's plot. I knew, though, that it was good. I'm still not sure I understand the movie, and I'm certainly not going to try to explain it here and now (although if you've got some time to kill, there's no shortage of attempts at explaining 2001; some are interesting, some are a bit silly). I'd recommend reading Clarke's novel to anyone who likes the movie but doesn't quite get what Kubrick is trying to express. Both the novel and the movie are concerned with themes of human evolution (with humanity being one step in a process), the dangers of technology, and the details of traveling in space. Clarke explains what Kubrick shows.

On Orthodoxy

Another nice quote from 1984 (Chapter 5):

"[...] Orthodoxy means not thinking -- not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

Personally, I quite like thinking...

Duckspeak

Anytime I read about politics or religion these days, I'm reminded of this passage in Orwell's 1984 (Chapter 5):

'There is a word in Newspeak,' said Syme, 'I don't know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.'

Analyze Meme

Eli over at Multi Medium was tagged with something (I think) is called the "123" meme:

Take the nearest book, turn to page 123.
Look for the fifth sentence, then post the three sentences following the fifth sentence.

Eli himself hasn't actually tagged anyone, but has invited those who want to volunteer to do so. I've decided to participate because 1) I'm desperate for any excuse to actually write something, anything, in the hope that the simple mechanical act of clacking away at the keyboard will somehow, like magic, stimulate my brain and give me back my writing mojo; and, 2) the book that happens to be nearest me, Follies of the Wise by Frederick Crews, has a pretty interesting passage at the mark indicated by the meme.

Writing about the "prepsychoanalytic" Sigmund Freud, Crews tells of a man who believed that his hysterical patients were all harboring repressed memories of early abuse and who cured them by "unknotting their repression". As Crews continues, however, Freud "suffered a failure of nerve; too many fathers were being identified as perpetrators," a development that lead Freud to psychoanalysis, "a doctrine that ascribes incestuous design not to adult molesters but, grotesquely, to children themselves."

Freud finally had to cope with the disagreeable thought that his hysterics' "stories" of very early abuse had been peremptory inventions of his own. He did so, however, through a dumbfoundingly illogical, historically momentous expedient, ascribing to his patients' unconscious minds a repressed desire for the precocious couplings that he had hitherto urged them to remember having helplessly undergone. That is how psychoanalysis as we know it came into being.

So, while a bit of Freud might inject some fun and liveliness into literary discussions, it's not very good science. Well, it's not "science" at all, actually. Psychoanalysis was the result one layer of bullshit being papered over with another...

Ask a Stupid Question...

Someone (possibly a Classical Lit student?) from Tennessee, clearly struggling with Homer's Odyssey, arrived here via Google with the search term "what does the kyklops do to the men he eats?" Umm, well... he eats them.

... [he]sprang up and put forth his hands upon my comrades. Two of them at once he seized and dashed to the earth like puppies, [290] and the brain flowed forth upon the ground and wetted the earth. Then he cut them limb from limb and made ready his supper, and ate them as a mountain-nurtured lion, leaving naught--ate the entrails, and the flesh, and the marrowy bones.
(Samuel Butler's translation. I prefer Lattimore's, but I don't have it nearby, and I can't be bothered to translate it myself.)

I hope you weren't planning a paper centered on this question. It seems a bit of a dead end. Focus instead on why Polyphemos ate Odysseus' companions (i.e. what clues does Homer give us regarding Polyphemos' character?). You should especially look at the punishment Odysseus exacts--was it just? If it wasn't, why not? If it was, why? And why was Odysseus punished for it? Look carefully at Odysseus' words when he first speaks to Polyphemos, and his words and manner as he's making his escape from the island.

Come back in a week and show me what you've got.

PSA: Get Literate!

We must never forget the value of the written word:

Dostoyevsky Comics

Batman as "Raskol", a tormented, poverty-stricken student with a dangerous new "philosophy"; The Joker as the mean-spirited pawnbroker; Commissioner Gordon as "Porfiry"; Robin as "Sonny", a cross-dressing Christian...

Yes, they're all here, in Batman by Dostoyevsky.

[h/t: God of the Machine]

Greek of the Week: An Interesting Question...

A character in a lost play by Euripides (Aeolus, Fragment 19) asks an interesting question:
τί δ' αἰσχρὸν ἤν μὴ χρωμενοῖς δοκῇ;
(Is anything shameful if it does not seem so to those doing it?)

... I'm stumped...

Quote of the Week

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
--Kurt Vonnegut

'Nuff said...

[Thanks Daniel, the Guy in the Desert]

Greek of the Week: On the "Prescriptions" of Nature

There's an amusing moment in The Clouds by Aristophanes. In the play the character of Pheidippides has been sent by his father to partake of the "New Learning" (i.e. the teachings of the "Sophists") so that he can learn how to make "wrong into right" (i.e. learn the art of "Rhetoric"). He learns too well it seems, because he returns home and beats his father, offering the following theoretical justification for his act:

σκέψαι δὲ τοὺς ἀλεκτρυόνας καὶ τἄλλα τὰ βοτὰ ταυτί,
ὡς τοὺς πατέρας ἀμύνεται: καίτοι τί διαφέρουσιν
ἡμω̂ν ἐκει̂νοι, πλήν γ' ὅτι ψηφίσματ' οὐ γράφουσιν;

Observe the rooster and all of the other animals,
and how they punish their parents. How, in fact,
do they differ from us except that they do not pass laws?
(1427-29)

To which his father Strepsiades replies:

τί δῆτ᾽, ἐπειδὴ τούς ἀλεκτρυόνας ἅπαντα μιμεῖ
οὐκ ἐσθίεις καὶ τὴν κόπρον κἀπὶ ξύλου καθεύδεις

Well then, since you imitate the rooster in all things,
why don't you eat shit and sleep on a perch?
(1430-31)

Have I ever mentioned that I'm quite fond of the Greeks?