i keep saying i'll have more cogent things to say about this, but till then...

[fictional]

Check out deepad's post, I Didn't Dream of Dragons, a thoughtful, lucid, poignant essay on race and reading fantasy.

Excerpt from my comment:

But here is my problem, and that problem is love. Brought up on a steady diet of white fantasy and British boarding school novels, now, even when I can identify the alienation imposed by them -- these are stories by people who think of me as sub-human -- I still love them. They are still the fabric of my childhood, the patterns of my inner landscape. It's like Stockholm Syndrome.

And I still don't know what to do with that? How does one cope with the politics of desire?

Comments

Another Question

[keith418.livejournal.com]

I think that in addition to looking at why people are drawn to what might be called "colonialist genre fiction" instead of fiction deriving from experiences in the Third World or from immigrants. For example, why Harry Potter and NOT Zadie Smith? Why Dr. Who and NOT Rushdie? If you wanted to, you could spend your life fully immersed in more PC fare, and what is generally seen by critics and academics as more "literary" than genre oriented, but you don't.

I find this question curious myself because both you and rm seem like amazingly intelligent and well-educated women to me - and women who betray little to no interest in the kind of literature that I might expect really cultured and well-educated women to be invested in. Why not Ahmed Alaidy, Isabel Allende, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala? Why so little interest in the stuff that actually address the other side of the equation?

I also want to say that no one has to do "literature" or genre all the time. You can have a little of both. I've noticed that the people who read more literary stuff tend to take breaks with genre novels, but the people who read genre seldom read other kinds of lit.

Re: Another Question

[demotu.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was kind of an asshole post with more assumptions than you can throw an asshole at.

?

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Let me try to put it another way:

If one kind of books produces "It's like Stockholm Syndrome" - then why not books and art that are not going to induce "Stockholm Syndrome"?

Re: ?

[demotu.livejournal.com]

Oddly, the original essay addressed that concept. From several angles.

?

[keith418.livejournal.com]

This seems to me to still ignore the amazingly rich literary output coming from Non-western sources.

Re: ?

[demotu.livejournal.com]

Except the whole essay was about the failure of that supposedly rich literary output to impact on her childhood experiences with literature, "genre" literature or not, and thus on her ability to write from a valid perspective that reflects her own culture. And I would make an argument that a culture creative's strength is better measured in the breadth of its creative output and the access to that output than the few geniuses who prevail over circumstances, but -

- my original comment was about you being an asshole perpetrating pretty blatant passive aggressive superiority towards two women I respect, not about whether or not good literature exists outside of the West.

Re: ?

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Not to insert myself unnecessarily, but tell me you're not having this conversation whilst using Nazi iconography.

Re: Another Question

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

You seem to have a number of erroneous assumptions here.
1. I am not interested in/familiar with "more literary fare" i.e. the authors that you mention and "fiction derived from experience."
2. The authors that you mention don't write "genre fiction."
3. That critics and academics agree with you about what is "literary".
4. That the authors you mention sufficiently address "the other side of the equation."

Some of them might be predicated on the fact that you don't actually know me or my background. I am, in fact, an academic. And a critic. I do have little interest in "fiction deriving from experience," though your assumption that I have not read the authors you mention is wrong. I am quite fond of Allende, for instance (who often writes magical realism, which is sort of like genre fiction that can sometimes win the Nobel Prize), and I greatly dislike Jhabvala and all her works (but I have read them), both for stylistic reasons, as well as political ones (not actually addressing the "other side of the equation"). Rushdie is another author I am fond of; Zadie Smith does not speak to me.

I also have extensive training in the early modern period, as well as 19th century literature. I've chosen however, to also examine genre fiction, children's literature, popular culture with these same critical lenses. I find the distinction between high culture and low culture to be mostly fictional, and this attitude is reflected both in my leisure-time activities as well as my work - & the distinctions between these two aspects of my life grow less pronounced by the day.

It is curious to me how much literary weight you seem to place on the aforesaid "fiction derived from experience." I am almost entirely uninterested in it. I have experience. I have spent a good portion of my life in the "third world." I am the daughter of immigrants. Those stories do not tell me anything new; they are not the exotic transports to other worlds that they may be to some. I enjoy the literature of fantasy because stories are doorways, and I don't want to walk in rooms I could get to on foot. I find it rather boring, to be frank. Literary style can be found anywhere (though rarely) and for something I'll enjoy aesthetically, I'll go pretty far. But that kind of perfection is just as often found in the parts of the canon which I prefer. Jane Austen, incomparable stylist. That's fine though - she counts as literary, right? Though still denigrated by many as "frilly dresses & romance." But for the turn of a sentence -- there are few to match. And I'd stack Georgette Heyer (genre) up there too. Films too. Do I not see the limited releases? Of course. Do I think a lot of mass market stuff is tripe? Certainly. But the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie? BRILLIANT. Perfect timing, perfect chemistry, perfect pace, perfect dialogue, beautiful performances. Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn in How to Steal A Million? Ditto.

Many of my students enjoy reality tv & "fiction derived from experience" in the same way; they look, in fiction, for things that could, they think, happen to them, for recognizability, for "facts." I find this attitude immensely depressing. How sad to be so tied down to this world? In one of my favorite works by Rushdie -- perhaps you've not read it; it's called Haroun and the Sea of Stories -- his villain asks, "what is the point of stories that aren't even true?" The heroes think differently, of course. In my opinion, (with apologies to Boswell & Johnson) a person who is tired of fantasy, is tired of fiction, for there is in fantasy all that fiction can afford.

But Rushdie could never, would never have written that novel without The Wizard of Oz, without The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Which is the point being brought up in the essay I'm citing in the post.

women who betray little to no interest in the kind of literature that I might expect really cultured and well-educated women to be invested in.

Incidentally, a question: Are women meant to be particularly interested in "fiction deriving from experiences"? Why? What does being a woman have to do with anything you've brought up here? Why not just people?

Re: Another Question

[demotu.livejournal.com]

Oh, win. Everything I was thinking (not the personal parts, obviously, although I knew much of it about you) but I couldn't get far enough beyond omg, asshole to say it.

Re: Another Question

[rm.livejournal.com]

(posted in two parts because of LJ comment character limit)

You know, we keep having this conversation in one fashion or another. You seem preoccupied by what I/we read, thinking that, that is somehow the relevant question, when I suspect very strongly that the more relevant question, at least to me, is a matter of how we read/experience media.

I have mixed feelings about the works you cite (as well as tone with which you do so), and unlike Kali, don't particularly have the patience to list my various reactions to the authors in question, which is why she's a critic and I merely play one occassionally on subjects of interest.

Litary fiction, by and large, focuses on two things: questions of personal power and the emotional logistics of the domestic. These stories hold remarkably little interest for me, because they are not the stories of my questions, problems or processes or those of anyone around me. As disconnected from reality as genre literature may seem to you, these stories seem to me, but instead of being about the stars, they are to me about the mud.

Because I am not struggling against the expectations on me as wife. Nor trying desperately to find enough personal power to pursue my creative dreams. I'm not trying to raise a kid that hates me, overcome writer's block, deal with a spouse's alcoholism, come to terms with a sibling's dark secret or know joy in the face of my parent's loveless marriage or any one of 100 other struggles rife in literary fiction.

But back to the how.

Let's take Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint. I suppose if you read it you'd be like "oh, okay, some book about a professional assasin with some random social and class politics thrown in." To me it's about "what the world look like if my sexual orientation was in the majority instead of the minority." The author merely uses the setting to illustrate facets of the point.

Let's take Doctor Who, which, if I'm not mistaken, you watch too. I don't know what you see in that if you do, but I imagine for lots of people it's "woah, adventures -- wouldn't that be COOL?" For me it's about "how do you love when you're sure you're too heartbroken to love anymore?" "how do you find the grit to be extraordinary when you're really perfectly ordinary and scared out of your goddamn mind?" "how do you engage with beauty when you know it will always end in loss?"

Harry Potter. Typical story, right? "Lonley boy, discovers he's special, fights evil, not even that well written." All true. But I, and I think it's safe to say, Kali, read for the cracks. Why is this world stratified this way? What is adulthood? Is the loss of positive social constructs enough to justify negative and essentially racist acts in an attempt to preserve them? What is the proper response to beauty built on the labor of slaves? What is family? (hey, that them'es in Doctor Who too!) And, on a meta level, how does a writer construct a story? What happens when the plot deviates from the plan and what's the proper response from an editorial standpoint?

Where you seem to see "oooooh, shiny! escapism" I see the questions that define my life in a way that makes that explicable to other people.

and continued

[rm.livejournal.com]

When I was in college the film Metropolitan came out, and I saw it with a bunch of friends. It's a extremely vivid rendering of my teen years: that is, being an outsider amongst NY private school kids and the folks that go to the International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf Astoria. Coming out of the theater, one of my friends said she had been amused, but it was all so fake -- no one really lives like that. Well, actually they do.

Metropolitan, despite being a well-made, funny and engaging film about essentially true things, did nothing to provide her insight into that experience. Yet, I've been able to simply explain that class experience in a way that was personally resonant for others through, for example, Harry Potter.

Just because something isn't real, doesn't mean it's not full of truth. Or allegory. Or mere usefulness.

I don't define myself by my gender. Or by what I read or watch. But I do partially define myself by how those things fit on me and how I engage them in turn. Literary fiction and its disection of modern work/life conflicts, heteronormative neuroses, the burdens of family legacies and quests for personal identity in the face of strip-mall culture, aren't things I need or want to wear, hich doesn't make many of those books less artfully rendered, it just makes them not terribly useful to me.

At the end of the day, I think it's ridiculous that this discussion always comes down to you asking me or Kali or whomever is engaging this dialogue with you to justify our tastes, to justify -- to link this back to Kali's original point -- our desires.

Desire is interesting as a subject for its variances and discomforts; it's not an experience of neatness. I don't know why you keep asking it to be.

Re: Another Question

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

I don't know what I can say but yes.

Thanks. I used all of my character limit to say why I don't like stuff, which is antithetical to my personal philosophy, which far prefers the experience of joy. (I didn't think of extending into another comment! You are v. clever.)

But, YEAH. This is gorgeous. Thank you for saying all that.

For me, also, as well as the things you mention, I find that great fictional loves, the ones that obsess, come to me to teach me certain things. HP, I think, taught me that I have things to say, fictionally. That inside those cracks you mention, there is a whole world to explore and build. I think Doctor Who has taught/is teaching me to embrace: "everything has it's time and everything ends." To accept "change or die" which for such a rigid creature as myself, is so hard, and so important. It's exercise for my heart, like all falling in love and heart-break, in their endless cycle.

Re: Another Question

[rm.livejournal.com]

Right story; right time.

The very short version of what I guess I was trying to say for us both, is that by and large the stories of literary fiction (which me must note is, in fact, a genre) will never be the right story or the right time for us, because our lives just aren't of that mold for sundry reasons.

Beautifully said

[tricksterquinn.livejournal.com]

So I meandered into this rather randomly, but I wanted to say first of all, WOW. That was so incredibly well thought out and wise and well-written, and much more polite than I'd've managed.

And secondly,
Let's take Doctor Who, which, if I'm not mistaken, you watch too. I don't know what you see in that if you do, but I imagine for lots of people it's "woah, adventures -- wouldn't that be COOL?" For me it's about "how do you love when you're sure you're too heartbroken to love anymore?" "how do you find the grit to be extraordinary when you're really perfectly ordinary and scared out of your goddamn mind?" "how do you engage with beauty when you know it will always end in loss?"
That is a gorgeous way of putting why I, as well, watch the show. I always find it fascinating to think about the different shows four people can be watching while all watching the same thing (or books or movies or any sort of media).

[sykii.livejournal.com]

That was the textual equivalent of taking a crap in someone's living room. I hope it made you feel big and powerful.
Also, the statement that people who read literature also read genre fiction, but people who read genre fiction don't read literature actually makes no logical sense in any universe.
Concern troll for the lose.

No logical sense in any universe...

[gement.livejournal.com]

Say it with me, kids, "Literary fiction is a genre, with identifiable tropes, settings, and patterns of language." It is not some magical better-than-you form of writing. Refer to RM's comment for more details.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Oh, I absolutely agree with that.
My point was that even if one accepts the (false) premise that they are distinct categories, it defies logic to say (about any two behaviors) that people who do A almost always do B, but that people who do B almost never do A.
It's not just bad lit crit; it's bad common sense.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing* Oh, I love you. That is not very literary, but true nevertheless.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Sorry, sorry. I wasn't attempting to correct you, but to agree with you and expand on your thought.

It doesn't entirely defy logic to say "People who do A at least 80% of the time are less likely to spend the remaining 20% on B than vice versa," though. I just don't think it happens to be true in this case.

Mostly because I know a lot of lit fic readers who wouldn't touch a "genre" book with a ten foot pole and try to rationalize why books like The Eyre Affair aren't actually sci-fi so they can read them. Man, I hate those people.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

What you say is true, and it was perhaps disingenuous of me to nit-pick his words when the meaning could be inferred, but if he's going to harass other people about their choice of reading material (and in such a paternalistic fashion), he should at least be precise in stating his arguments.

Trying to rationalize why books like The Eyre Affair aren't actually sci-fi

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Or write them.*cough*

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Also, Rushdie? Rushdie does not prove the point.

*laughs* Haroun ftw.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Yes. Your point about magical realism was also ftw. I mean, really.

That lowbrow E. T. A. Hoffmann and his trashy genre fiction!

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

And it's STOOPID.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, there is that, too :)