Defining tastes, modes, or whatever the hell you want to call it

So there's some discussion of sorts going on at Ecstatic Days about the bizarreness of trying to define that ever nebulous "literary fiction." Jeff VanderMeer makes some good points about the posts written by J.M. McDermott and yours truly, although I could note that in my original post I was more concerned with noting that the narrative mode called "literary fiction" is more inclusive and outward-looking than what McDermott seemed to be implying when he was decrying what he had endured reading by one particular writer.

I guess I should reiterate what I said over there about how I see the entire fiction "divide" as being little more than the arguing of picayune points in a much larger, "important" field of material culture (yes, I'm influenced by Thompsonian Marxists. Bite me). Namely, all that societies create to address particular concerns is fair game and that classifications serve as a way of viewing how said societies and their members go about organizing data and assigning meanings. But that's just boring cultural history stuff, no?

For another take on "literary fiction" (and a host of other things), here's a recent videotaped interview with R. Scott Bakker. Around the 2 minute mark, he starts talking about "literary fiction," giving it a social definition with which I disagree quite strongly:



With any luck, Terry Goodkind will be asked to share his thoughts on "literary fiction" and whether or not his writings are "fantasy" or "thrillers" in nature...

Fantasy Masterworks #8: Robert E. Howard, The Conan Chronicles Volume I: The People of the Black Circle

Conan went up the stairs and halted at the door he knew well of old. It was fastened within, but his blade passed between the door and the jamb and lifted the bar. he stepped inside, closing the door after him, and faced the girl who had betrayed him to the police.

The wench was sitting cross-legged in her shift on her unkempt bed. She turned white and stared at him as if at a ghost. She had heard the cry from the stairs, and she saw the red stain on the poniard in his hand. But she was too filled with terror on her own account to waste any time lamenting the evident fate of her lover. She began to beg for her life, almost incoherent with terror. Conan did not reply; he merely stood and glared at her with his burning eyes, testing the edge of his poniard with a calloused thumb.

At last he crossed the chamber, while she cowered back against the wall, sobbing frantic pleas for mercy. Grasping her yellow locks with no gentle hand, he dragged her off the bed. Thrusting his blade back in its sheath, he tucked his squirming captive under his left arm, and strode to the window. Like most houses of that type, a ledge encircled each story, caused by the continuance of the window-ledges. Conan kicked the window open and stepped out on that narrow band. If any had been near or awake, they would have witnessed the bizarre sight of a man moving carefully along the ledge, carrying a kicking, half-naked wench under his arm. They would have been no more puzzled than the girl.

Reaching the spot he sought, Conan halted, gripping the wall with his free hand. Inside the building rose a sudden clamor, showing that the body had at last been discovered. His captive whimpered and twisted, renewing her importunities. Conan glanced down into the muck and slime of the alleys below; he listened briefly to the clamor inside and the pleas of the wench; then he dropped her with great accuracy into a cesspool. He enjoyed her kickings and flounderings and the concentrated venom of her profanity for a few seconds, and even alloed himself a low rumble of laughter. Then he lifted his head, listened to the growing tumult within the building and decided it was time for him to kill Nabonidus. (pp. 83-84)

Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, 21 tales written between 1932 and Howard's death by suicide in 1935, stand like a Colossus in the subgenre of sword and sorcery fantasy that followed. For his supporters, Howard's imagination burned like a meteor through the night sky, brilliant, dazzling, lasting all too brief of a time. Howard's detractors, however, deplore his seeming chauvinistic, capricious attitude toward women, and they would point to scenes such as the one quoted above as an example of how degrading this form of fantasy literature could be, not just toward women, but also toward the numerous real-world ethnic groups that Howard depicts in very slightly-altered form in his Conan the Cimmerian tales.

When I began reading this first volume of two (the other will arrive in a couple of weeks and I'll review it separately) on Friday, I had quite a few reservations. Oh, I had heard much about how vivid and "alive" Howard's tales were and that if read as simple adventure pieces, much enjoyment could be gained from them. But I was uneasy about learning of his casual references to "wenches" and his use of racial stereotypes. I feared that I might be in for a reading of a series of stories that, while certainly better-written than the imitative work, would possess the depth and meaning of a The Eye of Argon. After finishing this first volume, my reservations still remain.

Howard certainly had a flair for telling an action-packed, vividly-rendered tale in short story or novella form. His Hyperborean Age setting of an Earth tens of thousands of years ago that would serve as a clear mirror for the "distorted myths" that would follow, certainly allowed him much leeway in creating interesting backdrops for Conan's adventures. Depending on what the reader brings to the table, passages such as the long one I cited above can be thrilling, as the villains get their comeuppance in short order and Conan survives to fight for another day.

But for those like myself who have certain beliefs in regards to ethnicity and gender relations, Conan's tales present quite a few roadblocks to enjoying Howard's writing. The frequent mentions of naked or half-naked "wenches," many of them chained to slave masters or kings, serving mostly as props for Conan's enjoyment or as a weak-willed, weak-hearted damsel in distress for him to rescue, makes for a rather dated and sometimes repellent world-view that hopefully is fading into the past. I could not, as much as I tried, distance myself from my own views when reading these tales. While I could recognize Howard's ability to tell an exciting yarn, ultimately I was left thinking that most writers (John Norman being a notable exception) who have been influenced by Howard are at least writing tales that invert or subvert Howard's often-odious notions regarding race and gender.

Was this volume worthy of being called a "Fantasy Masterwork?" Despite my reactions to elements of his writing, Howard has had too much of an influence on too many writers over the past seventy-seven years for him not to be considered one. Whether or not one might enjoy his writings today depends on the type of baggage that the reader brings to the table. For myself, I can appreciate much of what he accomplished with these tales, but that I have reservations about some of his elements to enjoy them fully.

Quote of the Day/Night unlike most other such things

This is from pp. 417-418 of Andrés Neuman's El viajero del siglo, roughly translated:

Sophie spoke of her need for independence, of Rudi's family plans, the touch of her fiancé's buttocks above the breeches, of how she imagined sexual life with him, of the most bent penises that she had seen, of the curiosity which she felt in regards to semen, of her menstrual problems. And following that, bizaarely, she spoke of Kant. According to Kant, said Sophie, to kill a bastard son is less grave than infidelity...

Kant and menstruation, thought Hans, why not?

A few more thoughts on literary fiction

A few days ago, I read a blog entry by author J.M. McDermott that dealt with the falsity that he was encountering in the literary fiction that he was reading. At first, I found myself wanting to agree with the basic premise of his post, to acknowledge to myself that perhaps there is a bit of falsity to this literary fiction genre, before my inner skeptic began to kick the tires and wonder if there was something else to the matter.

Yes, I have read literary works where the authors seem to combat the ennui of their dreary lives in rather bizarre (and yet still ultimately mundane) fashion. In those twists, I do see too much of a Governor Sanford breakdown and not enough of the types of reactions that "my people," or my "tribe," I suppose (to make another allusion to a term that has more facets than I previously discussed). But I think there's a more varied forest than one would get from looking at one little cluster of elm trees.

Yesterday, I blogged about (and then translated) the latest Premio Alfaguara winner, Andrés Neuman's El viajero sel siglo. Over the past few years, I have found the Premio Alfaguara winners (and a great many of the books that Alfaguara publishes in general) to contain fresher elements of literary fiction than what one might find in staid Anglo-American fare. For starters, most of the Spanish-language lit fic that I've read is much more extrospective than the Anglo-American counterparts. While there are moments of introspective moodiness, the stories in general tend to turn to outside events. Take for example Edmundo Paz Soldán's just-released Los vivos y los muertos (The Living and the Dead). Set in a fictious upstate New York small town, Paz Soldán's short 206 page novel utilizes several point-of-view shifts of the town's teens and adult friends and relatives to tell the stories of several deaths and murders in that small town over a short period of time and how the residents coped.

Paz Soldán's attention to detail (his story is based on actual events near Cornell University, where he teaches, that happened several years ago), including things such as how the teens interacted with each other, how they had built their own self-protective bubbles before these bubbles were burst during the course of the novel, all this created an atmosphere in which I (and I would guess many readers) felt very connected to the characters. It was very "real" in reading it. It was that sense of veracity in a fictitious tale that I believe is a real strength of the best literary fictions. It's not a turning inward to explore an imagined person's reaction to a past that will capture readers in most cases, but rather that turning outward and including others, making them feel a part of the story, that tends to lead to more favorable reactions.

This is a topic that I'd like to explore more at a later date, but for now, I just wanted to introduce this and see if a good conversation could result out of it. Maybe this weekend, I'll have other stories to discuss that I think meet some of the criteria I mention above, as well as possibly exploring other reasons why for many (and myself), literary fiction is just as vital and as important as various other genre fictions may be for others.

A translated blurb

My copy of the 12th winner of the Premio Alfaguara, Andrés Neuman's El viajero del siglo, arrived today. I think many here would be intrigued by the premise:

Un viajero enigmático. Una ciudad en forma de laberinto de la que parece imposible salir. Cuando el viajero está a punto de marcharse, un insólito personaje lo detiene, cambiando para siempre su destino. Lo demás será amor y literatura: un amor memorable, que agitará por igual camas y libros; y un mundo imaginario que condensará, a pequeña escala, los conflictos de la Europa moderna.

El viajero del siglo propone un ambicioso experimento literario: leer el siglo XIX con la mirada del XXI. Un diálogo entre la gran novela clásica y las narrativas de vanguardia. Un puente entre la historia y los debates de nuestro presente global: la extranjería, el multiculturalismo y los nacionalismos, la emancipación de la mujer.

Andrés Neuman despliega un mosaico cultural al servicio de un intenso argumento, pleno de intrigas, humor y personajes emocionantes, con un estilo rompedor que ofrece a estas cuestiones un sorprendente cauce.

And now, in better English than the one found in Amazon's Product Description:

An enigmatic traveler. A city in the form of a labyrinth from which it seems impossible to depart. When the traveler is about to leave, an unusual person detains him, changing forever his destiny. What follows after will be love and literature: a memorable love, which will shake equally both beds and books; and an imaginary world which will condense, in small scale, the conflicts of modern Europe.

El viajero del siglo proposes an ambitious literary experiment: to read the 19th century with the eyes of the 21st. A dialogue between the classic great novel and avant-garde narratives. A bridge between history and the debates of our global present: foreignness, multiculturalism and the [various] nationalisms, women's liberation.

András Neuman displays a cultural mosaic in service to an intense argument, full of intrigue, humor, and emotional characters, with a groundbreaking style which offers to these questions a surprising course.

From this blurb and the first 40 pages that I read tonight, this is shaping up to be another winner for the Premio Alfaguara. I have read all 13 of the books awarded this prize since 1998 and each and every one of them were memorable in their own ways. Also, quite a few of the winning novels share traits with English-language speculative fiction; those who can understand the blurb above will note a few of those on display there.

I have something I want to say about "literary fiction" and "speculative fiction" in the very near future, so I'll hold off on that for now. Just note that stories like these, if they were to be translated into the languages of more readers, might just give some new reading options to quite a few.

Oh, almost forgot - there was this one author blurb, about Neuman himself:

"Tocado por la gracia. La literatura del siglo XXI pertenecerá a Neuman y a unos pocos de sus hermanos de sangre."

("Touched by grace. The literature of the 21st century will belong to Neuman and to a few of his blood brothers.")

Who said it? Only Roberto Bolaño just before he died. And to think Neuman was born in 1977, making him 3 years younger than I am. Sobering thought that he earned such praise from Bolaño when he was in his 20s.

Fantasy Masterworks #39: Evangeline Walton, The Mabinogion

That day Pwyll, Prince of Dyved, who thought he was going out to hunt, was in reality going out to be hunted, and by no beast or man of earth. (p. 15)

Myths are an absolute bitch to translate properly. Grounded in a particular milieu, myths rarely reveal their full power to those not raised in that particular culture's time and values. Yet a good translation can approximate the best qualities of the original, making for a powerful tale that carries the echoes of something deeper, wilder, and more mystical than what a present-day reader may behold.

I have only the tiniest trace of Welsh ancestry (being in most part Irish and Cherokee ancestry, I grew up with other legends), so while I had heard of the Welsh myth/story cycle called the Mabinogion, I was not familiar with its particulars. So in some senses, I am the ideal reader for American writer Evangeline Walton's adaptation of that story cycle, also entitled The Mabinogion. Originally published as four books (Prince of Annwn, The Children of Llyr, The Song of Rhiannon, and The Island of the Mighty) in the 1930s, Walton's books aimed to "modernize" the Welsh stories without (according to Walton, in a couple of her endnotes) adding or subtracting from the originals. However, these stories were not successful until they were republished in the 1970s, likely in response to J.R.R. Tolkien's popularization of fantasy stories.

Each of the four books is in turn broken down into parts that revolve around particular story events. In the first volume, Prince of Annwn, the young Prince Pwyll dominates the first thread, while in succeeding "branches", the reader encounters the wizard-prince Gwydion, the beautiful Rhiannon, and the doughty Branwen. In each of these stories, there are echoes of certain cultural clashes, such as the invasions by the Romans and (later) the Anglo-Saxons, or of the infiltration of Christian values into what originally were pagan myths. Walton does not attempt to whitewash these, but instead she went to great pains to keep these competing cultural values embedded within the stories. From what I can judge, being almost wholly ignorant of Welsh mythology, Walton attempted to do for that story cycle what John Steinbeck at the end of his life aimed to do for Thomas Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur: make the story "readable" for a "modern" audience while as retaining as much of essence of the original as possible.

Did Walton succeed? For me, I found myself paying very close attention to the stories. There were echoes of other cultures' mythologies in Pwyll's day-long duel with Havgan, whose strength waxes and wanes with the sun's rise and setting. Walton told stories such as this in clear, evocative language that was in turns direct and poetic, but never dull or obtuse. In reading this omnibus, I saw names and locales which I believe were later used by other fantasy writers, making me wonder if they had been influenced by Walton or if they too were tapping into the same mythological streams. Some might say these tales are very "Celtic," and I suppose that would be an aptly vague, almost meaningless title, except Walton's tales do not feel as though they are copies of greater works. Instead, she manages to infuse these stories with a vitality that makes for a very enjoyable read.

Is Walton's The Mabinogion worthy of being called a "Fantasy Masterwork?" In my opinion, yes. She relates powerful, timeless tales in clear language that might make many readers want to delve further into the original Welsh myths. The best translations inspire a curiosity as to how the original would be for the reader, and in this, Walton has succeeded with me.

Cubicle Fun with William Shatner

Smuggled into work on Saturday my life-size cardboard cutout of Shatner as Captain Kirk. Since then, I've had about a dozen or so co-workers either shriek or be startled when walking by my office seeing Shatner standing there.

As for what's on his shoulders...well, a female co-worker has become part of a greater in-joke involving squirrels, so when I put this beside her cubicle (we share office space) on Saturday, I taped two pictures of squirrels to Shatner's shoulders. Lovely, no?

Anyone else ever partake of similar fun with office space...well, ones that don't involve the smashing of copiers?