Wiley, Margaret Lee. “GENIUS: A PROBLEM IN DEFINITION”. Studies in English 16 (1936): 77–83. Web.Genius is a problematic term to define not simply because there is dispute over the relative ease with which the word is paraded to refer to anything and anyone that stands against the grain, but also because the accumulation of various shades of meaning makes it difficult to extract something common from out of the linguistic mire.
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Monday, October 19, 2015
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Vonnegut, Atwood and Gunn
Of the three novels assigned for this week, James Gunn's The Listeners is a good position from which to critique the disputed relationship between SF and the mainstream, largely because it approaches 'mainstream' aesthetics from within genre. The purpose of this response will be to delineate exactly what it means to approach the 'mainstream' or genre from 'within' or 'without' aesthetically. I will try to do this by briefly investigating the treatment of the two themes underlying the three novels: the notion of human progress and the impact of religion.
In James Gunn's The Listeners, the first major hurdle faced by MacDonald is in the guise of Jeremiah the priest. Jeremiah's reputation suggests that the power of religion as an 'opiate of the masses' still exists in the near future, and can expedite the process of public approval or denial of an idea. This is a notion that both Vonnegut and Atwood seem to agree on as well. However, Gunn's handling of religion is markedly different from the two, in the exaggerated portrayal of its agency.
Genre exaggerates out of necessity, and it does so by condensing what is multifarious and omnipresent, in varying guises, into one symbolic figurehead, or institution. This should not, I argue, be confused with reductionist tendencies associated with fable, or parable, because SF tries to uphold the moral ambiguity that is part and parcel of an institutionalized religion existing either in the 21st century as we know it, or, as in the case of Gunn, a 21st century sufficiently extrapolated from the 20th, bearing in mind the advent of a technologically saturated era.
The 'mainstream' exaggeration of an equivalent something in our society is usually presented in the form of satire, which, while still critically considered to be 'lower' aesthetically to the primary current of the 'mainstream', is still above SF as genre, because of its direct engagement with sociopolitics. Vonnegut uses Sirens of Titan to critique religion as a method of inhibiting free will in the name of a higher power, but as agency it does not compare with Gunn's treatment. In satire that seeks to address a multitude of aspects in human society, religion becomes just another peg holding up the overarching method. With Gunn, however, religion, as approached from within genre, is treated science fictionally: that is to say, it is treated as a 'technique' that is as serious as literary 'technique'. Style and content, it could be argued, is inseparable, but SF often favours content over style, and in this matter of religion that is readily evident.
Speaking of style and content, The Handmaid's Tale is the most readily identifiable as 'mainstream' fiction, because of its naturalizing tendency. This is achieved by approaching the theocratic society of Gilead from the first person perspective of someone who is, even in the process of writing her memoir, is being actively abused by the system. But the system is all she has, and Offred often tries to empathize, and is never despairing to the extent of losing sight of her ambition. Religion as theme is diffused throughout everything that she does, and it is so diffused so as to become unfamiliar as religion. Approached from within, it becomes indistinguishable from a totalitarian regime, thus giving the lie to clear distinctions between different kinds of autocratic rule, bringing it all into the rubric of power.
SF, I argue, cannot generalize quite in this vein, in its constant need to buttress the real with its potential, intrinsic symbolic value. This symbolic value is not limited to actualized ideas, such as religion, but also in abstract notions such as human progress. Vonnegut's novel actively denies the notion of progress as something that is human. Indeed, he lampoons the notion of free will, by drawing attention to the various threads of power which undermine human freedom. Atwood's novel is a cautionary tale of what progress might achieve if taken to its logical extreme, which ignores other important human aspects such as compassion, love or emotional freedom as being peripheral. None of these two, however, explicitly draws attention to the theme of progress in its workings. However, in Gunn's novel, it is a theme that is not only entrenched in the novel, but actively troubles the protagonist. The protagonist consciously treats it as a symbol, not just as an artistic symbol that needs to be critically unearthed, but as a symbol that needs to be actively thought through as an important element of the story itself. Thus we find his socratic debates with Jeremiah and White. There is not much that happens in the way of action in Gunn's novel; much of the action is sublimated in conscious, concerned discussion for the fate of the world.
In conclusion then, Gunn's novel approaches the mainstream from within genre by reconfiguring the priorities of the mainstream - diffusion of theme and symbolism, and a fragmentation of the Idea driving the novel into situations - into the priorities of SF, which seeks exactly the opposite of the aforementioned. Where the mainstream diffuses, SF condenses.
Books similar to Gunn, Vonnegut and Atwood: Contact, by Carl Sagan; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams; 'The Conquest of Gola' by Leslie Stone; The Female Man, by Joanna Russ; 'The Story of Your Life' by Ted Chiang; Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut;
In James Gunn's The Listeners, the first major hurdle faced by MacDonald is in the guise of Jeremiah the priest. Jeremiah's reputation suggests that the power of religion as an 'opiate of the masses' still exists in the near future, and can expedite the process of public approval or denial of an idea. This is a notion that both Vonnegut and Atwood seem to agree on as well. However, Gunn's handling of religion is markedly different from the two, in the exaggerated portrayal of its agency.
Genre exaggerates out of necessity, and it does so by condensing what is multifarious and omnipresent, in varying guises, into one symbolic figurehead, or institution. This should not, I argue, be confused with reductionist tendencies associated with fable, or parable, because SF tries to uphold the moral ambiguity that is part and parcel of an institutionalized religion existing either in the 21st century as we know it, or, as in the case of Gunn, a 21st century sufficiently extrapolated from the 20th, bearing in mind the advent of a technologically saturated era.
The 'mainstream' exaggeration of an equivalent something in our society is usually presented in the form of satire, which, while still critically considered to be 'lower' aesthetically to the primary current of the 'mainstream', is still above SF as genre, because of its direct engagement with sociopolitics. Vonnegut uses Sirens of Titan to critique religion as a method of inhibiting free will in the name of a higher power, but as agency it does not compare with Gunn's treatment. In satire that seeks to address a multitude of aspects in human society, religion becomes just another peg holding up the overarching method. With Gunn, however, religion, as approached from within genre, is treated science fictionally: that is to say, it is treated as a 'technique' that is as serious as literary 'technique'. Style and content, it could be argued, is inseparable, but SF often favours content over style, and in this matter of religion that is readily evident.
Speaking of style and content, The Handmaid's Tale is the most readily identifiable as 'mainstream' fiction, because of its naturalizing tendency. This is achieved by approaching the theocratic society of Gilead from the first person perspective of someone who is, even in the process of writing her memoir, is being actively abused by the system. But the system is all she has, and Offred often tries to empathize, and is never despairing to the extent of losing sight of her ambition. Religion as theme is diffused throughout everything that she does, and it is so diffused so as to become unfamiliar as religion. Approached from within, it becomes indistinguishable from a totalitarian regime, thus giving the lie to clear distinctions between different kinds of autocratic rule, bringing it all into the rubric of power.
SF, I argue, cannot generalize quite in this vein, in its constant need to buttress the real with its potential, intrinsic symbolic value. This symbolic value is not limited to actualized ideas, such as religion, but also in abstract notions such as human progress. Vonnegut's novel actively denies the notion of progress as something that is human. Indeed, he lampoons the notion of free will, by drawing attention to the various threads of power which undermine human freedom. Atwood's novel is a cautionary tale of what progress might achieve if taken to its logical extreme, which ignores other important human aspects such as compassion, love or emotional freedom as being peripheral. None of these two, however, explicitly draws attention to the theme of progress in its workings. However, in Gunn's novel, it is a theme that is not only entrenched in the novel, but actively troubles the protagonist. The protagonist consciously treats it as a symbol, not just as an artistic symbol that needs to be critically unearthed, but as a symbol that needs to be actively thought through as an important element of the story itself. Thus we find his socratic debates with Jeremiah and White. There is not much that happens in the way of action in Gunn's novel; much of the action is sublimated in conscious, concerned discussion for the fate of the world.
In conclusion then, Gunn's novel approaches the mainstream from within genre by reconfiguring the priorities of the mainstream - diffusion of theme and symbolism, and a fragmentation of the Idea driving the novel into situations - into the priorities of SF, which seeks exactly the opposite of the aforementioned. Where the mainstream diffuses, SF condenses.
Books similar to Gunn, Vonnegut and Atwood: Contact, by Carl Sagan; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams; 'The Conquest of Gola' by Leslie Stone; The Female Man, by Joanna Russ; 'The Story of Your Life' by Ted Chiang; Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut;
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)