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This week: Fantasy as Literature Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.
-Walt Disney
All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
-Carl Jung
And in fact, I think one of the best guides to telling you who you are, and I think children use it all the time for this purpose, is fantasy.
-Peter Shaffer
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Fantasy as Literature
As a followup to my last newsletter, which concerned the perception of fantasy as "escapist" writing, I thought I'd tackle the wonderful (not) world of literary fiction - or, as I like to call it, "snob art."
You probably know the basic idea, even if you've never had the displeasure of reading one (try The New Yorker if you want to know what I'm talking about): A bunch of college professors and grad students are convinced that the best way to write is to eschew most or all of the principles of story writing. You know, like "believable characters," "structured sentences" and "plot."
I think they call it "post-post-modernism" or "dadaism" or some such name stolen from painting.
I've said this before in an earlier Fantasy newsletter, but in a different context: with almost every art form, writing included, there comes a point where, perhaps in an effort to do something "original" or "non-derivative," the art ceases to be about what the average viewer, listener, consumer, or whatever thinks. The artists quit doing the art for the general population, and start trying to please other artists and critics. This has happened in painting, sculpture, music, movies... every art form I can think of gets to that point, even graffiti art which, truth be told, was never very comprehensible to begin with. Perhaps the only exception is television programming, which relies on popularity more than most other forms of art.
This de-evolution is, perhaps, most evident in the most visible of the visual arts: painting. For a long time, the only painting there was, was some form of realism. La Gioconda (Mona Lisa) is a masterfully done portrait. The Last Supper depicted identifiable objects, and included symbolism. Whether you're Christian or not, you can look at that painting and make something of it based on the composition, layout, facial expressions, and so on. Da Vinci wasn't painting for other painters, though; he was painting for the church and, ultimately, the people who would visit it.
But eventually, perhaps partly because of the invention of the camera, that fell out of favor, and it was all about how abstract you could make your paintings. Look in any museum of modern art these days and you'll find something like a splash of color on a white background with the title "The Last Supper" or some such.
And we all pretend to be in awe of such things, when the fact is, technical expertise aside, we're all scratching our head wondering what it all means.
Well, apart from "an artist wants to make money," I'm not sure it "means" anything. Celebrated "artist" Jackson Pollack was famous for splattering enormous canvases with all different colors and selling the result for thousands of dollars. And some art aficionados spend time studying the paintings, looking for patterns (and finding them, because humans are superb pattern-identifiers) and meaning. And yes, no one (famous) had done it before, so it was "original," but so what?
Not just painting, but most art, suffers from this elitism. Movies went there early. Sculpture followed painting. Music, while on the popular level remaining three-to-five-chord simple melodies, also became out of a normal person's reach at the academic level. And literature took that turn sometime around the turn of the last century. I mean, I know a lot of people who worship James Joyce, but I can't make heads or tails out of his novels. They're incomprehensible.
Some people mistake incomprehensibility for depth. Joyce is, to me, the literature equivalent of Jackson Pollack. You could string random words together and make as much sense, and people would still find patterns in it.
I was at a fantasy and science fiction convention once, and at a writer's workshop, one of the authors kept emphasizing how it was important to come up with something "new, unique, original." Now, I haven't read this author's work, so I don't know if she took her own advice, but I talked to her afterwards, and the conversation went something like:
"I enjoyed the panel," I said.
"Thanks," she replied.
"I wonder about the 'originality' thing, though. Seems people don't want anything original. Look at some of the most popular books these days. Harry Potter, for example, is just the combination of fantasy with the British boarding school story, popular in England."
"Yes, but she did it in an original way."
Look, I'm not knocking Harry Potter, but I wouldn't have called it "original." Maybe other Americans aren't as familiar with British boarding school stories, but it was popular in the UK, too. No, it's not "original," but it didn't have to be to be widely read, discussed, and make its author richer than the freakin' Queen.
Or consider the highest-grossing films of all time, which, adjusted for inflation, are (in order): Gone with the Wind, Avatar, Star Wars, Titanic, and The Sound of Music. I won't say any of them suck (though I still haven't seen Titanic, and probably never will, because I'd have to listen to Celine Dion), but they all have one obvious thing in common: they tell stories. They're not just splattered paint on a canvas. There's a clear, unequivocal, surface meaning to all of them - and they also have deeper meaning.
Perhaps I'm wrong in wanting to judge art by its popularity, but I can't help but feel that by reaching a broader audience, you've accomplished something.
I feel like some authors try for the deeper meaning and ignore the surface entirely. Like a friend of mine said about a Hemingway story: "It's a guy going fishing." And that's it. That's the surface. I'd as soon watch paint dry, but they teach that stuff in college and hold it up as an exemplar of fine art. I suppose the metaphor holds true, though; if you're a guy going fishing, you're on the surface of a vast, mysterious world, which you're not a part of, but which occasionally you can catch a glimpse of, for instance when you catch a fish.
Point is, you can find patterns and meaning in anything, because that's what we do. We look at the shadow of rock formations on Mars and we see a face. But how many of those patterns were intentional, and how many are just random splatters of paint, or a fish hinting at the whole world beneath the surface, or a random trick of the light?
And that's where fantasy and science fiction come in. That, and action/adventure. Most, but not all, of the stories in those genres are stories, narratives with comprehensible plots and relatable characters. Is there something below the surface? Ideally, yes, but it's not necessary to understand the depth to enjoy the story.
Even the simple, basic conflict of protagonist vs. antagonist can be the allegory for the internal conflict that every human being experiences. Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader; Harry vs. Voldemort, that sort of thing. But again, we don't have to understand the story at that level to appreciate it.
So my takeaway from this is that you don't have to be truly original to be great. Batman, probably the most popular comic book superhero out there, was modeled on Sherlock Holmes, who might have been modeled on a Poe protagonist. All Kane did was give him a compelling backstory and dress him up like a bat. Superman's iconic outfit was modeled on that of the circus strongmen of the time and, arguably, the character has its true origin in the "fallen god" mythology common to many cultures. Hulk is a riff on the Jekyll and Hyde story, which represents an internal conflict made external. Sure, it all started somewhere, with a truly original story or character, but not all of us can do that - nor do we have to.
You can't copy one of these characters, but you can certainly be inspired by them. So, I figure, just write, and let the readers be the judges.
And remember: incomprehensibility is not depth. |
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Last time, in "Fantasy Newsletter (June 6, 2012)" , I talked about fantasy as escape:
Yera ~Twelve!~  : Your opening line reminded me of this Tolkien quote:
"Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"
Exactly.
st.ifa : i love so much this article. i, for one, went into writing, not really to escape from reality , but to discover myself. i have always lived in dream world. my mind is made that way from birth. i talk to myself. i joke and laugh and conjure all sorts of pictures in my mind every minute. the world of fantasy is my real home.
And really, who among us doesn't live in his or her own head? Also, see the last quote at the top of this newsletter.
Kirsten Marion : Darn right fantasy provides escapism and I echo your 'what's wrong with that?'. And sometimes our brains need the different perspective that fantasy provides in order to make sense of our current reality (or even grateful for it - depending on the story!) [Submitted Item: "Invalid Item" ]
I also have a question: What is the American convention for writing telepathic communication? My sense is that it is just in italics, but I've been known to be wrong.
Most stories I've read that involve telepathic communication - notably, the novels of Steven Brust - use italics to set off the mental communication. Italic font is also used to denote a thing that the narrator or POV character is thinking. Be aware, though, that not everyone agrees with this method - one of my writing workshop teachers went on a tirade about it once. He was British, though.
LJPC - the tortoise : Yay Robert! You're so right. Long live escapist fiction! I've read it since I was in grade-school and loved that it took me away from the mundane world and let my imagination soar. 
~ Laura
And I'll bet you came back to "the mundane world" with a different perspective on things.
And that's it for me for now - see you next time! Until then,
DREAM ON!!!
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Fantasy: July 04, 2012 Issue [#5133]
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