Someone should write Science Fiction And the Search For Literary Respectability. It won’t be me, though. I don’t string readers on across an entire novel plus only to end badly. And this would be one of those grand – literary – novels in which the main character gives up everything that makes him great and happy, while in search for the glamour it can’t get. And then he dies.
Okay, I realize this is a gross simplification. There are many currents in the field and out killing science fiction. But, as perhaps because for my sins I have a literature degree, (It’s a long story and complex, and I wanted engineering, but… You can’t always get what you want.) I keep running into the “we want to be literary” crowd and into the “science fiction is not real litcharatchure” crowd.
And in case you think it’s not a direction one is pushed in, let me tell you that every agent I ever had and every editor I had save Toni (Yay, Toni) Weisskopf at Baen fought like living heck to get me pushed in a “more literary” direction. Worse, they did that without consulting me and finding out if that was where I was aiming. It was simply and tactically assumed that since I could do it – proved it with the first Shakespeare series, more or less – that must be what I aspired to.
It’s entirely possible – of course – that I’m special, but I don’t think so. I think “literary” is what these people are all aiming for, right or wrong.
Part of the problem, as someone pointed out in the comments of the post yesterday (I’ll respond tonight. I’m going away to office-ish all day) the field is flooded with liberal arts degrees.
I’d like to point out that I never felt as out of place – in a lifetime of feeling out of place – as I did while taking my degree. Part of the reason I felt wrong is that studying “modern literature” is just… silly. To an extent all study of literature is.
Oh, sure, there is a lot to study in Shakespeare or Austen. Even Dumas (who was as sloppy as I am) can teach a lot particularly to a budding writer.
But the problem is these people by and large weren’t budding writers. (Or readers. One of my friends in college read ONLY comics. Disney comics.) And they had no clue what to study about literature. My classes ranged from the useful to the appalling, their aim shifting from technique analysis to indoctrination. (Though even that doesn’t explain what in the name of sweet Daphne my German Literature Professor thought he was doing when he made us memorize Wagner’s libretos.)
The useful did what fits within the study of literature as an art – study the techniques the writer used. How does Shakespeare make us feel Cordelia’s death? That type of thing. The appalling looked for “social protest” in works. Or dug through with Marxist analysis to turn the book into something it never was. (Does Marxist analysis work? Sure, up to a point. But it’s sort of like the fact that you can sing all of Emily Dickenson’s poems to the Yellow Rose Of Texas. Just because you can fit an author’s output into a pattern, it doesn’t mean the author meant it that way or that the pattern reveals anything useful. And in the case of Marxist analysis, it also fails to connect with reality at any point. At least The Yellow Rose Of Texas has the utility of being a catchy tune and allowing me to shock my kids when I sing Because I Would Not Stop For Death.)
Anyway, all of this is sillier when it comes to modern literature – i.e. contemporary with us – because you can’t tell what is going to be considered “literature” a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years from now. By definition – well, at least my definition – literature is that which appeals to humans across time because it touched something fundamentally human.
We have no way of knowing what of today will appeal across time. Sure, popularity has something to do with it, but not always. For instance Austen is much more popular (and readable!) today than the Bronte sisters. And while Shakespeare was a Mega Block Buster, not all of what we revere today was.
For the record, I don’t aspire to literature. I don’t even think about it, except to enjoy it. In four hundred years there’s a very good chance I’ll be dead. What my great great great grandkids think of my writing is a matter of profound and unaloyed unimportance to me.
BUT there is a strand of things that people think are literature. Part of this is that they fit Marxist analysis so well, and also they’re a little difficult to read, which of course, every liberal arts graduate knows it should be. (Of course. If it were easy, you wouldn’t need a degree to read it.) And needless to say they bow rather obsessively towards all the sacred cows of our culture, while goring the sacred cows of the now safely disapproved of past. (No? Yeah. When is the last time a darling of the literary establishment wrote a book suggesting men and women neither are nor should be absolutely alike – or the women superior – in ability and achievement? Really? Why not? Aren’t we supposed to challenge convention? Right.)
In other words, they’re the perfect read for the smug and comfortable. If your purpose in reading is to reassure yourself again that you are smart, that you are special, and that only you understand the heartbreak of psoriasis (joke from last post. There will be a quiz) then these books are perfect for you. For me, life is too short. I don’t care what people think of my reading material and I don’t discriminate against the amusing parts of the written word. I read for fun. Yes, that does sometimes mean Borges (so, sue me, I’m weird.) Sometimes it means obscure Portuguese poets. More often it means science fiction, fantasy, mystery and the occasional romance.
I don’t know why or how SF decided to aspire to literature. I suspect I’m not old enough. But to me it looks like a nouveau rich thing. Science Fiction was selling well, so it decided to go for social acceptance. I suspect a lot of involved the boomers, too, but that’s because, hey, you guys, I came right after you, and you have no idea how annoying the view is from where I stand. From where I stand (born in 62 and no, we’re not boomers. I’d put the cutoff date around 53 or so, but never mind the side discussion) ya’ll were some smug sons and daughters of a boom. Ya’ll were SO MUCH smarter than the old man (and woman.)
I suspect ya’ll were involved in this, because I’ve seen the fingerprints in the way you guys refer to the greats of the past, including Heinlein. It’s all “Oh, but they weren’t real litchratchure.” (Besides, of course, standing accused of not being enlightened.)
Anyway, at some point SF decided it wanted a seat at the “literary” table. So…
So, being full of liberal arts graduates, it started aiming for what it had been taught was literature: very compatible with Marxist analysis, a little difficult to read and, oh, yeah, careful not to tread on the toes of any accepted shibboleth.
Weirdly, this didn’t sell even though it was marketed and promoted like the next best thing. Even more weirdly, reader interest moved into the fields that were beneath the touch of literary critics: fantasy first, till that too started getting taken over, and then to the sort of Urban Fantasy that might as well be Paranormal Romance.
Mind you, given enough time, and the establishment retaining enough power (I don’t think it will) they’ll come for Urban Fantasy next. Perhaps they already are. (I don’t read it enough to know.)
But at least science fiction is now respectable, right? We’re accepted as literature?
Oh, sweet heavens, NO! If I had a dime for every time I come across – in an how to book, in a magazine, in a social discussion – the recoil of horror of the “literature crowd” at the mention of science fiction, I could sculpt Versailles in dimes.
Perhaps in a fitting punishment for the fact that SF “challenges” a long dead establishment, literature people view us still as the sf of the fifties. “Oh, you guys write rockets and big-bosomed women.” (Guilty! I like writing it too. AND muscular men!)
Do some of our people – particularly our more literary people – make it to mainstream and/or literary respectability? Sure they do. But then they’re very careful to tell everyone they’re not REALLY SF or even Fantasy. “My family? Never met them. I’m a lost prince. I was found under a cabbage leaf on a spring morn.”
So, what do we take from this sad tale, other than the end of the Romeo and Juliet that “all are punished?”
I don’t know.* I know that it’s got to change. It’s got to change because I like SF too much to watch it die, and because, as Dave Freer said, we need it now. We need to believe the future can be better than the past if we just put our back to its and push.
So, what are you waiting for? Roll up your sleeves.
*Though my friends Charlie Martin and Patrick Richardson and I are going to start a project. More on this later.
According To Hoyt 
One thing that turned me off of “literature” was the search for “hidden meanings” which implied the author was some sort of kook.
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No, just an idiot. it’s the critics that are smart, see?
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Whenever someone starts deconstructing hidden meanings in stories, I immediately flash back to the Ben Stein scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
It’s one thing to figure out what an author is saying in a story ABOUT THE STORY (I loooove “Writing Excuses” with Howard Tayler, Brandon Sanderson, etc., as a guide to better writing), another to look for hidden meanings as if there’s a metastory hidden in everything.
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One of my high school teachers had an interesting comment on this: “Great literature breeds.” If you think of these messages that people allegedly find in the classics as things they, the readers and critics, created under the influence of the work, then it makes much more sense.
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I want to write stories. I want to write stories that people enjoy reading. If people can take away a lesson from my writing, that’s great, but that will only happen if they read it. And so I try to write stuff that’s fun to read. And how do I do that? I write stuff of the kind _I_ like to read.
I’m sure that’s very wrong of me somehow. ;)
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I’m the reverse. I get paid to write material that teaches people lessons. If I can make it fun to read (such as pages 1 and 2 of http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ieduasst/tivv1r0/topic/com.ibm.iea.gsk/gsk/7.0/using_ikeyman/cert_mgmt.pdf?dmuid=20100322105620864985) that’s an added bonus – that that is what it is, an extra.
But I have the courtesy to label my educational material as such, not try and pass it off as entertainment.
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Of course. I used to teach, and making it fun is a good part of it. But each thing in its place.
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Yes, you terrible, terrible person. You’re as evil as I am. I shall reserve space in my pit of the unreedemed for you. (Otherwise known as that great con bar in the sky. I’m sure Robert and Jim are there. Possibly fighting.)
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I don’t string readers on across an entire novel plus only to end badly. And this would be one of those grand – literary – novels in which the main character gives up everything that makes him great and happy, while in search for the glamour it can’t get. And then he dies.
It can be a “sin and redemption” novel where the character starts by throwing away what makes him great and happy, pursues unattainable glamour, and then gives up and works back to being great and happy.
We all do stupid things, but heroes can recover from them.
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From your mouth to His ears.
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The problem is, he’s as likely to listen as Athena.
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Ori,
Have you been talking to my daughter? ;)
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“…allowing me to shock my kids when I sing …”
I’m stealin’ that. Some day, when you least expect it, one of my characters is going to bump into you coming around a corner and sing right at you, “Because I would not stop for Death/I’m goin’ there to see!”
Just you wait.
…
I am reminded that Sappho is appropriately called literature — inaccessible, maddeningly incomplete, losing a lot in translation, yet still — through all of that — strangely affecting.
So what? Does she sell?
…
One thing that saves SF/F from being TOO precious — at least for some of us — is that one of the Giants On Whose Shoulders We Stand constantly reminded We Who Would Follow that we’re competing for beer money. We do well to remind ourselves of that.
M
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Mark,
I wish, but they’ve been demonizing the man for the last thirty years, and convincing the young ones to pay him no mind. “When a man’s good words can no longer be heard/and a man’s good wisdom no longer understood/it strikes a man more dead than great reckoning in a small room.”
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Ahhh Political interpretations of the Wizard of Oz as an allegory for monetary policy in the late 1800s. Sure, Baum wasn’t writing kiddy lit, he was arguing for the gold standard. :)
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If you go back far enough, that actually makes sense. Writing was expensive and possibly censored, so it made sense to hide messages in books. Like King David’s exaggerated words, and total lack of action, after his general (Yoav) had killed general Abner.
But that’s ancient history, not the late 1800s in the US.
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Yes, but the “hidden messages” we were meant to find were sometimes daft. Like “he hates his left leg” WHAT? (Werner de Goethe, if I remember properly. I might not. Despite flashbacks to college classes, I’ve been trying to forget them for years. :) )
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My son was signed up for a “literature” course this fall. Then he saw the syllabus and found out that there was a “community service project” component. He wanted to know why (he had no problem doing it if there was a reason, but there was not a good justification). It turns out that the “lit” class was writings about what people were saying rather than about – you know – actually written stuff. Needless to say he switched classes to something that would actually talk about style and technique.
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I think Robert took this class.
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Great blog. Great analysis!
As someone who loves poetry, literary fiction, scifi, fantasy, mystery and (gasp!) horror — in no particular order — and enjoys writing all of the above, my hope is that as indie authors and indie presses gain a foothold, readers will become the strongest voice in dictating the market. Though, I will still write whatever flavor of fiction I feel like writing. Money is great, and I want lots of it, and will be ecstatically happy if my writing brings it to me, and am trying to be smart in how I run the business side of my career to help foster that — but in the end, the minute I start to write something based solely on sales is the minute I lose hold of the joy I get from writing. And at that point, I’m better off finding other ways to earn a living. Yes, I want to sell books. But that’s not the only measure of success for me. The number one measure is how much I’m enjoying my job.
Maybe because of the circles I travel in, I get crap for writing literary from my genre friends but have only had one literary friend comment on the validity of my horror stories as “real” writing. But I’m not in college and don’t have a literary degree and I haven’t had an agent for years, and no one knows who I am. So the circle of people who comment on my choice of reading or writing is very small..
I am rather fascinated by this division because I didn’t know it existed until I was in my 30s, though I was reading and writing both genre and literary fiction. I grew up white trash, went to an at-risk high school (where we read Stephen King as well as Shakespeare) and a local university (where we have a great sf class taught by a great sf writer). It wasn’t until I started becoming more involved with the sf/fantasy communities that I started to learn about it. I know it’s real; I just had not been exposed to it. Maybe because the focus in my youth in my social class was just trying to get us to read, no matter what we read. And I happened to get lucky with teachers who read widely and appreciated widely. I was handed “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in middle school by the same librarian who helped me find the kind of horror novels I liked.
I found other divisions in college, but they were more akin to neuroses than bias and had nothing to do with genre. I hope you will write more about this subject!
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I read practically everything. I just like some stuff better than other. And well done is well done. A well done mystery shouldn’t strive to be more like “literary” anymore than it should strive to be more like SF. It should strive to be a good mystery.
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I still vividly remember 50 years ago being required to produce analyses of the symbolic meaning to be found in selected passages from Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” as part of an English Lit. course. I failed miserably and it left me with a lifelong aversion to anything categorised as ” literary fiction”. Fortunately I happily carried on reading all the things I enjoyed, SciFi, Fantasy, mysteries, and thrillers, that have given me enormous enjoyment over the years. And that’s what most of the people I know want from fiction – to be entertained.
The literati are a minority and although they might make a lot of noise I’m sure it is as Shakespeare said – sound and fury signifying nothing. So as one of your fans Sarah I would say ignore the snobs and status seekers and carry on doing what you do so well – telling great stories and entertaining people.
(only can you do it a bit quicker please – VBG)
Melvyn
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you know, I hated Conrad when I read him because his language felt stilted to me. Yes, it does matter in my case. My internal sense of language which is the saving grace of my writing comes with a side effect of not being able to read some language. It feels like nails on the chalkboard.
And Melvyn, I’m writing as fast as I can. I’ll grant you this year has been slow. Health has been “interesting” which I hate. Right now I need to figure out what the stupid stomach bug is…
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There are a handful of SciFi authors I enjoy that I also would mark as employing the beautiful poetry and wordplay that would, in a fair world, make their works “Literature.”
Gene Wolfe, for one. Dan Simmons – despite sometimes getting lost in overlong dissertations on poetry.
Michael Moorcock I outgrew at the same time I outgrew most of the nihilistic industrial music I listened to in that time frame.
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I love Bradbury. My kids loved to have Bradbury read to them BEFORE they understood words. But the man could make the phone book sound poetic and interesting and make me cry all the way through “Jones” or perhaps “Smith” — it really is that simple. It is probably literature. Bradbury is what I used to beat down the teachers who sneered at my reading SF.
Alas the literary field is strewn with the carcases of people who attempted to be “the new Bradbury.”
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I’m embarrassed that I forgot Bradbury.
I sometimes think the purpose of HS literature reading is to get you to hate reading – as the only stuff I didn’t walk out hating was stuff I already read before the teachers rammed it down our throats. King Lear, Animal Farm, Bradbury.
Of course, I don’t think anything could have salvaged Lord of the Flies.
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Nothing but NOTHING could have salvaged Lord of The Flies which is based on the idea that men without a controlling authority become demons. Wrong universe and species, at least if the humans have been RAISED and not grown up in wilderness. A would-be suitor gave me this book for my nineteenth birthday. His suit did not prosper.
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The curious thing about ‘desire to be lit’ratchure’ is that it is driven by both authors and publishers. I suspect it is all about a lack of self-esteem, myself. I’ve just been following a thread elsewhere where authors were congratulating each other and a publisher (TOR) on getting understated more mainstream literature covers. Gee, that says you really appreciate those folk who shelled out their hard earned money to buy Science Fiction or Fantasy with the cover that said so.
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Yes, part of this is to want to be “important enough” for literature. Oh, my aching teeth. I did literature until I was 11. It’s all I could find. Then I discovered SF. It dreamed bigger dreams, and I ran away with it.
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Does Lit’chure pay better? That’s the only reason I can see for trying to write it. Maybe it gets its authors invited to better parties?
Of all the goals for which an author should strive, respect from critics and contemporaries strikes me as least important. Entertain readers, enlighten readers (at least by making them wrap their brains around alternate interpretations of realities), influence readers — don’t none of that require the work be literature.
Bob Heinlein and Louis L’Amour between them have probably influenced the world more than any ten writers of Lit’chure. ERB and Conan Doyle were hacks but created universally recognized characters who surpass pretty much any produced by Lit’chure.
Literature is a mug’s game played by the cool kids to ostracise and intimidate the hoi poloi. It is unimportant unless your main reason for writing is to impress those people, in which case you’re granting them the power to determine your happiness. Frankly, given what they like these are not the sort of people I think any sane person would so empower.
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I was told, by someone who should know, that the advances for litchratchure are about 12k tops. Now, I’m not sure he’s right anymore. I know several literary lions who’ve blown that by a factor of five. So I’d say “depends on how crazy the field is.”
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The desire to have sf seen as “literature” goes back to at least the 1950s, and maybe earlier. I saw discussions of the question in books published before JFK became Pres.
It’s not hard to understand. People are social critters, and want to fit in.
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“I don’t string readers on across an entire novel plus only to end badly.”
While not the meat of your post I have to say that I’ve read several books lately that do this and it isn’t the fault of any one genre. They all seem to be spawning equal opportunity masochistic writers. There are other things have become just as bad. Inconsistent characters personalities between books or seeming to think that such things such as rape/torture/etc are the “in” thing to add to a book(rape becoming the most consistently used with the least amount of plot to back it up). I mean these are things have always existed, but the amount of authors who seem to want to pull the wings off flies to see their character squirm is getting ridiculous. I’m also finding the love triangle team X trope in UF(seemingly increased due to those sparkling books which should not be named) and the day time soap opera of who is sleeping in who’s bed today getting old. I mean you had two characters wanting Kyrie, but didn’t take 6 books for her to decide who.
All of this(especially the cruel things) has really come close to discouraging me from reading. If I can’t pick up a new book without running into it then why bother? Like you mention I read for fun and strangely enough I don’t find such things fun to read. I’ve said this else where, but I don’t like this new “by rote” check list some writers are following. As if a book cannot survive with these things. The writers I trust, like you(points for sucking up?), just can’t write enough for my voracious book appetite. Many of the ones I use to read or had started getting into in the “fun” days have dropped off the map. I hope whatever this faze is gets over quickly.
Sorry guess I still needed to vent some. :)
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Yeah, yeah. I’m way behind on my email.
It all comes down to taking control. And to take control you’ve got to be your own publisher, or have someone who has the same views as you as a publisher. There are some people doing anthologies who are pretty good, like Janet Morris. But I suspect most of the time you are going to have to do it yourself.
Wayne
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