Incoherent rant
Dec. 5th, 2010 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkJust have to get this out of my system...
Several times when I went to the bookstore I saw a novel called The Magicians, by Lev Grossman. I sort of wanted to read it, but mostly forgot about it until I came upon a review of it in the college newspaper. Then I looked it up on Amazon, and read some of the reviews...which put me into instant writer-rage mode.
I feel like I spend a lot of time defending fantasy as a genre, because it's a genre that I love but that is definitely looked down upon by most people. When I was in high school, I had an awareness in the back of my mind that fantasy = not Real Writing, and so, when my school had its annual creative writing contest, I was too terrified to submit fantasy. I tried to write something "realistic." I tried really hard. But I couldn't come up with anything. I hated the pieces that I submitted (it was usually mandatory to submit something, and the submissions were graded), because they were far from my best work and they felt like a kind of betrayal of myself. I was writing the very realistic fiction that I normally loathed to read. But, being the grade-obsessed conscious person I was, I was too scared to submit something in the genre I was actually passionate about and automatically get marked down for writing something "childish" and "below my level."
Even now, I am reluctant to take a Creative Writing course in college, because I don't want to be stuck writing realistic fiction for a semester, and I still can't summon the courage to submit fantasy, because college professors can be even more elitist than high school teachers (and I still would rather not bomb my GPA).
Fantasy is not "literature," people say. Well, I say, YES, it is. The only difference between fantasy and other genres is that fantasy can have magic. Fantasy is not inherently escapist. Or, I should revise that: ALL fiction is escapist, and fantasy is no different. Generally, I think, people don't read fiction because they want to know what Real Life is like. Everyone knows what Real Life is like. The trick with fiction is that it has to be "realistic" in the sense that the plot and characters have to be believable, but no one wants to read a story that refuses to come to a conclusion, a story that's cynical and jaded because "that's what Real Life is like," inconclusive and pessimistic, a story with characters who don't change and an ambivalent ending.
Fantasy and sci-fi are treated as "not serious" genres because their plots are simplistic and clichéd, they always end happily, or something--I have to admit that I've always seen them as "real" genres, and so I can't understand very well the mindset of people who don't think so. Part of the blame lies in the deluge of horrible books that crowd the fantasy/sci-fi market. But then again, I wonder--why do people treat fantasy/sci-fi differently from other genres? As far as I can tell, most realistic fiction out there is just as bad as lower-end fantasy/sci-fi.
I can't help blaming the market in part, because fantasy can be so much more. What draws me to fantasy--as a reader and writer--is the fact that it has so much flexibility and potential depth. Fantasy is more or less forced to deal with complex conflicts that reverberate from the intrapersonal to interpersonal to societal, moral, and beyond. With realistic fiction, I'm often bored out of my mind. "Oh, here's a story about a girl who's been dumped by her boyfriend, and she can't break it into the popular crowd at school, woe is her." These kinds of stories ultimately don't matter. What matters are stories that illuminate human nature through the struggles of the main characters in a context in which important things are at stake. Maybe I just don't have the finesse to write these kinds of stories bounded in a real-world setting. But I also find few realistic fiction novels that do so. To quote a friend of mine who put it once in concise terms: "At least in fantasy, something is guaranteed to happen."
On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes I read so-called "realistic fiction" and have a hard time taking it seriously because I feel that the plot of the story can't happen in Real Life. "And the boy was abused by his father, who found out he was an illegitimate child, and the father shipped the boy across the country while pretending that he had died, meanwhile the boy grew up with DID and completely fabricated his childhood in his mind to avoid the trauma of foster homes..." I really can't believe in these kinds of stories. I just can't. Throw in a made-up setting, political intrigue, and some magic, and I might have an easier time.
I'm starting to make Wild Mass Guesses here, but I think people's lack of seriousness in the way they treat fantasy/sci-fi speaks to our modern-day cynicism that shuns anything "childish." But why is it that way? Childhood is the time when you believe that anything is possible, before you grow up to find that limits are placed on you, one by one. The sky becomes a ceiling rather than only the beginning of an adventure, and soon the ceiling shrinks until it becomes the roof over your head. Adults become preoccupied with what's "real," when the truth is that reality and fantasy are not so easily distinguishable (Inception!). Sometimes fiction is the best mirror of reality. And for those who think that Real Life is all about confusion, vagueness, people who can't accomplish things and a world that can't change--I challenge them. Is that really what you believe? Can you believe in a world without morals, a world incapable of good, a life without meaning? I don't think many people can.
As for happy endings...I don't like sad endings, but I'm not against them, either; I'm only against it when the story leads me to want and expect a happy ending, but then slaps down a depressing ending because "that's Life" or "happy endings are for children" or whatever. I can't imagine there are many people who don't want to live a happy life, who don't want to live happily ever after.
Short version: Fantasy deserves to be regarded as a "legitimate" genre by people, because it is one. All of the flaws that people attribute to fantasy/sci-fi novels are just as major problems in "realistic" fiction. People overrate "realistic" fiction that fails to tell an engrossing story while pursuing the reflection of a "realistic" cynical, meaningless life (and I can't understand why people read if they're looking for books on who cynical and meaningless life is).
Several times when I went to the bookstore I saw a novel called The Magicians, by Lev Grossman. I sort of wanted to read it, but mostly forgot about it until I came upon a review of it in the college newspaper. Then I looked it up on Amazon, and read some of the reviews...which put me into instant writer-rage mode.
I feel like I spend a lot of time defending fantasy as a genre, because it's a genre that I love but that is definitely looked down upon by most people. When I was in high school, I had an awareness in the back of my mind that fantasy = not Real Writing, and so, when my school had its annual creative writing contest, I was too terrified to submit fantasy. I tried to write something "realistic." I tried really hard. But I couldn't come up with anything. I hated the pieces that I submitted (it was usually mandatory to submit something, and the submissions were graded), because they were far from my best work and they felt like a kind of betrayal of myself. I was writing the very realistic fiction that I normally loathed to read. But, being the grade-
Even now, I am reluctant to take a Creative Writing course in college, because I don't want to be stuck writing realistic fiction for a semester, and I still can't summon the courage to submit fantasy, because college professors can be even more elitist than high school teachers (and I still would rather not bomb my GPA).
Fantasy is not "literature," people say. Well, I say, YES, it is. The only difference between fantasy and other genres is that fantasy can have magic. Fantasy is not inherently escapist. Or, I should revise that: ALL fiction is escapist, and fantasy is no different. Generally, I think, people don't read fiction because they want to know what Real Life is like. Everyone knows what Real Life is like. The trick with fiction is that it has to be "realistic" in the sense that the plot and characters have to be believable, but no one wants to read a story that refuses to come to a conclusion, a story that's cynical and jaded because "that's what Real Life is like," inconclusive and pessimistic, a story with characters who don't change and an ambivalent ending.
Fantasy and sci-fi are treated as "not serious" genres because their plots are simplistic and clichéd, they always end happily, or something--I have to admit that I've always seen them as "real" genres, and so I can't understand very well the mindset of people who don't think so. Part of the blame lies in the deluge of horrible books that crowd the fantasy/sci-fi market. But then again, I wonder--why do people treat fantasy/sci-fi differently from other genres? As far as I can tell, most realistic fiction out there is just as bad as lower-end fantasy/sci-fi.
I can't help blaming the market in part, because fantasy can be so much more. What draws me to fantasy--as a reader and writer--is the fact that it has so much flexibility and potential depth. Fantasy is more or less forced to deal with complex conflicts that reverberate from the intrapersonal to interpersonal to societal, moral, and beyond. With realistic fiction, I'm often bored out of my mind. "Oh, here's a story about a girl who's been dumped by her boyfriend, and she can't break it into the popular crowd at school, woe is her." These kinds of stories ultimately don't matter. What matters are stories that illuminate human nature through the struggles of the main characters in a context in which important things are at stake. Maybe I just don't have the finesse to write these kinds of stories bounded in a real-world setting. But I also find few realistic fiction novels that do so. To quote a friend of mine who put it once in concise terms: "At least in fantasy, something is guaranteed to happen."
On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes I read so-called "realistic fiction" and have a hard time taking it seriously because I feel that the plot of the story can't happen in Real Life. "And the boy was abused by his father, who found out he was an illegitimate child, and the father shipped the boy across the country while pretending that he had died, meanwhile the boy grew up with DID and completely fabricated his childhood in his mind to avoid the trauma of foster homes..." I really can't believe in these kinds of stories. I just can't. Throw in a made-up setting, political intrigue, and some magic, and I might have an easier time.
I'm starting to make Wild Mass Guesses here, but I think people's lack of seriousness in the way they treat fantasy/sci-fi speaks to our modern-day cynicism that shuns anything "childish." But why is it that way? Childhood is the time when you believe that anything is possible, before you grow up to find that limits are placed on you, one by one. The sky becomes a ceiling rather than only the beginning of an adventure, and soon the ceiling shrinks until it becomes the roof over your head. Adults become preoccupied with what's "real," when the truth is that reality and fantasy are not so easily distinguishable (Inception!). Sometimes fiction is the best mirror of reality. And for those who think that Real Life is all about confusion, vagueness, people who can't accomplish things and a world that can't change--I challenge them. Is that really what you believe? Can you believe in a world without morals, a world incapable of good, a life without meaning? I don't think many people can.
As for happy endings...I don't like sad endings, but I'm not against them, either; I'm only against it when the story leads me to want and expect a happy ending, but then slaps down a depressing ending because "that's Life" or "happy endings are for children" or whatever. I can't imagine there are many people who don't want to live a happy life, who don't want to live happily ever after.
Short version: Fantasy deserves to be regarded as a "legitimate" genre by people, because it is one. All of the flaws that people attribute to fantasy/sci-fi novels are just as major problems in "realistic" fiction. People overrate "realistic" fiction that fails to tell an engrossing story while pursuing the reflection of a "realistic" cynical, meaningless life (and I can't understand why people read if they're looking for books on who cynical and meaningless life is).
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-05 10:57 pm (UTC)I totally get the sentiments you have about not being able to write fantasy in an academic setting. I feel the same way, which totally sucks!
Also, I wonder if fantasy takes more effort and planning to write? Along with dealing with what realistic fiction deals with, you have to do a lot of world and societal building, isn't that right?
no subject
Date: 2010-12-06 02:32 am (UTC)Yup, there's a lot of worldbuilding and research involved in fantasy. It's daunting and frustrating and fun all at the same time, because you get to be the god of your world, but you also have to make sure it makes sense (and not just randomly put deserts and oversized forests all over the place, haha).