Creative Writing and Fantasy

[EUOL]

Okay, time for ANOTHER rant about higher education.  Here's an excerpt from a recent email correspondence between myself and Scott Card:

"I fear there's no such thing as a creative writing doctoral program where a fantasy writer would be treated well (or even admitted to the program!)."  --Orson Scott Card.

Sigh.  I know we all realize this, but it's sad to hear someone as knowledgeable as Mr. Card confirm the dreaded truth.  Out of all the multitudinous creative writing departments, how is it that not a single one will let itself admit that SF&F has value?

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

because they also wont admit that romance novels have value....

Lets face it most great writers arn't recognized until after their death, or many years after they've written a book.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

I think EUOL and Jeffe have this thing mixed up between you two. Now Jeffe, do you mean admitting that SF & F are valuable in the sense that it has a purpose on society and people?

And EUOL, are you speaking about the values the authors have to each other in writing?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

There are plenty dead SF&F authors, like Mary Shelly, Frank Herbert, Phillip K. Dick, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis...

The reason is because we're nerds. (ok, it sounds flip, but it can boil down to that in one way)

I think this goes back to our discussion about the boundaries between fantasy and "magical realism" and such. Faust is a fantasy: things happen in it that a 19th centuray playwright knew would never happen. But they don't treat it that way. Few people look at genres that way in real study. They kind of ignore it, even though it's a very valid way of looking at a lot of inter-textual references. The down side being that a lot of SF students don't look outside their genre when looking at a lot of those influences either.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Or its removed to the realm of kids stuff.

[JP Dogberry]

I personally see Sci-Fi, or Speculative Fictiona s the highest accomplishment of Literature. It is focused on ideas rather than events, and makes truly valuable social comment by tryign to predict what current trends will result in. (I know I could have explained that more articulately, but I'm tired)

Oh, and yeah, I'm a Nerd. That has a lot to do with it.



Maybe it has something to do with the pulp sci-fi of the golden age, where everythign was about communism and giant ants? Add that to all the Tolkein knock-offs, and you have a genre that doesn't look very repectful. But it has matured since those days, which were decade(s) ago.

Although, so are Video Games, and general society refuses to look at them as art either. No one can seriously say Deus Ex didn't make artistic speech. Mortal Kombat, maybe not.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

JP makes about about the maturity of the genre. We can all point to old examples, but as a whole, the genre is pretty new. A lot of genres have a long time getting out of the gate. give it some time

[Fellfrosch]

The big problem is not the genre you choose, but that you choose a genre in the first place. Genre fiction (SF&F, romance, mystery, horror, etc.) is viewed as highly inferior, and "serious" authors don't bother with it.

[stacer]

I've just been reading a couple interesting articles on feminist criticism and how, to make themselves be accepted as part of the regular world, marginalized groups often "step-stone" over another marginalized group--for example, women compared themselves to being treated "like stupid children."

Toward the end of one of these articles, here's what author Bev Clark (my teacher from my Midnight Gardens class last summer) said:

"There is still an urge to elevate by discarding what seems juvenile. . . . Given the relative lack of attention, even by children's critics, to the more realistic moes of children's literature, it may be that much easier for adult critics to appropriate domestic fiction like hers [referring to Louisa May Alcott] for themselves, leaving the children with fantasy and fairy tales. On the other hand, in my more hopeful moments I like to think that Alcott's canonization, even her paracanonization, will make it easier to treat children's literature--hers and others'--with respect. Tokenism may be the first step on the road to genuine dialogue."

Now, I understand that her point is that she'd like to see adult critics respect children's literature from a child-centered perspective (which is what the article is about), not just appropriating certain children's books as adult books--which is exactly what SE was talking about with inter-textuality w/ SF. But does it seem to you that Clark is doing exactly what she rails against--belittling fantasy in favor of realistic fiction? Or is she saying that all the genres usually "relegated" to children should be respected by adult critics as well?

I just thought it was an interesting parallel. And it's got me thinking about my paper on this article, which is good, because it's due in 3 hours and I haven't started it yet. At least it's only 2 pages, but sometimes those are the hardest to write. (Hence, I haven't started yet...)

[Nicadymus]

An interesting thought stacer, but how do you solve the problem?  How do you get adult critics to respect "all the genres usually 'relegated' to children"? and/or how do you draw such genres away from the aforementioned relegation?  I think if you can answer 1 you can answer the other, but I don't know how to answer either?

Any thoughts?

[House of Mustard]

I'm by no means an expert on this subject, but I was just curious:

Why is SF & F acceptable for the masses in movie form, but not in book form?  It seems like anybody will go to a Star Wars movie, or Aliens, or whatever, but few people would be caught dead on the SF aisle in a bookstore.

[Mistress of Darkness]

Because a movie is only 2 hrs long, and usually involves popular actors, but books are different. Reading is considered by most to be geeky (and in reference to another discussion about whether geeky is a compliment or not, I will say that when caught reading a book by co-workers I have met both admiration and disbelief/disapproval, though much less of the later).

And I think Fell has it right. Ph.D programs are most likely aspiring to right "Literature" which is kind of silly because most "Literature" authors are anything but a Ph. D in Creative Writing. However, just because a fantasy writer won't be "treated well" doesn't neccessarily mean that you shouldn't go for your Ph.D. I don't remember EUOL ever being phased by what someone else thought of him.

[Lieutenant Kije]

I'm with Saint.  Give it some time.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

wow.. where to start.

Naturally we have disparaging thoughts about other genres, because if something is low, then you must be higher than that. I think SF fans tend to look at Romance this way (not all, and maybe not even most, but it seems a common target). Part of this is because I've never read a good "romance." Which is entirely because the genre doesn't interest me and I've only read about 2 romance books. But then, I'm sure some of the books I HAVE enjoyed could be considered romance if approached the same way we're encouraging the approach to SF&F -- for example, Marie de France (whose Lais are considered "romances" but in a different sense than say, the writing of Danielle Steele: although they contain some similar elements). A great deal of Medieval lit was written for women, who may have been stuck at home while the men were out beating swords upon shields. For that matter, what was all that Pastoral stuff about in the early Renaissance? Yeah, they've got similar targets, and there's probably a similar set of elements.

The whole point being, we need to be open to all literature, and probably just ignore these artificial boundaries anyway, since so many of them stradle the lines anyway. We can reject specific pieces, but not really categories.

[stacer]

I pretty much agree with you, Saint. I blur the line between children's and adult lit--most of the time I prefer books that were written (or at least marketed) for children/young adults.

We just read a book for today about a girl who lives in an orphanage whose real life is horrible, so she creates an imaginary life for herself, using the dolls she finds in a dollhouse in the basement to enact this imaginary life with her as the star. Very nice story, and as it progresses, we discover a link between the story Lucie is enacting in the dollhouse and a family in England. The daughter of the family in England, Delia, begins to write to Lucie.

So, the big question in class today was, "Is Delia real, or is Lucie just crazy? Did Lucie make her up, then write Delia's letters and mail them to herself?"--a kind of Fall of the House of Usher question--is the whole story just a dream of the house, which is a symbol for the crazy protagonist. The class discussion ended up that most of the members of the class would rather that this sad, hurt girl would be crazy than that something magical was happening in the story (that Lucie's play with the dollhouse had an effect on Delia's family 3000 miles away).

It was fascinating to listen to all their reasons why this book could not be fantasy. Finally I just aked one girl, "Why is it such a disturbing idea that something magical in the story has happened?"--especially given that the author had written two other obviously fantastic books--and she couldn't answer. She just felt that Lucie was not grounded in reality, and so therefore she must have imagined it all--simply because she liked to play with the dollhouse, using her imagination in a way that many children do.

Intriguing, how if you added the label "fantasy," or suggested that anything magical was happening, somehow half the class didn't want to touch it.