Vicious Circles and Metanarratives

In the class I'm teaching, we just finished our discussion about Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers with some comments about vicious circles and how the characters seem to be trapped in these ever repeating loops that seem to go nowhere. So I thought I would give some background on postmodernism, metanarratives, and a few other tidbits from theory that might help an understanding of this novel and other postmodern texts. First, to postmodernism...

Postmodernism can mean many things to many people. (Some scholars don't even like to acknowledge it as a literary movement at all - they group postmodern texts with late modernism.) For our purposes, we can view postmodernism as a literary movement that sprang up as a reaction to World War II, especially the horrors of the war and the seemingly arbitrary nature of a war to end all wars happening for a second time. WWII was also a technologically advanced war, and an obsession with technology and what it does to mankind is an important aspect of some (though not all) postmodern texts. Other tropes, ideas, or techniques that occur in postmodernism include: paradoxes, an insistence on pluralities of meaning or a lack of meaning, existentialism that borders on nihilism, false nostalgia for a past that never actually existed, use of pastiche (copying an original work, but using it in a different context), an obsession with metafiction (writing about writing; stories about how to tell stories), and a contentious relationship with metanarratives.

That's a very long list of things, and though not every text exhibits all of these, I'll go into detail on a few so we can get a better understanding of the vicious circle of postmodernism. First, metanarrative... Jean-Françios Lyotard first made the term part of the discussion surrounding postmodernism when he began discussing the difference between the modern and the postmodern. Modernism, in his eyes, revolved around certain grand narratives. These narratives were essentially stories people told themselves to explain certain intangible ideas that seemed to run society. These ideas were usually expressed in capital letters - Progress, the Enlightenment, Science, Marxism, Religion (pick one), etc. - and tended to be things that were supposed to lead us to some kind of grand Truth or Transcendency. Science, for example, is a story of intellect, progress, and manifest destiny. It starts in the Enlightenment, leads us through the Industrial Revolution to the 20th century, out into the Age of Technology and a better world. Science, as a metanarrative, promises that those who conduct research are part of a larger whole, all striving for the betterment of mankind and the advancement of civilization.

Postmodern texts, however, mistrust metanarratives. Postmodern authors, their characters, even their plot lines, see a totalizing narrative as a false hope. Science doesn't always better mankind and doesn't always advance civilization - just look at what happened during the war (and pick a war here, since the ones after WWII only deepened postmodern angst). Things like Science or Progress or Art aren't grand stories that give us archetypal heroes, great grail quests, or satisfying conclusions. Instead, postmodernism argues that metanarratives have either: 1) failed us, 2) need to be overthrown, or 3) never existed in the first place. And we therefore have a choice. We can accept the fact that metanarratives don't exist (for whatever reason) and wander about in the void created by that loss. Or we can create or recreate our own metanarratives, building a new world that may or may not replace what was lost.

Hence the vicious circle. In The Leftovers characters become aware that metanarratives have fallen apart in the face of the Sudden Departure. When a fraction of the population just vanishes without a trace, without an explanation, there can be no more grand unifying theories. Religion doesn't work. Science can't explain things. Civilization falls apart, at least theoretically. Structures just can't work anymore. So the characters in the novel have to figure out how to cope with this. Some of them choose to recreate new metanarratives. Some simply wander, lost in a world that has itself lost meaning. Some try to cling to stories that just can't work anymore. And, at least in this novel, those who recreate or wander or cling to the past are caught in a vicious circle. They can't move on because they can't forge a truly new way - they can't let go of the stories that once ruled their lives. The can't let go of the idea of narrative. So they are caught in a constant cycle, never moving forward, never moving backward. Static. The book becomes a commentary on our need to conform to these stories, stories we write about ourselves, society, civilization, human behavior. It's not saying we need forego humanity completely and start from scratch, but it is pointing out the entropy inherent in our current system.

This is quite a long post at this point, so I'll save more discussion of postmodernism for later...

Jorge Luis Borges: "The Lottery in Babylon" and a different End of the World

Some quick background info on Borges might be a good idea before we start getting into a discussion of one of his more famous short stories. Borges was a prolific writer, poet, and essayist, who began publishing his work in Argentina in the early 1920s. Though popular in Spanish speaking countries to a certain extent starting in the 1940s (depending on whether one agreed with his politics or not), he wasn't read and translated widely until the 1960s and 70s, when the Latin American Boom* and magical realism** began to captivate the rest of the world. Many critics say Borges was robbed of a Nobel Prize for his works because of some of his fascist political leanings (he was very anti-Peron and anti-socialist), but his stories and essays have had a great impact on writers throughout the Americas, including here in the USA. His tone, his allusions to other works, and the way he completely makes up references, critics, and pretty much anything else necessary for his stories, sets his body of work very much apart.

In "The Lottery of Babylon," we are introduced to many of the tactics that make so many readers fall in love with his writing. The eerie tone of the first person narration sets the reader immediately on edge, as does the way Borges buries the main plot of the story underneath the allegorical and metaphorical aspects of the story. Our narrator is running away from the Lottery and from the Company that runs it. Babylon, his world, is at its end times, and he is trying to get away as fast as he can. Yet the Company, as a representative of organized religion, or capitalism, or socialism, or any other organization or -ism one could think of to overlay onto the story, occupies the main conflict. And beyond that, this is about World War II and the political and social conflicts in Argentina at the time. Yet even this vision of conflict is, well, conflicting. Has the Company brought about the chaos our narrator flees? Or are the citizens to blame? Is Babylon the work of consensual degradation and madness or is it the work of some menacing overlord who wants to subjugate the masses?

These questions, I believe, are at the center of the story. The text is not here to give us answers, but to force us to ask questions. How does all this actually work? Why has it progressed this way? Who is to blame for this society, a society that goes beyond the usual duplicities and iniquities of the multiple Babylons to which it alludes? This story is about the End of the World because it shows us extremes. This is not anarchy, but chaos; no one is to blame and everyone is to blame. This is the end of humanity as defined by logic, order, and law. Everything we use as a frame of reference is gone - which is also what makes the story harder to read and understand. The footing we usually use to find ourselves within a narrative has been taken away, just as it has been taken from Babylon itself. We are down the rabbit hole, with no rabbit to guide us. And that is the point... when everything is taken away, what is left? When taken down to its core, this story is about human nature, in a way that mirrors so many other stories about the End of the World. How do we react in such extreme situations? What is left when there is nothing left? Does humanity rise to the challenge or fall along the wayside? Is there anything that can keep us human, in our own definition of the term?

The story becomes, then, a version of Schrödinger's cat. We won't know the answers to these questions until we open the box, but in this case, the box cannot be opened, as we have no way to visit Babylon or get any 'real' or 'factual' information about it, so the answers will always be up in the air.

* Though I've linked to the wikipedia page, be careful reading it. Some of its claims are contentious at best and it doesn't go into the kind of detail needed to have a good grasp on the Boom. But it's a start.

** The wikipedia page for magical realism is NOT useful. It completely confuses certain definitions and claims certain authors, including Borges, as magical realists when they aren't. Borges influenced magical realism, but his stories are more in keeping with Poe than someone like García Márquez.

++ On a side note, an intriguing use of the story as a way to understand sports can be found here.

Why read science fiction?

I've been thinking quite a bit about why we do or don't read, write, and analyze science fiction, especially in a university setting... Some English departments or profs love using sf in class, while others loath the genre, labeling it as pulp silliness, one dimensional techno porn, or stuff that's just too foreign or weird to use with students, especially in intro classes. And still others fall into an in-between category, comfortable to teach what they know (which usually doesn't include science fiction). But I've been an sf fanatic since I first started reading (at least, I know enough that the snobs call it sf instead of scifi), so I'm drawn to the genre not just because of the challenge of teaching something a bit out of the ordinary, but also because I truly believe there is something genuine and important in science fiction that really should be taught in the classroom.

Case and point: the work of Ray Bradbury. Most of us know his name because of Fahrenheit 451, though I'm just as big a fan of The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes, which scared me pretty badly when I was a kid. Bradbury is a master of horror as much as he is a master of science fiction, and the atmosphere of many of his best stories exudes the kind of chill that makes us want to continue reading, even if we don't want to. What happens next? Why is this happening in the first place? What does all of this even mean? And the importance of meaning, of the purpose of his stories, highlights the reason why science fiction makes a lovely focus in the classroom. Setting aside the truly didactic stuff - the novels and stories that hold to well worn cliches, archetypes, and tropes so over-used they've become useless - scifi, when done well, leaves things open to interpretation. These stories can put us (both characters and audience) in situations that could never really exist so we can see how human nature adapts, or doesn't, to irreality, the surreal, the impossible. It truly encapsulates what fiction is all about (and conjures eerie allusions to what Plato famously hated about poetry).

In Bradbury's "The Last Night of the World," he opens with the question, "What would you do if you knew this was the last night of the world?" This sentence immediately puts the reader inside the story. What would you do? The characters in the story simply go about their normal lives, eating dinner together, playing with their children, washing the dishes, getting up to turn the faucet off after they've already gone to bed. Holding hands and saying good night, the last words they'll every say to each other. And what is the purpose of all this? Why give us a story that seems to have no real plot, no major, obvious theme? Is this a warning about something, like some of Bradbury's other stories in The Illustrated Man? The Veldt, The Highway, and There Will Come Soft Rains all warn of the problems with technology and our own loss of humanity. They speak of a distraction from nature and the more important things in life (like family and emotion). Yet "The Last Night of the World" isn't the kind of apocalyptic story that warns us to stop relying of technology or else we'll die (unless turning off the faucet is an ecological plea for sustainability, which I doubt). Instead, it's very tediousness, lack of real plot, and stoic characters actually point to the mundane as part of the problem. Why don't these people do anything? Why don't they care? If they had panicked, if they had tried to save themselves, could they have stopped the End of the World? This corruption of the usual End of the World trope is a twisting of the usual theme for a reason. It speaks to the banality of evil, to the way bad things happen when good people do nothing (yes, that was a reference to both Hannah Arendt and The Dark Knight in the same sentence). Suburbia, family, normality: all well and good, all safe, as long as it's kept in check, as long as we don't get too complacent. But if we get too wrapped up in our own complacency... The End of the World will catch us in our beds, fast asleep.

Whatever Happened to Brazilian Literature?

Whenever people talk about Latin American literature, most tend to forget about Brazil.  Sometimes it’s because we forget they speak Portuguese in Brazil, not Spanish.  Sometimes it’s because we just don’t know much about South America or their literary traditions.  But what most people don’t know is that translation, especially bad translations, have had quite a bit to do with why we just don’t read a lot of Brazilian lit.  And that’s too bad, because there is a huge wealth of texts from Brazil just waiting for us to read.

Most Brazilians, and scholars, consider Joaquim María Machado de Assis as the country’s best writer.  A native of Rio de Janeiro, he wrote at the turn of the 20^th century.  A great talent, though perhaps not appreciated in his own time, he is now revered the same way the Argentines revere Jorge Luis Borges – as a man ahead of his time, a multifaceted writer and a pre-cursor to postmodernism.  Known for his unreliable narrators and meta-fictional narratives, he’s the kind of author critics and readers tend to fall in love with.  Sometimes compared to Kafka or Lawrence Sterne, Machado has a reputation for genius, if only in the small circles where his works are read (universities, mostly).    

But he’s also the reason we don’t read many Brazilian novels these days.  When someone finally decided to translate his most famous work, Dom Casmurro, into English, they botched the job.  The book is ostensibly a story of a man who thinks his wife is cheating on him.  A simple enough plot.  But the real vision of the novel comes from the way the narrator muses on how one writes, why one writes, and what writing can mean for not just the author, but his audience.  It’s the meta-fiction that makes the novel.  And that’s what the first translation cut out… any chapter or paragraph that pertained to the act of writing was excised.  So when North American reviewers read Machado, they were less than impressed.  This is the best Brazil can do?  Then why translate anything more? 

And so began a long silent streak from Brazil, at least to North American ears.  The publishing bonanza the rest of Latin America enjoyed skipped a vast majority of the continent.  It wasn’t really until publishers discovered Jorge Amado that their eyes turned back to the Brazilian literary scene.  His exotic and melodramatic texts captured the minds of readers and has affected which books and authors are translated.  But if you truly want to read the best Brazil has to offer, look beyond Amado; though his books represent the flare and flavor of Brazil admirably, there is much more to the country than carnival and the tropics. 

My suggestion is to start with Machado de Assis, either Dom Casmurro (there is a newer translation by Helen Caldwell that includes the whole text) or The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas.  Then perhaps try some of the newer, grittier stuff.  My personal favorite is Caio Fernando Abreu’s Whatever Happened to Dulce Veiga?  Part detective story, part journey of discovery, with lots of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, it’s hauntingly written.  And to truly get a taste of the country, you can always try João Guimarães Rosa’s The Devil to Pay in the Backlands.  It’s a bonkers book, a bit like trying to read Joyce, Faulkner, and Pinchon all at the same time – and also nothing like that at all.  A challenge, especially as it was extremely hard to translate, but one worthwhile if you’re up for it (though you may need to find a library copy, as it seems to be harder and harder to find it in print).  

(If you happen to follow the links to these author's wikipedia pages, you'll start to see part of my point.  These are major authors, yet their English wikipedia pages are slight or almost nonexistent.  And it's increasingly harder and harder to get these titles in print.  Which is really too bad - amazing, important books dropping by the way-side because of a seeming lack of interest).

An Apology for Grimdark Fantasy

I’ve been reading Steven Erikson for years, loving every word in his epic, 1,000 paged volumes. I go on binges, reading them on weekends when I don’t have other work, finishing in the wee hours of the morning. I love Brandon Sanderson, too, and even (blasphemy!) think his last few Wheel of Time books are better than RobertJordan’s. It’s the way he writes: the fast-paced sentences, the fragments, the realism. 

It’s like George R.R. Martin or Stephen R. Donaldson or even Stephen King. There’s a feel to their fantasy that makes things immediate. Dangerous. And not just in a blood and guts kind of way (though they definitely bring the gore). It’s the impact of their words, the way the sentences roll together to create images, pictures of things so strange and different yet so real. It’s dark and gothic – the Southern kind, not the British. Why wouldn’t anyone love immersing themselves in these worlds? I know I’m not the only one… just look at how popular Game of Thrones has become.

But it wasn’t until I started following Joe Abercrombie on twitter that I began to hear the word Grimdark and the controversy surrounding it (Abercrombie’s twitter handle is @LordGrimdark). There is a deep divide in the fantasy world – there are those who love this kind of “bankrupt nihilism,” as Leo Grin calls it in his article denouncing the depravity of what he considers anti-fantasy, and there are those who hate it, as Grin and many other Tolkien-ites do. In a nutshell, Grin charges that these novels ignore the pure, poetic, mythic qualities of classic fantasy, eschewing conventional tropes for what he calls “postmodern blasphemies.” Now it may just be me, but his supposed digs just make me want to read this stuff all the more.

Joe Abercrombie wrote a great reply to the kind of poo-pooing Grin and others have posted over the last few years. I won’t go into too much detail here, as his article is definitely worth reading in its entirety, but I will say that it helped me think about why I love this sub-genre so much. It isn’t conventional; it doesn’t always show us what we want to see or give us the plot lines we want to happen. Grimdark is new, not just because of when it was written, but also because of how it reinterprets and reinvigorates older themes and motifs. Grimdark fantasy, just like postmodern literature, takes the tropes we all know, things that have been repeated over and over unto cliché, and makes them new again. The guy in black who wields an axe, rides a nasty, face-chomping stallion, and has a disfiguring facial scar? Not actually the villain. And the guy we’ve been following around, the nice guy with the moral code and the magic blade? The so-called protagonist of our story? He might actually be a complete idiot who gets everyone killed in the end. Or he might die right before the battle, never to complete his story or rescue the girl or kill the dragon. And that’s the point. These novels defy expectations to get at that “deeper meaning” the purists are so hung up about.

And, in truth, that’s what I love most about Grimdark fantasy. Literary modernists despise postmodernism because it doesn’t dig deep – they claim there is no depth to such fiction, only surface. Yet the postmodern gets depth through surface, through quantity as much as quality. And that’s why I think Grimdark fiction makes sense. It’s postmodern in its approach to what came before –all the conventional elves and ogres and disguised princes get new life through recreation. Their stories are new again, reflecting the needs of an audience who’s been there and done that and seen the movie already. 

But what do the rest of you think? Is Grimdark the new wave in fantasy or just a quick blip in the radar? Is it worth reading or a waste of time? And how do such works and their authors fit into the larger debate about grit and its place in literature? How does this fit alongside writers like Cormac McCarthy or Chuck Palahniuk or Bret Easton Ellis?