How Zombies and Superheroes Conquered Highbrow Fiction

[Lapis Exilis]

We love to complain that the world sees SF/F as unworthy of serious regard, but is it true?

At Atlantic Monthly online:

But now, only eleven years into a new century, American literary culture has undergone a sea change. A group of high-profile literary writers have fled the place we call "real life"—and their numbers are growing. Literature shelves now commonly feature Halloween party staples: Zombies, werewolves, and vampires; hardboiled gangsters and private sleuths; space aliens with high-tech gadgets. Today's serious writers are hybrid creatures—yoking the fantasist scenarios and whiz-bang readability of popular novels with the stylistic and tonal complexity we expect to find in literature. Meet the New Mutants of American fiction.

So, if the highbrow are partaking of pop culture for a little hybrid vigor, will pop culture fans embrace our new literary cousins? Has anyone read The Passage? Will you pick up copies of Zone One and Red Moon when they hit the bookshelves? Does your average SF/F fan really want to read literature with "stylistic and tonal complexity"? I know I avoided Cormac McCarthy's The Road but mostly because I heard it was relentlessly depressing. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was fantastic though (and pretty relentlessly depressing - no real supernatural stuff either, just a story of a geek's life, chock full of geek references.) But The Passage was the best post-apocalyptic thriller I've ever read (yes, including The Stand, which I thought was one of King's weaker early works), and I'm waiting with bated breath for the sequel. If Zone One and Red Moon are that sort of book - I'm there!

 

[RJDiogenes]

There has been "stylistic and tonal complexity" in SF and Fantasy for well over 40 years now. I'm not quite sure what they are talking about, unless it's just making creative writing more mainstream. The Road was only marginally SF and dismal enough to drive someone to suicide; if that's what they mean by "complexity," I'll stick to whiz-bang.

 

[A beaker full of death]

I agree; it merely sounds like the intelligentsia are becoming less dismissive of popular work. I've long maintained that, at his best, Stephen King is a great American writer.

 

[WillsBabe]

I've long maintained that, at his best, Stephen King is a great American writer.

I was reminded of that recently when I re-read Salems Lot after nearly 30 years.

 

[Captain Qwert Jr]

It means the Highbrow aren't what they used to be, or perhaps rather the posers who want to be known as Highbrow are in ascendance.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

There has been "stylistic and tonal complexity" in SF and Fantasy for well over 40 years now.

Can you give some examples of what you mean? I think Octavia Butler can be stylistically and tonally complex, but I haven't found that her SF/F fiction is particularly well known. Most other SF/F that I've read can be thematically complex (like LotR and its general meditation on death) but the writing tends to be straight-forward. And the grand bulk of SF/F is more about great storytelling than great writing. Look at Rowling - excellent storytelling, writing at best mediocre and often fairly abysmal - and absolutely no stylistic, tonal or thematic complexity.

I'm not quite sure what they are talking about, unless it's just making creative writing more mainstream. The Road was only marginally SF and dismal enough to drive someone to suicide; if that's what they mean by "complexity," I'll stick to whiz-bang.

I think when they talk about "complexity", well, with McCarthy it means that he's generally hailed for his multi-layered treaments of material, and a tight, minimalist prose style. Literary fiction seems to, like a lot of highbrow stuff, hold dear to its heart dreary, sorrowful subjects (usually dubbed "haunting") so something like The Road is smack in the middle of that particular genre. I'm not a fan of his stuff, I think I've only read All the Pretty Horses and the writing was certainly beautiful, but didn't really stick with me.

I agree; it merely sounds like the intelligentsia are becoming less dismissive of popular work.

Well... yeah -that's pretty much what the article was about.

I've long maintained that, at his best, Stephen King is a great American writer.

Sure he is. But there's a distinct difference between say, King and Faulkner. Literary fiction is a genre of its own - no better and no worse than any other genre, if you ask me. But plainly literary fiction is not what King writes.

I don't know - maybe no one else is all that interested in this stuff, but I think it's interesting that literary fiction, which has for the longest time, as the article says, been strictly realist, and really limited in its subject matter, is opening up - and specifically opening up towards speculative subjects.

And, really, has no one here read The Passage? It is a fantastic read. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It has all the horror and vigor of early King - a terrific post-apocalyptic adventure story.

 

[RJDiogenes]

There has been "stylistic and tonal complexity" in SF and Fantasy for well over 40 years now.

Can you give some examples of what you mean? I think Octavia Butler can be stylistically and tonally complex, but I haven't found that her SF/F fiction is particularly well known.

Butler is one, sure. It pretty much started during the New Wave of the late 60s, with guys like Harlan Ellison and Robert Sillverberg. There was Spinrad and Zelazny. Farmer. Today there's Kingsbury or Banks. Any issue of Asimov's features "literary" science fiction.

 

[Set Harth]

I know I avoided Cormac McCarthy's The Road but mostly because I heard it was relentlessly depressing.

The Road was only marginally SF and dismal enough to drive someone to suicide; if that's what they mean by "complexity," I'll stick to whiz-bang.

Some of that is probably inevitable due to the subject matter. I've only seen the film but I think looking at it as only depressing or dismal kind of misses the point to some extent.

Spoiler: The Road

It has a "happy" ending.

 

[Myasishchev]

We love to complain that the world sees SF/F as unworthy of serious regard, but is it true?

If it is or has been, the exceptions have certainly eaten the rule. I mean, there are numerous canonical pieces of literature that are either fantastic or science fictional. There aren't such things as vengeful fatherly ghosts or faerie queens living in the forest or wizards on secret islands with hot daughters; never been a place called Oceania; no reservations within the World State where savages are free to practice their brutal lifestyle; never been a civilization on Mars with magical psychoflexis powers which can be readily taught to Earthlings; never been a dystopian patriarchy come to power in the the remnants United States that practiced rape as a cultural imperative; never been a squid that killed half New York; there are not yet transhuman clones of dead misanthropic comedians walking the dried husk of a dead Earth and contemplating the meaninglessness of existence.

And these examples aren't just books I like (Midsummer Night's Dream sucks and Stranger in a Strange Land certainly gets to sucking toward the end, and I've never even read Handmaiden's Tale nor particularly wish to), but books which are widely read and have garnered mainstream acceptance and awards and are taught in schools (well, maybe not Watchmen because of the wiener or The Possibility of an Island because of the relative newness and the Dear Penthouse... sex scenes, but neither would especially shock me, although really you should have to pass a psych battery before reading any Houellebecq).

 

[Stevil2001]

There has been "stylistic and tonal complexity" in SF and Fantasy for well over 40 years now.

Can you give some examples of what you mean? I think Octavia Butler can be stylistically and tonally complex, but I haven't found that her SF/F fiction is particularly well known.

Butler is one, sure. It pretty much started during the New Wave of the late 60s, with guys like Harlan Ellison and Robert Sillverberg. There was Spinrad and Zelazny. Farmer. Today there's Kingsbury or Banks. Any issue of Asimov's features "literary" science fiction.

Le Guin springs to mind, too. Her stories have a very self-conscious preoccupation with storytelling itself that is pretty typical of 20th- and 21st-century literary fiction.

 

[Kegg]

I suppose I could ask 'Isn't this what Kurt Vonnegut did his entire career?' but I think the meaningful distinction there is Vonnegut went highbrow via pulps, rather than vice versa... and, of course, when I actually read the article they genuflected in his general direction.

Anyway last I checked Vonnegut was also pretty popular with your average SF reader, although I suppose it can also be pretty plausibly argued he's an easier read than the authors being discussed here (I, for one, always found myself vaguely unable to put down a Vonnegut book until I'd finished the thing).

And well, I did actually read Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union, since the author is (unsurprisingly) mentioned here... though I turn my nose up at the idea of the Epic of Gilgamesh being called 'a superhero story'. I suppose by this logic American comics can annex half of all world mythology to their genre, which - like the idea of a Thor movie based on an American comic - rubs me the wrong way.

And yes, as far as literary/sci-fi goes, Ursula Le Guin comes immediately to mind. I'd give John Brunner a nod there too, why not, there's a lot of complex things going on structurally in Stand on Zanzibar. I know Kingsley Amis has long been a champion of Frederik Pohl, and also that's a pretty reasonable position to take at that.. although bringing Amis and Brunner reminds me that the article does have a rather narrow American focus, so that may not be applicable.

 

[Starbreaker]

I've read plenty of books that I would consider great works of literature even though they have science fiction, horror or fantasy elements. I hate to say it, but stuff like Twilight has made speculative fiction "cool" again.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I know I avoided Cormac McCarthy's The Road but mostly because I heard it was relentlessly depressing.

The Road was only marginally SF and dismal enough to drive someone to suicide; if that's what they mean by "complexity," I'll stick to whiz-bang.

Some of that is probably inevitable due to the subject matter. I've only seen the film but I think looking at it as only depressing or dismal kind of misses the point to some extent.

Spoiler: The Road

It has a "happy" ending.

Well, relatively speaking, yes.