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Polemicists & Science Fiction
Dec. 23rd, 2006 06:15 pmJohn Scalzi is getting awesome coverage in the NYT Sunday Review of Books. More power to you, John.
He observes in his commentary on this event that the reviewer is disappointed in him for not making Old Man's War into a political credo (and embarks on a lovely metaphor about monuments and rooms which I shan't recap here--go read!), and this has cross-connected in my head with the book review I've spent most of today writing.
Here's the thing.
Academic (and therefore "highbrow") literary criticism does not know what to do with science fiction. Or fantasy. Or horror. It never has.
This is because academic literary criticism, on which "highbrow" or "mainstream" literary criticism is modeled, has evolved to deal with a particular kind of writing, which has particular goals and particular methodologies. New Criticism is our bête-noire, here, and the New Critics considered imagist poetry the pinnacle of human artistic endeavor.
Now, take this mindset, and confront it with stories who, as a habitual gesture, literalize and concretize metaphors. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress doesn't contain lovingly crafted metaphors about alienation and the difficulty of surviving as a minority population and the hostility of the universe. No, it's literally about living on the Moon. We don't need to be told what Heinlein is "really" talking about, because he tells us himself.
In other words, literary critics are out of a job.
Response #1 to this dilemma is for the critic to announce that sffh isn't worth his time. This is becoming more and more problematic, as more sffh readers and writers are insisting that it is so, dammit.
Response #2, rather than trying to figure out a new vocabulary and methodology for literary criticism, is to change the arena of discussion. Feminist theory does this, and does it very well, which I suspect is one reason feminists and science fiction writers get along so well, sometimes even in the same skin. And, of course, you can do it with other kinds of politics, too. There are many great works of science fiction that positively demand this approach. 1984, to name one.
In other words, the chosen compromise is to treat science fiction as allegory. John is causing difficulties by not playing by those rules, by not knuckling under to the idea that sffh has worth proportionate to its higher calling as a brightly colored stalking horse for Serious Political Ideas.
In other words, critics would be much happier with the genre if it would sit down quietly and be didactic, instead of running around like a swarm of anarchic fools playing literary Calvinball.
He observes in his commentary on this event that the reviewer is disappointed in him for not making Old Man's War into a political credo (and embarks on a lovely metaphor about monuments and rooms which I shan't recap here--go read!), and this has cross-connected in my head with the book review I've spent most of today writing.
Here's the thing.
Academic (and therefore "highbrow") literary criticism does not know what to do with science fiction. Or fantasy. Or horror. It never has.
This is because academic literary criticism, on which "highbrow" or "mainstream" literary criticism is modeled, has evolved to deal with a particular kind of writing, which has particular goals and particular methodologies. New Criticism is our bête-noire, here, and the New Critics considered imagist poetry the pinnacle of human artistic endeavor.
Now, take this mindset, and confront it with stories who, as a habitual gesture, literalize and concretize metaphors. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress doesn't contain lovingly crafted metaphors about alienation and the difficulty of surviving as a minority population and the hostility of the universe. No, it's literally about living on the Moon. We don't need to be told what Heinlein is "really" talking about, because he tells us himself.
In other words, literary critics are out of a job.
Response #1 to this dilemma is for the critic to announce that sffh isn't worth his time. This is becoming more and more problematic, as more sffh readers and writers are insisting that it is so, dammit.
Response #2, rather than trying to figure out a new vocabulary and methodology for literary criticism, is to change the arena of discussion. Feminist theory does this, and does it very well, which I suspect is one reason feminists and science fiction writers get along so well, sometimes even in the same skin. And, of course, you can do it with other kinds of politics, too. There are many great works of science fiction that positively demand this approach. 1984, to name one.
In other words, the chosen compromise is to treat science fiction as allegory. John is causing difficulties by not playing by those rules, by not knuckling under to the idea that sffh has worth proportionate to its higher calling as a brightly colored stalking horse for Serious Political Ideas.
In other words, critics would be much happier with the genre if it would sit down quietly and be didactic, instead of running around like a swarm of anarchic fools playing literary Calvinball.
