Comments on: How Fiction Works Discussion Review: Fiction and Social Change http://fictionwritersreview.com/blog/how-fiction-works-discussion-review-fiction-and-social-change fiction matters Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:02:27 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 hourly 1 By: Greg Schutz http://fictionwritersreview.com/blog/how-fiction-works-discussion-review-fiction-and-social-change/comment-page-1#comment-394 Greg Schutz Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:20:31 +0000 http://fictionwritersreview.com/?p=1472#comment-394 I’m sure Jeremy will find himself in sympathetic company here. I recently confessed my own fiction-can-change-the-world idealism on this website, in an essay-review of J. Mitchell Morse’s <i>The Irrelevant English Teacher</i> (a book I’m continuing to promote to all who’ll listen). Wood notes that the Mexican police chief’s justification for his reading list “has taxonomized three aspects of the experience of reading fiction: language, the world, and the extension of our sympathies toward other selves.” But Jeremy’s right, I think, to push beyond that taxonomy here—calling attention to language as the bedrock medium through which literature provides us our view of a fictional world and elicits our sympathy for fictional others. Morse would surely agree: one of the central assertions of <i>The Irrelevant English Teacher</i> is that appreciation of artful language inoculates the reader against artlessness and, by extension, against bankrupt ideologies. (Counterarguments exist, of course. There’s always Harold Bloom: “You cannot teach someone to love great poetry if they come to you without such love. How can you teach solitude?” In other words, to what extent can receptivity to the lessons of literature be consciously cultivated?) “For [language] is what creates the world by transcending it”: I like this very much. And the passage from <i>Gilead</i> demonstrates that transcendence—if not of the world itself, than of our comfortable quotidian ways of thinking about it—perfectly. Here, this discussion seems to connect to Wood’s chapter on “Truth, Convention, and Realism,” which Natalie has discussed. Doesn’t Robinson’s startling image—the eternal light of the first day of creation, within which the Earth merely rotates—qualify as what Wood calls “<i>lifeness</i>: life on the page, life brought to different life by the highest artistry”? (Isn’t part of “lifeness,” in other words, that “transcendence” Jeremy spoke of?) And if, as Wood says, one charge leveled against “realism” is that its conventions have congealed into genre, promoting laziness among readers and writers alike, doesn’t a passage like Robinson’s demonstrate that, in the hands of a master practitioner, “realism” can still burst the bonds of its own conventions and deliver readers into wonder, strangeness, and, yes, even reality? I’m sure Jeremy will find himself in sympathetic company here. I recently confessed my own fiction-can-change-the-world idealism on this website, in an essay-review of J. Mitchell Morse’s The Irrelevant English Teacher (a book I’m continuing to promote to all who’ll listen).

Wood notes that the Mexican police chief’s justification for his reading list “has taxonomized three aspects of the experience of reading fiction: language, the world, and the extension of our sympathies toward other selves.” But Jeremy’s right, I think, to push beyond that taxonomy here—calling attention to language as the bedrock medium through which literature provides us our view of a fictional world and elicits our sympathy for fictional others. Morse would surely agree: one of the central assertions of The Irrelevant English Teacher is that appreciation of artful language inoculates the reader against artlessness and, by extension, against bankrupt ideologies.

(Counterarguments exist, of course. There’s always Harold Bloom: “You cannot teach someone to love great poetry if they come to you without such love. How can you teach solitude?” In other words, to what extent can receptivity to the lessons of literature be consciously cultivated?)

“For [language] is what creates the world by transcending it”: I like this very much. And the passage from Gilead demonstrates that transcendence—if not of the world itself, than of our comfortable quotidian ways of thinking about it—perfectly.

Here, this discussion seems to connect to Wood’s chapter on “Truth, Convention, and Realism,” which Natalie has discussed. Doesn’t Robinson’s startling image—the eternal light of the first day of creation, within which the Earth merely rotates—qualify as what Wood calls “lifeness: life on the page, life brought to different life by the highest artistry”? (Isn’t part of “lifeness,” in other words, that “transcendence” Jeremy spoke of?) And if, as Wood says, one charge leveled against “realism” is that its conventions have congealed into genre, promoting laziness among readers and writers alike, doesn’t a passage like Robinson’s demonstrate that, in the hands of a master practitioner, “realism” can still burst the bonds of its own conventions and deliver readers into wonder, strangeness, and, yes, even reality?

]]> By: Brad Green http://fictionwritersreview.com/blog/how-fiction-works-discussion-review-fiction-and-social-change/comment-page-1#comment-387 Brad Green Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:48:42 +0000 http://fictionwritersreview.com/?p=1472#comment-387 Wonderful post. I'm warm as good shot of Rum down the throat reading this. I think a lot of younger writers...hell, people even, are weary and frustrated with fiction. There's a newer strand of internet literature that often seems to abandon reason and meaning, as if those things can not have influence outside the solipsistic sphere within which they were created. If fiction can change a person, fiction can change society. The program outlined here sounds wonderful. Thanks for the article! Wonderful post. I’m warm as good shot of Rum down the throat reading this. I think a lot of younger writers…hell, people even, are weary and frustrated with fiction. There’s a newer strand of internet literature that often seems to abandon reason and meaning, as if those things can not have influence outside the solipsistic sphere within which they were created.

If fiction can change a person, fiction can change society. The program outlined here sounds wonderful.

Thanks for the article!

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