For clarification, this is not my conclusion per se; and in any event, my intention wasn't to conclusively characterize Joe's position one way or another, only to expand the prioritization he has been lauding to what I see as its theoretical end, for the sake of further discussion. If he wants to interpret that as some kind of dishonest attack, eh ... whatever.

Carry on.


K

Madget-- Message board discussions tend to deteriorate over time, and my sense from your previous post was that this was what was occuring. I didn't take anything you said personally; and I apologize if I implied that you weren't being honest..

Matt is obviously in a class by himself in being capable of considering the entire context of a discussion, and I think serves as a good example for both of us.

Stanislaw Lem is an example of a writer who uses fantasy to encourage rationality and skepticism about myths (e.g., creationism).

I had to read a lot of short fiction focusing on the real world for literature survey classes--everything from Flannery O'Conner to Jack London to Ursula K. LeGuin--and I often found that stuff that seemed tiny and insignificant still seemed tiny and insignificant when I had to try to explain what I got out of the stories.

"To Build a Fire" by London, for example, is a great depiction of a guy freezing to death. All I really got out of it was that the dumb ass protagonist shouldn't have gone out into a snow storm by himself.

"Hills Like White Elephants" by Papa Hemingway is often held up as a brilliant example of minimalist fiction and subtext. I just thought the guy in the story was an asshole. Yeah, it's kind of clever that the story is about a guy trying to convince a woman to get an abortion without ever coming right out and saying so... but I just got annoyed by the dialogue and descriptions of beer.

I'm enjoying the discussion immensely and almost don't want to post for fear of spoiling it, but here's a minor point for now, re Matthew's comparison of the realistic ARDENsomething play to Shakespeare's Tempest (which in turn took shape from the opposition of failed marriages vs. wizards and barbarians from... Madget, right?)

Joe Z. suggested that Shakespeare's own Othello would be a better match than ARDENsomething. I disagree, because ARDENsomething has one advantage in that it more precisely fulfills the naturalistic/realistic credo: that it was apparently based on the author's knowledge of a real-life failed marriage.

In contrast, Shakespeare's OTHELLO was based on an older Italian story, which William S. substantially changed. I no longer remember where I read this, but apparently the original story was something of a "black-baiting" story, in which Othello is a cuckolded fool who implicitly is the racial inferior of the Venetians. From this Shakespeare wrote a far more humanistic version of the tale than did the original author, but even though OTHELLO cannot be classed a fantasy, and maybe not even strictly "romantic," it also doesn't seem to match up, IMO, with the Zola-esque program of recording reality one has directly experienced, or believes that others may truly experience.
OTHELLO-- both in the forgotten original story and William S.'s version-- seems to descend from the tradition of the tale/fable, which could be as fantastic ("Rumplestiltkin") or realistic ("The Robber Bridegroom," perhaps?) as the occasion demanded.

So, Matthew, for what it's worth I think your comparison works better. If one had to have a Shakespeare play derived not from a tale but from recorded history, and about a failed marriage, I think you're stuck with comparing the TEMPEST to the lackluster (IMO) HENRY VIII, which makes the score: Wixards 1, Failed Marriages 0.

I'd like to reply in detail to the above, but it'll take time, so I'll have to get back to it. I wanted to add some off-the-cuff comments that are responsive to the discussion.

First, I don't want my specific tastes in literature to be an issue in the discussion; the ideas I'm advocating should stand or fall on the merits, not who I am as a person. But if it's helpful, I'll rattle off a few of my favorite novels-- Camus's The Stranger, Sartre's Nausea, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Shakespeare's King Lear, Balzac's Le Père Goriot (which I just found out was inspired by King Lear!) , Proust's Swanns Way, W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage (kinda similar to Swann's Way, isn't it?), Kingsley Amis's The Anti-Death League (not a great book, I suppose, but a personal favorite), The Voyeur and Jealousy, by Robbe-Grillet; Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, Emma By Jane Austen, On The Road by Jack Keroac. Of recent novels, my favorite is Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, by Ann Hood; but I find it difficult to find contemporary novels that interest me as serious works, perhaps because the literary field is somewhat politicized.

Of fantasies, my favorite by a wide margin is In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan. I also liked The Innocents by Henry James, and The Haunting of Hill House by Sherry Jackson. Never read Dante. I know he's indispensible, but as a devout atheist, I've always placed him low on my list of priorities.

I've enjoyed other fantasies, but strictly as entertainment. Lovecraft's The Dunwick Horror and In the Mountains of Madness are favorites, as is King's The Shining and Pet Cemetary. I'm not a big fan of 'high' fantasy. I really loved The Hobbit, but I was disappointed by The Fellowship of the Ring, and never finished the rest of the Trilogy. I guess I enjoyed the rationalist approach of the first book much more than the heavily mystical concerns of the larger work. I also enjoyed 'The Once and Future King.'

Most fantastic literature I read is in the area of science fiction, with Philip K. Dick and A. E. Van Vogt being favorites. I also enjoy another branch of fantasy literature known as the mystery genre, Donald Westlake being a favorite.

Oh well, that was fun listing all that stuff, but now I've used up my time. More later.

Have you read any of his Roads to Freedom trilogy?

K

Not yet. I want to read Troubled Sleep sometime-- great title!

I hasten to add a couple of stories from Flaubert's Three Tales. A Simple Heart is a terrific story, realistic but with some fantasy overtones. And The Legend of St. Julian Hospitator is an incredible storybook fantasy, extremely well written and fascinating.

It's been a long time since I've read them and my tastes have changed a bit (and as this thread shows, probably not exactly parallel to yours!) -- but The Age of Reason and The Reprieve made quite an impression on me when I first read them. I couldn't understand why they weren't more highly regarded when Nausea enjoyed such acclaim. Not that I dislike Nausea per se, but the Roads to Freedom books -- or as much as I read of them at any rate -- struck me as far more indicative of Sartre's literary talents on the whole. The Age of Reason particularly electrified me. I never did get all the way to Troubled Sleep though. (Bear in mind it's the last book in a trilogy.)

K

What grabbed me about Nausea was the initial concept of the nausea coming on when he picked up a stone. Kind of like a philosophical mystery story. I was already pretty much an existentialist when I read it, so it didn't have as much impact on me, but I liked it a lot.

Back to the debate-- I thought it would be interesting to focus on the logical aspect of what we're debating, i.e., Madget's statement, ''I don't see any reason a quiet story about an unhappy marriage should be any more inherently valuable than a story about magicians and barbarians...'

I've never taken a logic course, but I think this can be codified as:

Evaluate Approach A and Approach B, to determine which is most likely to succeed at achieving Objective C.

And Madget's view is that A and B are equal.

My assumption is that both A and B are real and distinct. Because they are distinct, the likelihood is that they are not equal. I also take it as given that both A and B have achieved objective C in the past.

From my past experience with A and B, I judge that A is more likely to achieve C. My reasons, previously given, have to do with context, relevance, and genre expectations (which I referred to above as 'style.')

My detractors obviously judge the matter differently.

One view is that, given that A and B have previously achieved C in the past, it is impossible to determine which is more likely to achieve C in the future. I don't think this follows; it represents a disinclination to evaluate A and B, not a proof that they are equal.

A related view is that C is by nature indeterminant, and that therefore we cannot ever know if A or B is more likely to achieve it. This makes some sense; after all, C represents new knowledge, and its form cannot be ascertained. But since we are evaluating likelihood, the uncertainty of C shouldn't rule out an evaluation of A and B.

Still another view is that A and B are not distinct, that they are instead two sides of the same coin, and therefore cannot be anything but equal. To the contrary, I think there are signifigant aspects of A and B that can be identified and agreed to by a large consensus, and which are quite likely to affect their ability to achieve C.

And finally, there seems to be the view that Approach A is completely impotent and cannot have any affect whatsoever in achieving C. Any past success it has enjoyed in achieving C are only the result of residual aspects of B that manifest themselves. A sucks, B rules!

I don't agree with this view.

Actually, in bringing up the topic of mixtures, there is the possibility that A can have some mixture of B and still remain A. But B must have some mixture of A in order to be understandable, on the principle that you cannot describe something that doesn't exist except in terms of what exists. So really, A can be defined as A without B, whereas B can be defined as A with B. This preponderance of A would seem to suggest A's dominance.

A good reference site on logical fallacies, BTW, is here. It would seem to suggest that any attempt to provide fantasy with depth would commit the illogical fallacy known as Subverted Support!

(Just kidding...)