duntemann.wbst@XEROX.ARPA (05/23/84)
For those of you who just tuned in (or those of you who just switched the channel from watching V) the foofaraw is currently about whether or not mainstream literature will be absorbed by SF within the coming century. I say it will. Others, notably Reiher & Cain, say no way. I see the situation this way: SF is broadening year by year, growing less completely technological and less adventure oriented, and seems to be heading toward a general understanding of the way human beings operate within today's (and possibly tomorrow's) universe. Mainstream, on the other hand, has been growing steadily more introspective, more limited in scope, and always more prone to despair, ever since the end of the Victorian era. Mainstream in the last fifty years has contracted so much I greatly fear it will vanish into its own self-made singularity, leaving behind a single message: It's all pointless! So what's better? What is more "true"? What the heck is literature for, anyway? My definition is this (I've said it here before): Literature is the mapping of the human spirit by the language of the culture. Literature is NOT the culture, nor does it direct the culture. It follows the culture, and reflects those things in which the culture believes most strongly. My opinion is that the literature of the past fifty years comes nowhere near an accurate reflection of American or British culture. (I can't speak for other cultures.) The optimism of the postwar period is unequalled in history. And yet what are we offered? Despair, despair, despair. "We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/" Crap. We rate a little better than that. Something broke when the Victorians gave way. I feel something of the spirit which prompted Tennyson to write, in "Locksley Hall": Down along the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime/ With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of time. "Fairy tales" implies not ridicule but wonder, here. Tennyson was not afraid of science, nor did he hold it in disdain. He was ready to wait out the long result of time and see what happened. The literature of the last fifty years seems to have been written by broken old men who prefer to make literature reflect their own failings rather than the larger mythic consciousness of their people. I suppose it's impossible to say with certainty whether a work of literature is good or not. So I guess this whole argument settles down to a draw. I accuse the mainstream of failing to accurately reflect our twentieth century culture which is not, I hold, a culture in the grip of despair. I also think that day by day, as our writers grow better, SF more accurately reflects the underlying optimism of the postwar era. Who's right? Who knows? You tell me. --Jeff Duntemann duntemann.wbst@xerox