A Glimpse of What Might Have Been
August 2, 2023 7:09 AM Subscribe
It’s curious that fiction’s decoupling from what Shields called the “burden of unreality, the nasty fact that none of this ever really happened”—or what the German sociologist of economics Jens Beckert calls the “doubling of reality”—is simultaneous with financial markets’ embrace of the unreal. Especially since it wasn’t always this way. The story of these divergent literary and financial trends starts in the Eighties and Nineties, back when fiction was still fiction, and finance was still math. from Double Reality, Hedging the Novel in the Postfictional Age by Jessi Jezewska Stevens [The Point; ungated]
I feel like you've got to be doing some very circumscribed reading for the experience of the author to hold true.
Also, who is going around assuming novels are true? Didn't James Frey teach us a lesson on that 15 years ago?
And those excerpts from The Guest Lecture sure aren't selling this form of fiction to me!
posted by sagc at 7:49 AM on August 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
Also, who is going around assuming novels are true? Didn't James Frey teach us a lesson on that 15 years ago?
And those excerpts from The Guest Lecture sure aren't selling this form of fiction to me!
posted by sagc at 7:49 AM on August 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
As an advertisement for Checkout 19, this is great. Otherwise it's just puzzling. "An implicit agreement has been forged between publishing houses and readers: the following events were experienced by someone, most usually the author herself." What? No?
posted by joannemerriam at 7:56 AM on August 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by joannemerriam at 7:56 AM on August 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
Well, I liked it! I need to mull it more, but still.
The Guest Lecture sounds appealing to me, and I am going to get a copy. It's precisely the sort of thing I tend to like.
I don't know whether I agree with this or not but I think it's interesting to try to explain, rather than merely moralize, about how people read fiction now. We get an awful lot of "the kids are reading wrong because they are snowflakes/badly educated/etc".
As a chronic genre fiction reader, I've definitely noticed that there is a strong stream of "realism" in genre writing and a strong tendency to need to sell the author as well as the book, both in a way that I don't think was really common up through, let's say, about 2005. This is clearly about changes in audience and publishing, and it isn't something that I think is bad, but it's definitely a thing that exists.
(Like, there's a HUGE amount of fantasy and science fiction that is a very, very light transposition of contemporary social issues into fantastic format, and a huge amount of fiction that is intended substantially to literally educate you on actually existing history and social circumstances as it tells a story. It's not like this didn't exist in, eg, 1995, but if you contrast the left-wing SFF of 1995 with today's, the difference in tone and approach is clear. Earlier left-wing SFF tended to transpose a lot more completely and fictionalize a lot more when it wanted to be didactic.
To me, this is structurally about changes in audience, changes in criticism and changes in the SFF infrastructure but you only need to spend a little time on goodreads to see that there's a lot of anxiety about just how fictional things can/should be, what can be fictionalized and what can't etc.
It would be, frankly, stupid to say that this is bad. There were advantages to the approach of 1995, there are advantages to the approach of 2023. In both 1995 and 2003, people are responding to larger social conditions. But it would also be stupid to say that nothing has changed or that there is nothing to be learned from the change.
So anyway. I had not considered markets and fiction. However, if you said "I just read this great book about how the emerging market logic of the 19th century is visible in the bourgeois novel" I would be like "where do I get this book, sign me up". It's not ridiculous to suppose that the economic structures which loom so large in capitalism propaganda and control so much of our daily lives would shape how fiction gets written.
posted by Frowner at 8:14 AM on August 2, 2023 [9 favorites]
The Guest Lecture sounds appealing to me, and I am going to get a copy. It's precisely the sort of thing I tend to like.
I don't know whether I agree with this or not but I think it's interesting to try to explain, rather than merely moralize, about how people read fiction now. We get an awful lot of "the kids are reading wrong because they are snowflakes/badly educated/etc".
As a chronic genre fiction reader, I've definitely noticed that there is a strong stream of "realism" in genre writing and a strong tendency to need to sell the author as well as the book, both in a way that I don't think was really common up through, let's say, about 2005. This is clearly about changes in audience and publishing, and it isn't something that I think is bad, but it's definitely a thing that exists.
(Like, there's a HUGE amount of fantasy and science fiction that is a very, very light transposition of contemporary social issues into fantastic format, and a huge amount of fiction that is intended substantially to literally educate you on actually existing history and social circumstances as it tells a story. It's not like this didn't exist in, eg, 1995, but if you contrast the left-wing SFF of 1995 with today's, the difference in tone and approach is clear. Earlier left-wing SFF tended to transpose a lot more completely and fictionalize a lot more when it wanted to be didactic.
To me, this is structurally about changes in audience, changes in criticism and changes in the SFF infrastructure but you only need to spend a little time on goodreads to see that there's a lot of anxiety about just how fictional things can/should be, what can be fictionalized and what can't etc.
It would be, frankly, stupid to say that this is bad. There were advantages to the approach of 1995, there are advantages to the approach of 2023. In both 1995 and 2003, people are responding to larger social conditions. But it would also be stupid to say that nothing has changed or that there is nothing to be learned from the change.
So anyway. I had not considered markets and fiction. However, if you said "I just read this great book about how the emerging market logic of the 19th century is visible in the bourgeois novel" I would be like "where do I get this book, sign me up". It's not ridiculous to suppose that the economic structures which loom so large in capitalism propaganda and control so much of our daily lives would shape how fiction gets written.
posted by Frowner at 8:14 AM on August 2, 2023 [9 favorites]
relevant Oscar Wilde quote:
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
and now I shall read the article
posted by philip-random at 8:14 AM on August 2, 2023 [13 favorites]
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
and now I shall read the article
posted by philip-random at 8:14 AM on August 2, 2023 [13 favorites]
If there's a trend towards all fiction being "real", maybe it's because readers get really engaged when a novel has some backstory about what inspired it and since most authors started off as readers, they know to deliberately base their novels on something "real" so readers have something to get engaged over.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:21 AM on August 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:21 AM on August 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Oh, I don't know, I think it's a really interesting premise: the current view of the economy (at least, to the extent there's a common cultural view?) is as different from the post-2008 thinking, as post-2008 was from pre-2008. We in the west are living in what looks like the beginning of a robustly industrial age, an age of actual things that actually exist, with a great suspicion of anything that can be chopped up into imaginary tranches. But how does that cultural emphasis, that the real is more important, more chunkily pertinent, than the synthesized and overly complex, map out onto a literary market that was going through a fad for autofiction and authenticity? (I had to check the date of the review at first, thinking it must have been pre-pandemic, or at least pre- the current discussion of climate industrial policy.)
Of course the real answer is, none of these concepts actually map onto one another, and every discussion of literature needs a disclaimer that we're only talking about this tiny subset of books and tiny subset of critics--and in the case of this particular review, we could of course point out that magic and beauty are not exactly missing in novels, nor have we ever been post-fictional, nor has there ever been a time when fiction hasn't been absolutely happy to play with our expectations that we might be reading something real. It's part of the fun, including getting in our joyously angry prole jabs at the elite critic who would use a term like "post-fictional" in the first place.
But how could anyone deny that the time you're living through defines how you're able to talk about that time? The financial crisis and its aftermath really did change the way we think about the economy; we haven't caught up to COVID yet, I don't think--it'll take a while for us to really figure out how it rearranged the mental furniture. If what you hear about, constantly, is the tale of the upper classes getting rich off things that simply don't exist (whether that be synthetic CDOs or Marvel movies), the soul wants to buck that a little; it wants to talk about what you can actually put your hands on, and the way your desires are twisted from the knowledge that someone can have that much wealth, comfort and safety for nothing, while you are living your precarious novelist life. And when life is staid and dull and all about taking up your wrenches to build the factories of the new tomorrow, the mind will naturally stray to dream-worlds.
But you can't talk about all the books, you do have to pick, and so I do like this review for the way it portrays one way you could think about the way history and literature and criticism and fads in fiction could overlap.
(Also, because she referenced Scarry's essay and talked about beauty and austerity in novels, I started to think about Zadie Smith's On Beauty, but then I looked it up and that book is from 2005--pre-crisis, even!--and now I feel ancient.)
posted by mittens at 8:25 AM on August 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Of course the real answer is, none of these concepts actually map onto one another, and every discussion of literature needs a disclaimer that we're only talking about this tiny subset of books and tiny subset of critics--and in the case of this particular review, we could of course point out that magic and beauty are not exactly missing in novels, nor have we ever been post-fictional, nor has there ever been a time when fiction hasn't been absolutely happy to play with our expectations that we might be reading something real. It's part of the fun, including getting in our joyously angry prole jabs at the elite critic who would use a term like "post-fictional" in the first place.
But how could anyone deny that the time you're living through defines how you're able to talk about that time? The financial crisis and its aftermath really did change the way we think about the economy; we haven't caught up to COVID yet, I don't think--it'll take a while for us to really figure out how it rearranged the mental furniture. If what you hear about, constantly, is the tale of the upper classes getting rich off things that simply don't exist (whether that be synthetic CDOs or Marvel movies), the soul wants to buck that a little; it wants to talk about what you can actually put your hands on, and the way your desires are twisted from the knowledge that someone can have that much wealth, comfort and safety for nothing, while you are living your precarious novelist life. And when life is staid and dull and all about taking up your wrenches to build the factories of the new tomorrow, the mind will naturally stray to dream-worlds.
But you can't talk about all the books, you do have to pick, and so I do like this review for the way it portrays one way you could think about the way history and literature and criticism and fads in fiction could overlap.
(Also, because she referenced Scarry's essay and talked about beauty and austerity in novels, I started to think about Zadie Smith's On Beauty, but then I looked it up and that book is from 2005--pre-crisis, even!--and now I feel ancient.)
posted by mittens at 8:25 AM on August 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Iain Banks used to complain about the number of interviewers who asked him if The Wasp Factory was based on “his personal experience” to which he’d respond something like “if it was, I’d be helping the police with their inquiries, not answering your questions.” He was somewhat aghast that serious literary people who would never believe that he’d flown a starship, somehow imagined that a bicycle ride had to be cribbed from an actual specific thing that he’d done. He seemed rather hurt that his interviewers didn’t believe that he could imagine a bicycle….
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:45 AM on August 2, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:45 AM on August 2, 2023 [15 favorites]
I'm reading the post intro and I'm thinking chavenet and allow me this brief spell of feeling indulged
posted by elkevelvet at 8:56 AM on August 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by elkevelvet at 8:56 AM on August 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't know to what extent the author's larger argument holds true, but I find pretty interesting as an oblique commentary on Stevens's own novel The Visitors, and how it combines the absurdist and fantastical with the grimly real and financial (the 2008 market crash and Occupy Wall Street). It's a really interesting book, actually. I don't know if I'd wholeheartedly recommend it - the ending did not work for me, but almost all the rest of it did.
posted by Jeanne at 9:25 AM on August 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Jeanne at 9:25 AM on August 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Frowner, I think you've got a point that fiction has become more educational.
I believe America became more past/genaeology as a result of "Roots".
Weirdly, at the same time, the idea of a canonical version of fiction is breaking down. It's legitmate and appreciated to have many versions of the same story.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:41 AM on August 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
I believe America became more past/genaeology as a result of "Roots".
Weirdly, at the same time, the idea of a canonical version of fiction is breaking down. It's legitmate and appreciated to have many versions of the same story.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:41 AM on August 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Having once been asked by someone in the publishing business if I could somehow take a piece of fiction and somehow "make it memoir," I have pretty strong (and largely negative) views on the whole fiction has to be non-fiction trend. Just because it's true doesn't mean it's honest. And fact-checking is, at best, a luxury add-on, available only to those willing to pay for it on their own dime.
I'll cop to my own personal taste issues being what it is, but with the possible exception of Checkout 19 (which is, indeed, a gem) and a few others, I'm mostly bored shitless with the whole auto-fiction trend (and it is very definitively a trend) even as I understand the market and social forces (people want "based on a true story"; writers are afraid of being called out for writing a circumstance or a character that does not precisely resemble their own) that have made it such a predominate mode in literature right now.
That said, as I've noted before, there is a lot of awesome new fiction out and this is going to be a pretty great fall, if you're the kind of person who follows that sort of thing
posted by thivaia at 10:09 AM on August 2, 2023 [8 favorites]
I'll cop to my own personal taste issues being what it is, but with the possible exception of Checkout 19 (which is, indeed, a gem) and a few others, I'm mostly bored shitless with the whole auto-fiction trend (and it is very definitively a trend) even as I understand the market and social forces (people want "based on a true story"; writers are afraid of being called out for writing a circumstance or a character that does not precisely resemble their own) that have made it such a predominate mode in literature right now.
That said, as I've noted before, there is a lot of awesome new fiction out and this is going to be a pretty great fall, if you're the kind of person who follows that sort of thing
posted by thivaia at 10:09 AM on August 2, 2023 [8 favorites]
I feel like there is a connection between the way every author is not expected to be their own marketing team via social media and the way we expect novels to be true to the author's experience. One of our forms of human interaction in 2023 is the parasocial relationship.
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:15 PM on August 2, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:15 PM on August 2, 2023 [6 favorites]
I'm mostly bored shitless with the whole auto-fiction trend (and it is very definitively a trend)
it leaves me cold for the most part. Which brings to mind what I call the RISE scenario. Which is the notion that a good, compelling read is always a combination of four basic concerns.
Research
Imagination
Style
Experience
with every story having its own a unique balance.
My issue with auto-fiction is that it puts way too much emphasis on Experience, which let's face it, the vast majority of writers lack -- certainly the exceptionally interesting kind. Survive a plane crash and eat the rest of the passengers before you're rescued -- that's the kind of story that isn't going to require much in the way of imagination, style and research to be compelling. But most of us don't have that, so ... we resort to other means to compel. Dive deep into research, develop an alluring style, coax our imaginations to come out and play.
Except if the market's demanding GENUINE EXPERIENCE and you're sufficiently ambitious, you're going to fake it. Try to anyway. Which I guess requires a deft application of imagination, research and style to really pull off (and all glory to those who do -- all fiction being lying after all). But most don't. Their fiction gets bogged down by the tyrannic weight of authenticity ... and I just end up reading another Lee Child mega-best-seller which I found in a freebie kiosk (skipping all the boring parts, of course).
posted by philip-random at 12:23 PM on August 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
it leaves me cold for the most part. Which brings to mind what I call the RISE scenario. Which is the notion that a good, compelling read is always a combination of four basic concerns.
Research
Imagination
Style
Experience
with every story having its own a unique balance.
My issue with auto-fiction is that it puts way too much emphasis on Experience, which let's face it, the vast majority of writers lack -- certainly the exceptionally interesting kind. Survive a plane crash and eat the rest of the passengers before you're rescued -- that's the kind of story that isn't going to require much in the way of imagination, style and research to be compelling. But most of us don't have that, so ... we resort to other means to compel. Dive deep into research, develop an alluring style, coax our imaginations to come out and play.
Except if the market's demanding GENUINE EXPERIENCE and you're sufficiently ambitious, you're going to fake it. Try to anyway. Which I guess requires a deft application of imagination, research and style to really pull off (and all glory to those who do -- all fiction being lying after all). But most don't. Their fiction gets bogged down by the tyrannic weight of authenticity ... and I just end up reading another Lee Child mega-best-seller which I found in a freebie kiosk (skipping all the boring parts, of course).
posted by philip-random at 12:23 PM on August 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
The author used to be this comparatively mysterious figure and now they have to be simultaneously somebody who's popular enough online as a persona to guarantee sales but not human enough to have any sort of opinions or past that would make them unappealing in any way. They have to be creator and potential friend at the same time and that's impossible.
posted by kingdead at 1:30 PM on August 2, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by kingdead at 1:30 PM on August 2, 2023 [11 favorites]
The thing is, though: you can invent but you can't hide.
Right around the time Reality Hunger was published, a novelist whose first book was about to appear (with both contemporary and historic settings, plus touches of magic realism) expressed some apprehension in a now-defunct forum:
"given some of the previous discussions of autobiography, I just wanted to specify that when I say I'm afraid of personal exposure, I don't mean that the book is autobiographical or that I'm afraid of betraying my personal secrets. What I mean is that all the decisions I made about voice, style, content, genre, length, even the names of the characters, are telling more about me, and more intimately, than if I had published my journal. Journals have a relatively standard voice and style, and the life they describe is often a life not entirely of your own choosing, its characters are friends and family who came to you with names already assigned, for example. So your journals merely expose your life. But your fiction is something you chose freely in every particular, -- therefore it exposes your mind, your soul."
(Because it was a long-ago forum post, part of an ongoing conversation, I won't name the writer or the book here. But if anyone's wondering, their book turned out to be well received and well reviewed.)
posted by tangerine at 2:43 PM on August 2, 2023 [10 favorites]
Right around the time Reality Hunger was published, a novelist whose first book was about to appear (with both contemporary and historic settings, plus touches of magic realism) expressed some apprehension in a now-defunct forum:
"given some of the previous discussions of autobiography, I just wanted to specify that when I say I'm afraid of personal exposure, I don't mean that the book is autobiographical or that I'm afraid of betraying my personal secrets. What I mean is that all the decisions I made about voice, style, content, genre, length, even the names of the characters, are telling more about me, and more intimately, than if I had published my journal. Journals have a relatively standard voice and style, and the life they describe is often a life not entirely of your own choosing, its characters are friends and family who came to you with names already assigned, for example. So your journals merely expose your life. But your fiction is something you chose freely in every particular, -- therefore it exposes your mind, your soul."
(Because it was a long-ago forum post, part of an ongoing conversation, I won't name the writer or the book here. But if anyone's wondering, their book turned out to be well received and well reviewed.)
posted by tangerine at 2:43 PM on August 2, 2023 [10 favorites]
But your fiction is something you chose freely in every particular, -- therefore it exposes your mind, your soul.
Holy shit. QFT.
posted by thivaia at 2:58 PM on August 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Holy shit. QFT.
posted by thivaia at 2:58 PM on August 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
At author Q&As, how much of fiction is "real" is a typical interest for audiences, and yet memoir is quite often met with a degree of suspicion over how factual it is. I've sometimes wondered if the two tendencies both stem from seeing books as a kind of long-winded puzzle. The truth is something separate from or behind the book; you might get at it by asking the author directly what they really meant or what such and such a scene was based on, as if a book years in the making isn't already the author's best expression.
At the extreme end there's often at least one person who seems to refuse (or be unable?) to distinguish novel narrators from authors. Unlike Iain Banks, I have actually heard people confuse autobiography with SF and fantasy aswell as the everyday experience of riding a bike - and it always makes me wonder what reality seems like to these outwardly quite ordinary readers that they can entertain the possibility that a time travel story, say, is literally rather than figuratively true.
I also remember a teacher of my acquaintance saying recently that students have started saying "fiction novel" and "non fiction novel" as if novel just means book; maybe it's just ordinary language drift, but it did occur to me there may be some underlying confusion over what constitutes reality in book form.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 6:25 AM on August 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
At the extreme end there's often at least one person who seems to refuse (or be unable?) to distinguish novel narrators from authors. Unlike Iain Banks, I have actually heard people confuse autobiography with SF and fantasy aswell as the everyday experience of riding a bike - and it always makes me wonder what reality seems like to these outwardly quite ordinary readers that they can entertain the possibility that a time travel story, say, is literally rather than figuratively true.
I also remember a teacher of my acquaintance saying recently that students have started saying "fiction novel" and "non fiction novel" as if novel just means book; maybe it's just ordinary language drift, but it did occur to me there may be some underlying confusion over what constitutes reality in book form.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 6:25 AM on August 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
But your fiction is something you chose freely in every particular, -- therefore it exposes your mind, your soul.
It's interesting how my reaction to that statement would be "That's so beautiful! We're all communing with each other through writing!" in the past and now I'm like "I cannot BELIEVE a motherfucker would do that. Are they crazy? These psychopaths will eat you alive!" Social media did a number on people!
posted by kingdead at 7:01 AM on August 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
It's interesting how my reaction to that statement would be "That's so beautiful! We're all communing with each other through writing!" in the past and now I'm like "I cannot BELIEVE a motherfucker would do that. Are they crazy? These psychopaths will eat you alive!" Social media did a number on people!
posted by kingdead at 7:01 AM on August 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think, in some cases, people love books so much that they can have a hard time separating out the reality from the fiction. I don’t know as much about sci-fi, but I found myself pretty upset last year listening to a pretty awful, often invasive, exaggeratedly salacious podcast that seemed intent on proving that Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” was barely concealed non-fiction. I quit listening when it seemed to be trying to force someone out of the closet and doing a whole “isn’t this just so weird and scandalous” thing about gender presentation and sexual orientation that was not quite transphobic but close enough that it probably received its mail.
I dunno. I don’t really get the whole parasocial fandom thing. Maybe because experience has shown me the less I know about the person who wrote my favorite book the more I’ll keep loving the book. I liked The Sectet History quite a bit when I was in high school (it hasn’t aged as well for me), but I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to think too hard about what portion of it was “real.” Sure there are plenty of fictional people, places and things that I’ve wished to be real as well, and found so lifelike while reading I could almost touch them and smell. them. But isn’t that the coolest part about art, the bringing to life, the imagining or reimagining? Like, did Hilary Mantel really give me a crush on Thomas Cromwell—Thomas Cromwell of all people—for a minute in “Wolf Hall?” Yeah. She did. How wild is that? But it’s her invention that I crushed on not the historical figure. I know that.
And yet (and speaking of things that haven’t aged well), I am a woman in her late 40s and to this day, I cannot be in a room with a wardrobe without reach my hand through to make sure the back is solid so take any of this with a grain of salt.
posted by thivaia at 7:16 AM on August 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
I dunno. I don’t really get the whole parasocial fandom thing. Maybe because experience has shown me the less I know about the person who wrote my favorite book the more I’ll keep loving the book. I liked The Sectet History quite a bit when I was in high school (it hasn’t aged as well for me), but I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to think too hard about what portion of it was “real.” Sure there are plenty of fictional people, places and things that I’ve wished to be real as well, and found so lifelike while reading I could almost touch them and smell. them. But isn’t that the coolest part about art, the bringing to life, the imagining or reimagining? Like, did Hilary Mantel really give me a crush on Thomas Cromwell—Thomas Cromwell of all people—for a minute in “Wolf Hall?” Yeah. She did. How wild is that? But it’s her invention that I crushed on not the historical figure. I know that.
And yet (and speaking of things that haven’t aged well), I am a woman in her late 40s and to this day, I cannot be in a room with a wardrobe without reach my hand through to make sure the back is solid so take any of this with a grain of salt.
posted by thivaia at 7:16 AM on August 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
File under: life, it's all story
I enjoyed the ideas in this article, but not the style of writing so much. I write fiction about class and have been very influenced by Douglas Rushkoff's story of what is on billionaires' minds about how to survive an oncoming apocalypse. It is obvious that the stories that are solidifying for the ruling class and tech elite are terrifying not only for them but for everyone who touches their orbit, in a winner-take-all post-society anarchy scenario. Instead of paying taxes and making an equitable society they would rather try to end game how to put their security staff in shock collars.
As a writer, I have been particularly focused on listening to how narrative affects people and I believe that it is supreme - the water we swim in, the air we breathe. Story is like art and love and pornography - you know it when you feel it - when you recognize it - yet it is amorphous since it is individually felt.
As for the parsing of fiction as true, not true, sort of true etc. it is all marketing. No one has perfect recall, even if they write it down or have a video - Truth is somewhere else. We think that we can create these categories and labels and then spend time arguing about where the boundaries are (literary criticism is an exhausting profession INMO).
I appreciated reading the analysis of fictional finance. It always amazes me the levels of obfuscation that goes into how finance works. In finance, you are either a bureaucrat (working to improve your finances based on the system and the rules) or a gambler (as no one can predict the future, but computing is making us believe we can with probability).
In the fictional realm, at least you can pick up a book for free at a Little Library!
posted by Word_Salad at 8:58 AM on August 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
I enjoyed the ideas in this article, but not the style of writing so much. I write fiction about class and have been very influenced by Douglas Rushkoff's story of what is on billionaires' minds about how to survive an oncoming apocalypse. It is obvious that the stories that are solidifying for the ruling class and tech elite are terrifying not only for them but for everyone who touches their orbit, in a winner-take-all post-society anarchy scenario. Instead of paying taxes and making an equitable society they would rather try to end game how to put their security staff in shock collars.
As a writer, I have been particularly focused on listening to how narrative affects people and I believe that it is supreme - the water we swim in, the air we breathe. Story is like art and love and pornography - you know it when you feel it - when you recognize it - yet it is amorphous since it is individually felt.
As for the parsing of fiction as true, not true, sort of true etc. it is all marketing. No one has perfect recall, even if they write it down or have a video - Truth is somewhere else. We think that we can create these categories and labels and then spend time arguing about where the boundaries are (literary criticism is an exhausting profession INMO).
I appreciated reading the analysis of fictional finance. It always amazes me the levels of obfuscation that goes into how finance works. In finance, you are either a bureaucrat (working to improve your finances based on the system and the rules) or a gambler (as no one can predict the future, but computing is making us believe we can with probability).
In the fictional realm, at least you can pick up a book for free at a Little Library!
posted by Word_Salad at 8:58 AM on August 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Great essay, so much to think about. (Rebecca Solnit argues for both justice and beauty as well in her brilliant (nonfiction) book Orwell's Roses.)
posted by blue shadows at 12:20 AM on August 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by blue shadows at 12:20 AM on August 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
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