I'm not sure I buy it.
I mean, its a nice thing for teachers to say, or other people who's livlihood depends on stupid questions continuing to be asked. But, I'm pretty sure I've heard a stupid question. Quite a few of them actually.
And then there are questions that are just wrong- not morally wrong, but just the wrong questions to ask. Like when someone asks a writer, "Where do you get your ideas?" Just a heads up; writers hate that question. It's like being asking "Where do you get air?" If you are a writer, ideas are everywhere. They bombard you wherever you go, assault you even. They take over your mind and demand that you write about them. And then when you start to obey, other ideas come along and hi-jack those ideas. That is why the typical writerly response to the "ideas" question is a blank stare. Wrong question. How about, "Has there ever been a point in the universe from which ideas did not flow?" Oh, and by the way, the answer to that is, "No".
And then there is a third category of questions- the questions directed at the wrong people. I experienced a doozy one of those the other day.
After ConScription, I was getting a ride to the airport with the guy who owned the backpackers I'd stayed at. His name was Scott and he knew that I was a fantasy/sci-fi writer who had been attending a fantasy/sci-fi convention. We were chatting about the Con, the workshops, etc. and out of the blue he said, "So I'm worried about my nineteen-year-old son."
"What has you worried?" I asked.
"Well he loves to read. He devours books, in fact. But every since he read the Harry Potter series as a boy, that's the only sort of thing he'll read. I was wondering if you could tell me when my son will grow out of reading Fantasy."
And I said, "I'm afraid you've asked the wrong person that question. You see, I am forty and I still haven't grown out of reading fantasy. In fact, my whole livelihood sort of depends on the hope that people don't grow out of reading fantasy. What is it about fantasy that you consider juvenile?"
"Well, it doesn't teach you anything about 'real life'?" he insisted. "Not like the great biographies, the philosophers and thinkers. My son is going to grow up thinking everything can be fixed with the wave of a wand."
"So you like to read non-fiction? You like to read philosophy to find your truth, and your son finds his truth in Fantasy."
"Truth? What truth is there in Fantasy?" he asked scowling.
You know that saying, there is no such thing as a Stupid Question.
Naw, I don't buy it.
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Comments
Your conversation with Scott reminds me of a strange one I had with a mum recently.
She saw that I had been reading a book. After we had been chatting a while she said, "Are you, like, eccentric?" I looked at her, wondering whether I should feel flattered. "Like, do you read?"
"Yes," I admitted.
"Yes. My husband's eccentric too. He reads all the time."
OK.
that is so weird. Eccentric=literate? Was she blonde? Hehe.
And that guy was an obvious fucking idiot. World's full of them, too.
As for "understanding" fantasy, personally that isn't my emphasis when I read it. I read for the pure enjoyement of it, the escape and adventure, the awe and mystery. For fun! And if I gain understanding about myself or the human condition in the process. Well, that's just an added bonus.
Sometimes they are right. There is more to science fiction than a spaceship, more to fantasy than ghosts or magic - those elements need to be an integral part of the story, and they need to be built on, and answer, the what-if - _Speculative Fiction_ - if those elements are missing, you can throw in some of the markers, but you're still not ending up with genre.
And I think that genre has a reading protocol (just like every other genre) which means that as an experienced reader, you'll accept that you *don't* understand things at the beginning of the book, hoping that they will remain coherent and relevant to the story, even if you don't fully understand all of them when you get to the end. Genre readers are used to that, are intrigued by descriptions that seeminly make no sense, will accept 'magic' or 'technology' as an explanation as long as what is described is coherent in itself. This process of trust - suspension of disbelief - is inherent to SF. (Other genres ask readers to accept other unrealistic aspects of stories in order to move on. C'mon, you don't think that workaholic hard-nosed businessmen make great lifepartners?)
Thanks for the great dialogue.
Ripley
Somewhere along the line, most of these consumers of fantasy must end up living sufficiently functional lives in order to support the habit - and it's likely that his son will end up one of them.
But damn a problem-solving wand sure would come in handy.
My only problem is that there's a hole in the hutch, so they keep escaping.
"Where do you get your ideas?"
--I have them on lay-away at K-Mart.
--The tooth fairy. She leaves me ideas instead of quarters.
--You heard of Netflix? Well there's another company called Ideas-R-Us. If you don't like the idea, you just mail it back to them.
Well, that's a start ;)
But that isn't reassuring enough to get people over their fear of asking.
And I would agree that 'What truth is there in fiction' is a stupid question, because it engages with the reader's concept (it's all just made up) rather than the actual books.
Fiction asks, "If this happened, what would it mean?"
'Mean' in the sense of 'what are the consequences' or 'mean' in the philosophical sense? 'Mean' to the character, or to the reader?
Fiction does a lot of things, but I think ultimately most of them are related back to the reader and ask him to engage. It looks like a learned skill to me, this ability to relate to people and situations that - on the surface - might have nothing in common with you, and at the same time, that's one of fiction's strengths - the ability of the reader to recognise facets of themselves in people they had not considered kin, the ability to look at the facts of a situation without the emotional loadedness that their real world equivalents bring. Show a war between two countries in a made-up world, and the reader will have to face up to the arguments in a way that using a real-world example, in which the reader is likely to have a stake and been subjected to propaganda from one side or the other is unlikely to achieve.
If you see only the surface trimmings of speculative fiction, you miss all that, but that's what outsiders tend to see.
I think you make some great points concerning the differences and similarities between fiction and non-fiction.
Thanks for putting your two cents worth forward.
I figure that's a related question to yours, about ideas.
I told him I've got a subscription to Ideas Quarterly.
I can be less than polite sometimes.
If this is true, it's a big problem for anyone working in a creative endeavour. But how to solve it? I have no idea.