Luck
No black cats or ladders in our paths, no loose mirrors liable to shatter, and I didn't spill any salt. Things hold steady for a bit.
In one of her essays, Le Guin takes on Tolstoy's "famous first sentence", the one which opens Anna Karenina. She thinks he just said it because it sounded good, not because it's true. I agree, and I don't think people should head into works of fiction expecting to learn anything absolutely factually true. Le Guin did go on to say that she thought people do indeed read works of fiction to find out about other people in different places without having to travel, but I disagree rather vehemently about the value of that. Read personal accounts, autobiographies, travel narratives, they may contain a few grains of fact, but as a friend is prone to remark,"It's ALL fiction!" Sometimes some kinds of truths do appear in fiction, but I don't think people should run their life on stories. I think fiction is ruined by the need for "true-to-life" material so popular now; this is bizarre. Why the hell would you want to read all about people like you? What's the fun in that? The best fiction, I think, is inventive, playing around with the stories that have come down the line from Gilgamesh; full of lies, exaggeration, delight. Not plodding, heavily researched pablum that's just like "real life."
So, give me a calm life, but wildy wonderful novels and short stories. With any luck, this work will keep appearing.
In one of her essays, Le Guin takes on Tolstoy's "famous first sentence", the one which opens Anna Karenina. She thinks he just said it because it sounded good, not because it's true. I agree, and I don't think people should head into works of fiction expecting to learn anything absolutely factually true. Le Guin did go on to say that she thought people do indeed read works of fiction to find out about other people in different places without having to travel, but I disagree rather vehemently about the value of that. Read personal accounts, autobiographies, travel narratives, they may contain a few grains of fact, but as a friend is prone to remark,"It's ALL fiction!" Sometimes some kinds of truths do appear in fiction, but I don't think people should run their life on stories. I think fiction is ruined by the need for "true-to-life" material so popular now; this is bizarre. Why the hell would you want to read all about people like you? What's the fun in that? The best fiction, I think, is inventive, playing around with the stories that have come down the line from Gilgamesh; full of lies, exaggeration, delight. Not plodding, heavily researched pablum that's just like "real life."
So, give me a calm life, but wildy wonderful novels and short stories. With any luck, this work will keep appearing.
posted by isabelita at 12:19 PM
2 Comments:
I haven't been reading much fiction lately, and it might be because it seems so thin and uninteresting to me. That probably is due to the author's effort to be true to little, real lives. I hadn't thought of it in those terms. For me, fiction needs to have ordinary characters who live extraordinary lives. Something must set them apart. Imagine how Raskolnikov would be drawn today.
Something I've always appreciated about Ursula LeGuin is that her parents were two very famous anthropologists. What a grand way to get started in life.
In one of her personal essays, Le Guin writes about her developmental years. It sounds as if the best thing her parents did was to have plenty of good literature around, and let the kidds read as much as they wanted.
I utterly concur with you about fiction; I am frequently astounded at the way people can't seem to handle anything but reading stuff based on "a true story", as if that's the ultimate golden achievement of a work...what a waste of trees.
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