Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[butchersapron]

I like the use of Celtic-origin dreich.

Expropriate the expropriators.

 

[DotCommunist]

Well, yes, in the sense that books reacting to the genre's political assumptions exist. But as you've noted yourself, those assumptions are overwhelmingly dominant.

they are the drivers, not the reactions. Two concrete examples of this are how cyberpunk via the likes of Gibson and steampunk by the likes of Meiville have have become sub genres in their own right, and most of it is fucking shit- but then you get Jonathon Letham or Paulo Gacipulpi

 

[sihhi]

Expropriate the expropriators.

Only one option here culture-defence by an onslaught on the expropriators:

You should check your cultural privilege expressed in a casual non-bothered-about-my-culture-but-it-is-older-than-yours trope. Scots are the original Celts, Irish culture is merely a borrowing of real (Scottish) Gaelic culture - P-Celtic is the real Gaelic language and Gaidhlig not Irish is the real inheritor of that language.

 

[sihhi]

looked at the pictures ftw

Typical male privileged dismissal being horrific about LP's friends etc etc.

Here is a real critic who has read the words and observed the pictures

A Portrait of the Artist as a Kohl-Eyed Entrepreneur

Everyone should welcome that an artist can now make a real living out of their creative gifts without starving or working for an insurance company. Uncompromising men and women are easy to admire but artists who subvert from within live to tell the tale.
“As any strawberry picker can tell you, hard work and nothing else is a fast road to nowhere.” – Molly Crabapple

Arguably some of her finest work came as a result of her collaboration with British writer Laurie Penny in ‘Discordia – Six Nights in Crisis Athens’. With Penny’s writing style evoking Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel, Crabapple’s bubblegum illustrations capture the anomic tragedy of modern day Greece and the essence of her internet wide appeal. This goth-lite artist is sexy, vivacious and has the anti-establishmentarian movement purring in admiration. While it may have been romantic for artists to suffer in the inter-war era, the crowd sourcing phenomenon of the twenty-first century provides a new model.


Crabapple in this respect is a modern inspiration and should be applauded for her glamour inspired riches. Romantics may starve in dismay but aspiration and the arts no longer have to be mutually exclusive.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

they are the drivers, not the reactions. Two concrete examples of this are how cyberpunk via the likes of Gibson and steampunk by the likes of Meiville have have become sub genres in their own right, and most of it is fucking shit- but then you get Jonathon Letham or Paulo Gacipulpi

You are collapsing fantasy and SF together there. Like any other genre, SF has had all kinds of "waves" and movements and reactions against previous assumptions. Fantasy is much more conventional, much narrower in terms of style and genre content. A Mieville stands out as unusual in the confined world of breeze block, endless series, "secondary world" fantasy, for all that he's had some influence. Fantasy isn't monolithic, but it's closer to it than any other commercially successful genre, bar perhaps the kind of Romance that's primarily marketed by publisher name rather than author name. By number of books published, and even more so by physical weight, it's truly remarkably conventional.

We are talking here about a genre where an endless series of breeze block size novels with a name like "A Song of Ice and FIre" is considered unusually sophisticated.

(It occurs to me that the term "Fantasy" can be a bit misleading, as it's really a catch all title for two genres, distinct but each extremely homogenous, and then a bunch of oddities around the edges of the two dominant genres. The two being books about farm boys who are secretly Princes in imaginary worlds and books about falling in love with a vampire in New York. And in both cases, what's interesting is less the predictability and narrowness of the escapism and more where the escape is to).

 

[DotCommunist]

You are collapsing fantasy and SF together there. Like any other genre, SF has had all kinds of "waves" and movements and reactions against previous assumptions. Fantasy is much more conventional, much narrower in terms of style and genre content. A Mieville stands out as unusual in the confined world of breeze block, endless series, "secondary world" fantasy, for all that he's had some influence. Fantasy isn't monolithic, but it's closer to it than any other commercially successful genre, bar perhaps the kind of Romance that's primarily marketed by publisher name rather than author name. By number of books published, and even more so by physical weight, it's truly remarkably conventional.

We are talking here about a genre where an endless series of breeze block size novels with a name like "A Song of Ice and FIre" is considered unusually sophisticated.

(It occurs to me that the term "Fantasy" can be a bit misleading, as it's really a catch all title for two genres, distinct but each extremely homogenous, and then a bunch of oddities around the edges of the two dominant genres. The two being books about farm boys who are secretly Princes in imaginary worlds and books about falling in love with a vampire in New York. And in both cases, what's interesting is less the predictability and narrowness of the escapism and more where the escape is to).

draw the line then. It blurs. Many consider any FTL to place any book into fantasy

 

[Nigel Irritable]

draw the line then. It blurs. Many consider any FTL to place any book into fantasy

As I was saying above, it's probably more useful to treat "Fantasy" as two distinct genres: The kind of books where there is or should be a map inside the cover, and the kind of books where someone has sex with an attractive but brooding werewolf. That's "fantasy" as it materially exists in terms of publishing, retail and consumption.

Discussions about "the fantastic" and whether any book with such an element should be categorised as "fantasy" tend towards the self-serving.

 

[DotCommunist]

As I was saying above, it's probably more useful to treat "Fantasy" as two distinct genres: The kind of books where there is or should be a map inside the cover, and the kind of books where someone has sex with an attractive but brooding werewolf. That's "fantasy" as it materially exists in terms of publishing, retail and consumption.

Discussions about "the fantastic" and whether any book with such an element should be categorised as "fantasy" tend towards the self-serving.

I'll just throw magic realism in there

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I'll just throw magic realism in there

A central point of "magic realism" is the desire to use some limited fantastical elements without getting categorised as "fantasy". If your book gets stacked in between embossed covered bricks called things like the Last Prophecy of Darnillion or the Canticle of Aldreth or beside a book where sexy supernatural archetypes have sex with sexy streetwise heroines in Brooklyn then you aren't writing "magical realism".

 

[DotCommunist]

And yet you are still writing fantasy, its an imaginary construct genre that allows guardian readers to read rushdie without feeling sullied

 

[J Ed]

A central point of "magic realism" is the desire to use some limited fantastical elements without getting categorised as "fantasy". If your book gets stacked in between embossed covered bricks called things like the Last Prophecy of Darnillion or the Canticle of Aldreth or beside a book where sexy supernatural archetypes have sex with sexy streetwise heroines in Brooklyn then you aren't writing "magical realism".

Honestly I find magical realism frustrating, I can't get into a book where key plot elements don't let me get immersed in the storyline. Pick one or the other!

 

[DotCommunist]

Honestly I find magical realism frustrating, I can't get into a book where key plot elements don't let me get immersed in the storyline. Pick one or the other!

I've got a lot of time for rushdie. and Aruhydati Roy.

more for rushdie though. Better to take it as prose poetry then let the story emerge from there

 

[Nigel Irritable]

And yet you are still writing fantasy, its an imaginary construct genre that allows guardian readers to read rushdie without feeling sullied

All genres are imaginary constructs in a certain sense, but the attempt to include anything with any element of "the fantastical" as "fantasy" (much like attempts to include anything with any element of "the future" under SF) is chiefly a self-serving attempt by fans of books about farm boys who are really lost princes to gain cultural cachet for those books by association. Books categorised as "magic realism" include, by definition, some examples of "the fantastic", but they do not exist within the genre conventions and assumptions of map inside the cover fantasy nor within those of sexy werewolf fantasy. They don't draw on that tradition, or concern themselves with a dialogue with it, and they aren't published, sold or received by readers as being part of that tradition. They have much more in common in terms of concern, style and audience with other literary fiction than with either of the two "fantasy" genres.

Ultimately "something unrealistic happens" isn't enough of a meaningful commonality to construct a super-genre around.

 

[DotCommunist]

its the map inside the cover thats doing you isn't it? How do you feel about dramatis pesonae lists and extended footnotes?

 

[DotCommunist]

also the lycanthrope boning thing exists in your head. Try Glen Duncan 'Last Werewolf'

you'll lose the boner

 

[SpineyNorman]

Can you two get a fucking room or something and allow the rest of us to return to the important task of analysing Laurie Penny's toilet habits?

 

[SpineyNorman]

Just to inject a bit of hypocrisy into proceedings after moaning about people talking about fantasy and that, an ISN member on my facebook just posted this with the heading 'Boom!' (I'm not down with da yoof but I think that means he approves)

GAME OF TROPES: Racefail

I don't even understand what the author is talking about but I suspect it's probably bollocks.

 

[butchersapron]

This is laurie freeing slaves (not reading your brothers guff norm):

 

[Nigel Irritable]

its the map inside the cover thats doing you isn't it? How do you feel about dramatis pesonae lists and extended footnotes

Try not to sulk.

The map inside the cover is a shorthand way of saying "secondary world fantasy", the werewolf sex a summary of the central concerns of the books stacked under "urban fantasy". These two genres constitute the overwhelming bulk (in every sense) of what's sold and read as "fantasy", and trying to construct a common genre out of them and "magic realism" simply on the basis that something unrealistic happens in all three types of book is silly and transparent in its intentions.

Rather than trying to attach those genres (or really secondary world fantasy as urban fantasy readers seem to be less concerned with the place of their tastes on the literary snobbery totem pole) to other fiction with some fantastical element, it's more interesting to look at the relatively rare examples where someone who is consciously writing within the genre has tried to use or incorporate "literary" techniques rarely associated with it.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Can you two get a fucking room or something and allow the rest of us to return to the important task of analysing Laurie Penny's toilet habits?

This stuff is, if I recall correctly, the kind of novel that Penny recommends from time to time, so clearly it's on topic.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I don't even understand what the author is talking about but I suspect it's probably bollocks.

The language used is grating, but the central point actually seems fair enough.

 

[DotCommunist]

Try not to sulk.

The map inside the cover is a shorthand way of saying "secondary world fantasy", the werewolf sex a summary of the central concerns of the books stacked under "urban fantasy". These two genres constitute the overwhelming bulk (in every sense) of what's sold and read as "fantasy", and trying to construct a common genre out of them and "magic realism" simply on the basis that something unrealistic happens in all three types of book is silly and transparent in its intentions.

Rather than trying to attach those genres (or really secondary world fantasy as urban fantasy readers seem to be less concerned with the place of their tastes on the literary snobbery totem pole) to other fiction with some fantastical element, it's more interesting to look at the relatively rare examples where someone who is consciously writing within the genre has tried to use or incorporate "literary" techniques rarely associated with it.

Whose sulking? As far as I can see you are the only one with that hideous bourgois guardian readers prejudice against genre fiction, so quick to label someone who recognizes its flaws as a fanboy etc. Cop on nigel- you aren't nearly so wise to it as you think you are

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Whose sulking? As far as I can see you are the only one with that hideous bourgois guardian readers prejudice against genre fiction, so quick to label someone who recognizes its flaws as a fanboy etc. Cop on nigel- you aren't nearly so wise to it as you think you are

You are sulking. Noting the conservativism, in both a political sense and in terms of technique, of the overwhelming bulk of "secondary world" fantasy relative to other genre fiction does not imply a bias against genre fiction at all.

 

[DotCommunist]

You are sulking. Noting the conservativism, in both a political sense and in terms of technique, of the overwhelming bulk of "secondary world" fantasy relative to other genre fiction does not imply a bias against genre fiction at all.

and yet, you manage to do so- its not even implicit. The problem is of course that many who have merely dipped toes have a skewed take on genre fiction. Understandable that you'd take such views. I myself admit to its huge flaws and yes, the inherent conservatism. But you've attempted to paint me as an apologist for it because I pointed some context. So may I suggest respectfully that you get back in your box

 

[J Ed]

The language used is grating, but the central point actually seems fair enough.

The thing about the Dothraki is that they are such an amalgamation of different racist and Orientalist tropes that it's difficult to exactly put your finger on exactly what it is about them that makes them racist or whether that amalgamation means that it's actually alright. Their language is based on a mix of Hawaiian and Algerian Arabic but their nomadism is obviously a nod to the Mongol Horde. What's clear is that they do fulfill the 'black brute' stereotype.

 

[butchersapron]

The thing about the Dothraki is that they are such an amalgamation of different racist and Orientalist tropes that it's difficult to exactly put your finger on exactly what it is about them that makes them racist or whether that amalgamation means that it's actually alright. Their language is based on a mix of Hawaiian and Algerian Arabic but their nomadism is obviously a nod to the Mongol Horde. What's clear is that they do fulfill the 'black brute' stereotype.

**bah**

 

[DotCommunist]

on the tele

 

[J Ed]

**bah**

I still like the programme it's just a bit dodgy on race

 

[Nigel Irritable]

and yet, you manage to do so- its not even implicit.

You are feeling offended because I'm being dismissive about the bulk of a genre you like. And so, while knowing nothing about my tastes, you are attributing some Guardian weekend supplement concern to police the boundaries between literary and genre fiction to me. I've said nothing dismissive about genre fiction in general and most of my comparisons involving "secondary world" fantasy have been with other genre fiction (SF and Romance).

But you've attempted to paint me as an apologist for it because I pointed some context.

You are an apologist for it, at least in a limited sense. While acknowledging elements of the conservatism of "secondary world" fantasy, you've consistently downplayed the significance of that conservatism. And you also seem offended by a dismissal of the idea that secondary world fantasy and magical realism form a common genre, which is an attitude I've only ever encountered from fans of the former.

 

[butchersapron]

I still like the programme it's just a bit dodgy on race

I got the wrong people, meant lauries people.