A Process of Translation

[coalescent]

Kelly Link's Magic For Beginners is reviewed in the New York Times by Michael Knight (yes, really). He seems a bit confused:

Take ''Some Zombie Contingency Plans.'' It's about a recently released convict who drives around the suburbs looking for parties to crash because he's lonely. There are zombies here, but are they real? The premise is fresh and the characters (the con, the girl whose party he crashes, her little brother who sleeps under the bed) are likable and Link puts a metafictional twist on the narrative voice (''This is a story about being lost in the woods,'' she says), but the story doesn't quite come together, and those zombies -- are they supposed to be a metaphor?

Scott Westerfeld explains:

Allow me to explain, Mr. Non-sf-Reading Reviewer Man. Sure, zombies can “be a metaphor.” They can represent the oppressed, as in Land of the Dead, or humanity’s feral nature, as in 28 Days. Or racial politics or fear of contagion or even the consumer unconscious (Night of the Living Dead, Resident Evil, Dawn of the Dead). We could play this game all night.

But really, zombies are not “supposed to be metaphors.” They’re supposed to be friggin’ zombies. They follow the Zombie Rules: they rise from death to eat the flesh of the living, they shuffle in slow pursuit (or should, anyway), and most important, they multiply exponentially. They bring civilization down, taking all but the most resourceful, lucky and well-armed among us, whom they save for last. They make us the hunted; all of us.

That’s the stuff zombies are supposed to do. Yes, they make excellent symbols, and metaphors, and have kick-ass mytho-poetic resonance to boot. But their main job is to follow genre conventions, to play with and expand the Zombie Rules, to make us begin to see the world as a place colored by our own zombie contingency plans.

EDIT: A relevant comment at Making Light:

I got into a rather heated argument a few months back with someone who was insisting that Tooth and Claw was good because "it isn't really about dragons." I said that it was too really about dragons, and that it would have been a much worse novel if it had not been really about dragons. "But I mean, really about dragons," said the other person. And I said yes, really about dragons. It didn't matter how many kinds of typographical emphasis she attempted to vocalize: Tooth and Claw is about dragons.

It also does other things, but if every little thing in it was a metaphor for man's inhumanity to radishes or some damn thing, it would suck.

Comments

[greengolux.livejournal.com]

It's a shame that Link's fiction didn't get talked about more on the 'Waiting For The Fantastic' panel because I think her stories are perfect examples of what John Clute was calling 'equipoise' - they could be anything from outright fantasy to mainstream metaphor and there's absolutely no way to tell. Indeed, the joy is in the fact that they are all these things at the same time.

So I'd say that Michael Knight does get it, in a way. And in a way, Scott Westerfield doesn't. Yes, zombies in 'Some Zombie Contingency Plans' are plain old literal zombies. But that's not the only thing they are. They are metaphors too. Not as well as being literal zombies, but in direct contradiction to that reading. The literal and metaphorical readings are incompatible and both present at the same time. Fucking wonderful.

So yeah, I'd say that Knight's confusion constitutes getting it, in some sense. What he hasn't grasped is how to properly appreciate that sense of confusion and uncertainty.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

So yeah, I'd say that Knight's confusion constitutes getting it, in some sense. What he hasn't grasped is how to properly appreciate that sense of confusion and uncertainty.

Yep, that's a more accurate way of putting it. But perhaps not as entertaining. ;-)

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

sense of confusion and uncertainty

Or perhaps the confusion and uncertainty only exists within genre circles. There's a lot to be said for the idea that ambiguous genre tales - those that straddle the mainstream and the generic, and do so by using genre staples in mainstream ways (i.e. as something less or more than literal) - question not mainstream sensibilities, which are quite used to metaphors thankyouverymuch, but genre ones. The genre sensibility is the only one that is used to zombies being Just Zombies, and also the only one that sees the point in that. In this way, Link is exploding genre preconceptions, not mainstream ones.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps the confusion and uncertainty only exists within genre circles.

That doesn't explain why Michael Knight is confused and uncertain.

Unless one considers literary fiction a genre, of course.

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

That doesn't explain why Michael Knight is confused and uncertain.

We have two confusions here, perhaps - one born of unfamiliarity (Knight's), and one of over-familiarity (Westerfeld's). Of the two, Knight's seems to me the most open.

Unless one considers literary fiction a genre, of course.

Literary fiction is certainly a community, just like science fiction. But since I don't think science fiction is a genre, and just use the term for ease of argument, I'm not about to call literary fiction a genre. :)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I think the point is that genre readers tend to be pretty comfortable with the ambiguity; by contrast Knight seems to be looking for metaphors, and not really understanding why they're not being used in the way he expects. So if you want to argue that Link is exploding mainstream preconceptions of genre fiction, I'd be tempted to agree with you ...

[mattia.livejournal.com]

Dear Baniel, methinks you're reacting in a slightly kneejerk fashion here ;-)

Niall's quoting others, and seems to lend the Second Two a tad too much credence, but from what I've read, I don't think he's saying that the latter two have it All Right and the former All Wrong.

SF readers do get Metaphor, y'know. Most of them. I do. I'm quite certain the rest of the Third Row (ie: I'm too lazy to type up all da names) do. They do also understand the multiple readings angle, if you will. In this sense, Westerfield's reading is the more 'blinkered SF fan' one, and yes, does come across as self-important. However, I don't think you'd need to look far to find his equivalent in lit-fic land.

The brief description Knight provides for the stories in the review (annoyingly spoilerific descriptions, I might add. It's a short, but still) almost undercut his pretty much dead-on accurate description of the writing, the feel, the questions the ficition poses, the contradictions. Knight may not fully be enjoying the book in the way Niall is (or, for that matter, in the way I did), or he may simply be asking the 'questions' as a way to illustrate what you wonder when you first get through the book, or what mainstream readers unfamiliar with this level of 'oddness' might get from it (see his closing parapgraph).

I think it's more about levels of comfort, rather than a deeper lack of understanding; yes, Knight's a-hunting for metaphors, and he does seem rather disqueted, perhaps even disconnected from stories at times (he says as much in his closing paragraph, give or take), but I can't conclude from this that he's reading it 'wrong'. The simple fact he seems to relish the fact that Link undercuts the metaphors he thinks are building more often than not (paragraph 6) tells me he does, in fact, rather 'get it'. Most of the time. Whether or not ZCP 'quite comes together' is, after all, a matter of perspective.

That he is reading it from a more mainstream perspective seems clear. Are SF fans more comfortable accepting the literal weridness of it all in addition to the potential metaphorical baggage? Quite probably. Does that make their reading more correct, or richer? If they read it as straightly as Westerfield seems to have done, well, then that's anything but true. Yes, Westerfield's got a clear 'understanding' of what 'Zombie Contingency Plans' is about. And at the same time misses the point completely, and rails against Knight's review on, I might argue, fairly unfounded grounds. There Be Zombies throughout the book, and it's a review of the entire work What exactly did he expect from a 400 word review on a book in a mainstream paper? Detailed analysis of every story? That one's being used as an example, and while the effectiveness of the description vis. getting the point of it all across is debatable (see above), I can't but conclude that Knight's review is, in fact, a good one, if not a great one. In fairness to Westerfield, though, I'm liable to see his reaction as a knee-jerk rant in and of itself, and not necessarily representative of how he reads things. I like giving people the benefit of the doubt.

I have much the same kind of feeling vis. the Making Light quote as I do the Westerfield one; namely, that while yes, if the whole book was only one big, pompous, metaphorical travel into drivel, and only that, or tried to hard for EVERYTHING TO BE METAPHORICAL, or otherwise meaningful in ways beyond the literal, then it probably wouldn't make a terribly satisfying piece of writing. I've read Donaldson's stuff. I know what I'm talking about. The opposite approach that is portrayed (whether accurately or not. In Westerfield's case, my vote is 'not', in the Making Light snippet, we ain't got the source, soo), let's mislabel it the 'lit' approach, is equally blinkered in stating it's good BECAUSE it's about metaphor, not Real Dragons. Both, in this case, are wrong, but I put it to you that a strictly metaphorical reading, and attribution of quality to a book because of it, smacks of a good deal more pretention than a strictly literal reading. Neither, however, is particularly great, rich, or as rewarding as it could be. Some may be slightly more wrong than others, but which ones depends on your own perspective.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

They are metaphors too. Not as well as being literal zombies, but in direct contradiction to that reading. The literal and metaphorical readings are incompatible and both present at the same time. Fucking wonderful.

Oh, man. I don't have my mind completely around what this might mean. But I like the way it feels, a lot. Gorgeous. Thank you.

The other thing about the zombies...there aren't any zombies in "Some Zombie Contingency" plans. Not in the shambling brain-eating sense of zombies. There's lots of talk about zombies. There's lots of thinking about zombies. There are people who may be zombies in other senses. But actual rotting undead zombies? Are not in this story anywhere. Even when the zombies are literal here, they're sort of metaphors.

[greengolux.livejournal.com]

Off-screen literal zombies?

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

Literary seriousness detected. Paging chance88088 ... Repeat, paging chance88088 ...

[chance88088.livejournal.com]

eeep! sorry - it snuck in while I was having a nap after being up since 3. stupid jet lag.

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

I'm disappointed now.

[sparkymark.livejournal.com]

28 Days Later has "Rage ZOMBIES ZOMBIES ZOMBIES Victims": 28 Days was about a boozy Sanda Bullock.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

So they're both about humanity's feral nature?

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

So, as an SF reader, you found Austen's Persuasion to be superficial, and complained that you had already worked out the entire story in the first twenty-odd pages, becuase you're used to stories with more depth; but when a "mainstream" reviewer reads a zombie story and wonders if the zombies constitute some kind of metaphor, he's being foolish and missing the point?

Hmm, interesting perspective.

BTW: "Yes, they make excellent symbols, and metaphors, and have kick-ass mytho-poetic resonance to boot. But their main job is... to make us begin to see the world as a place colored by our own zombie contingency plans."

Redundant use of the word "but", I think.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Everyone seems to have missed the part where I ended my Austen post asking people to explain to me how and why I was being wrongheaded. When I write a post claiming that because I can't read it it must be bad, rather than saying that it appears bad because I don't seem to be able to acquire the protocols to read it, then your comparison will be valid. I admitted I don't know the context of the book I was trying to read; Knight doesn't.

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

Nonsense. Reviews for publication just don't start off with 'I haven't read a lot of books like this, so letters from the readers advising me of similar titles which will broaden my understanding of the period/genre/style/whatever would be greatly appreciated. Having utterly undercut my argument, and used up a good portion of my world limit, I will now write a review to which you just aren't going to bother paying any attention.' LJ discussions and NYT reviews are two completely different things, and you know that very well. Everyone comes at everything with different contexts - any itelligent reader assumes that. And the nicer ones forgive it. ;P

[greengolux.livejournal.com]

I admitted I don't know the context of the book I was trying to read; Knight doesn't.

I don't think it's about context, I think it's about comfort levels with multiple and contradictory readings of a single story. Knight sees there are multiple readings and finds this discomforting. Which indeed it can be.

Westerfield, meanwhile, doesn't seem to want to acknowledge that there are these multiple readings. I don't think that being comfortable/enjoying the ambiguities of a story like 'Some Zombie Contingency Plans' has anything to do with being familiar with the genre context. Plenty of genre readers find this sort of fiction just as diquieting as Knight does. In fact, Westerfield's refusal to consider the multiplicities of readings probably indicates that he's just as uncomfortable with the contradictory possibilities as Knight is.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Everyone seems to have missed the part where I ended my Austen post asking people to explain to me how and why I was being wrongheaded.

No, I got that bit. It's just that you pretty much ignored or dismissed everything anyone said in reply to it :-p

I admitted I don't know the context of the book I was trying to read; Knight doesn't.

But in the entire review, he mentions once, mildly, that this dissociation between book and reader might be a negative. In fact, he spends most of the review praising the unusual and varied scope of the stories. In no way at all did he imply that, for example, he couldn't judge if the book was good or bad becuase he lacked the relevant referential framework.

Any book that requires a pre-reading list to be understood is going to gather mixed reviews (and I don't include Austen in that category, becuase I've always found her writing to be immendsly straightforward). Any book that requires you to "know the context" has failed in at least one regard. The only lack of context you have with Austen is historical - the book was written a long time ago. You can't actually blame Austen or her writing for that :-p If "Magic For Beginners" confuses someone, then it's perfectly reasonable for them to say so; and sitting in the ghetto, pointing and mocking them for "not getting it" because they haven't immersed themselves sufficiently in the genre isn't being funny, it's being snobbish.

Knight's review was positive and appreciative; I would have thought that that was a good thing...

[merebrillante.livejournal.com]

Hope you don't mind a stranger butting in, but that is awesome. Thanks for posting that!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Heh, you're welcome. Glad someone else enjoyed it. ;)

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Glad someone else enjoyed it

Oh, shush; don't pretend you don't enjoy the attention :-p

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

It's funny how some people interested in the genre I know are piling on the reviewer because he was honest enough to admit his confusion -- but the review on the whole is extremely positive (even mentioning Small Beer press) and if I didn't know anything about Kelly Link or genre conventions or "slipstream," he made it sound intriguing enough I'd probably go out and buy it. It's a positive review in the NYTBR that doesn't dismiss the book and wasn't shunted off (at least online) into a little roundup "Skiffy" column! I think that's a big deal.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Totally! I think it's very fair and very true to the feel of reading the book (at least, the feel for some readers of reading the book).

Which doesn't mean I don't think the conversation about it has been interesting. I do, I do! Just, I like the review, and I like Westerfeld's thoughts, and I like the conversation, and I like the book.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

I like the review, and I like Westerfeld's thoughts, and I like the conversation, and I like the book

Me too! ((grin))

But seriously, that's a quite positive review in the NYTBR. I know writers who would cheerfully bump off their aged mothers for reviews like that.