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.

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

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

[sparkymark.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[merebrillante.livejournal.com]

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

[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.