Dear Katy, This is too abtruse for me to follow. It think you'll have to go on without out me, since I cannot follow. I do not share your understanding. But thanks for the invitation! You'll have to contemplate realism your way, while I go my way.
Katy, love the idea of a taxonomy of realisms. I wonder if it might help to clear the ground with something of a via negativa: what kinds of literary art are specifically *not* realistic, either a) claiming to do something else than represent reality (from your first sentence, I take it that *representation* is a key part of your understanding of realism--abstract artists typically want to evoke feeling, but by avoiding representation rather than embracing it), or b) failing to achieve realism? B) seems much more contentious, as it'll depend on our understanding of reality, but a) may be more straightforward to delineate.
Alex, so happy to hear from you. You're right, (b) would be a far more difficult case to make. And, to turn the screw, you do sometimes encounter overly restrictive versions of claims about the "real," which are in fact trapdoors into someone's distorted and joyless vision of things (think of those figures in Lewis' fiction who insist that the "real" is only what's miserable, a worldview Franzen wants to critique by calling it "depressive realism"). I want at all events to avoid that overly restrictive version, or trapdoor. (A) seems like a much more fruitful direction; I appreciate & admire many forms of speculative fiction, which can also address spiritual material compellingly (as in some of Chiang's stories, or Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun), even as those seem to me to be doing something essentially different from what I want to do in my own work & describe in those I see working along similar lines. And you're right, the way experience gets represented is near the heart of the question.
I find this concept interesting but I am lost without examples. I cannot tell where the knife cuts. Can you give examples of familiar works that are and are not contemplative realism and explain why and why not respectively?
Mark, this is a great question, and I hope the next few installments will address it in a way that's satisfying! We'll focus on writers I consider forerunners or precursors of the style (e.g., Mauriac, Undset, Bloy), as well as more contemporary writers who might or might not embrace the label but whose work sounds notes that are consonant with what the style seeks to do.
Dear Katy, This is too abtruse for me to follow. It think you'll have to go on without out me, since I cannot follow. I do not share your understanding. But thanks for the invitation! You'll have to contemplate realism your way, while I go my way.
Roseanne, thanks for dropping in & giving this a try! I'm sure we'll be seeing each other around. :)
Katy, love the idea of a taxonomy of realisms. I wonder if it might help to clear the ground with something of a via negativa: what kinds of literary art are specifically *not* realistic, either a) claiming to do something else than represent reality (from your first sentence, I take it that *representation* is a key part of your understanding of realism--abstract artists typically want to evoke feeling, but by avoiding representation rather than embracing it), or b) failing to achieve realism? B) seems much more contentious, as it'll depend on our understanding of reality, but a) may be more straightforward to delineate.
-Alex T.
Alex, so happy to hear from you. You're right, (b) would be a far more difficult case to make. And, to turn the screw, you do sometimes encounter overly restrictive versions of claims about the "real," which are in fact trapdoors into someone's distorted and joyless vision of things (think of those figures in Lewis' fiction who insist that the "real" is only what's miserable, a worldview Franzen wants to critique by calling it "depressive realism"). I want at all events to avoid that overly restrictive version, or trapdoor. (A) seems like a much more fruitful direction; I appreciate & admire many forms of speculative fiction, which can also address spiritual material compellingly (as in some of Chiang's stories, or Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun), even as those seem to me to be doing something essentially different from what I want to do in my own work & describe in those I see working along similar lines. And you're right, the way experience gets represented is near the heart of the question.
I find this concept interesting but I am lost without examples. I cannot tell where the knife cuts. Can you give examples of familiar works that are and are not contemplative realism and explain why and why not respectively?
Mark, this is a great question, and I hope the next few installments will address it in a way that's satisfying! We'll focus on writers I consider forerunners or precursors of the style (e.g., Mauriac, Undset, Bloy), as well as more contemporary writers who might or might not embrace the label but whose work sounds notes that are consonant with what the style seeks to do.