Current Key Note

August 2006

• 08.30.2006
  Very brief excerpt from Spears of God

July 2006

• 07/29/2006
  A Couple of Poems
  

June 2006

• 06/11/2006
  Gravitude in Appalangeles
  
• 06/07/2006
  Poems: (Multiple)
  

May 2006

• 05/11/2006
  The Importance of Being Uncertain
  

April 2006

• 04/10/2006
  Poem: Fragments of a Stained-Glass Meteorite
  

March 2006

• 03/19/2006
  Let in Future Times
  
• 03/05/2006
  No Place Like Home — for Now
  

February 2006

• 02/04/2006
  Fundamental Problems
  

January 2006

• 01/30/2006
  The New Inquisition
  
• 01/25/2006
  The Future Through the Past

‘Key’ Notes

"Let In Future Times" – Or,
"What is ‘Serious’ Literature?"

March 19, 2006
by Howard V. Hendrix

It’s snowing again here in Shaver Lake. Tomorrow is the official first day of Spring, but we’re supposed to have our next big storm "the day after tomorrow." Yes, I know that last phrase is the title of a movie about global climate change but, be that as it may, we’re probably still only having a late winter here in the Sierra Nevada range (and not global freeze-down—yet).

Recently I’ve been reading Renaissance devotional poet George Herbert, for the Renaisssance class I’m currently teaching for the English Department at California State University, Fresno. Today I came across his poem "The Bunch of Grapes," which contains the lines "God’s works are wide, and let in future times; His ancient justice overflows our crimes"—from which I take part of today’s title.

"Let in future times" is precisely what the literary establishment still refuses to do.

One can always hope to see a change, but I’m not so sure. This past week I also happened to be reading a nationally syndicated review of a science fiction thriller (no, not one of mine) by a critic with a national paper of record. This critic condescended to say that one of the great values of genre fiction generally, and science fiction in particular, was that it could serve as a sort of cultural tripwire and talk about issues that "serious" or "responsible"literary fiction wouldn’t touch.

Being damned with faint praise is better than no praise at all, I suppose, but it does make me wonder: What did we genre fiction writers do to deserve this? What were "our crimes," in George Herbert’s words?

Bad book and magazine covers? Sure. Silly wizards, dopey dragons, and lurid, beryllium-brassiered Bimbos of the Death Sun have adorned the covers of many books and magazines that actually often contained some surprisingly good stories.

Bad writing? Certainly. As Theodore Sturgeon once said, "Ninety per cent of all fantasy and science fiction is crap." Yet the first corollary to Sturgeon’s Law is "Ninety per cent of everything is crap" – including what comes out of the creative writing programs, which now crank out more graduates degreed in creative writing each year than there are total members in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the professional trade association to which I belong.

No, the issue here is something larger. Personally, I have always striven to write serious literature in a popular form, but apparently "serious" means something different from what I was led to believe.

I thought "serious" meant a literature that dealt with important ideas and themes – like the impact of political and technological change on human beings, for instance, or the future of humanity as a whole, or the survival (or failure to survive) of our species.

I have learned thus late in life, however, that to be "serious" now means to adhere to an orthodoxy – in this case the orthodoxy of "psychological realism," which rules the academic creative writing programs and the literary establishment generally the way Stalin’s "socialist realism" once controlled art in the old Soviet Union.

Yet the psychological realism (PR) of the schoolmen is neither truly psychological nor truly realistic. The best of writing in the PR vein transcends the category (as does the best in any genre, arguably) while the worst of psychological realist writing is mere gossip or trendy confession, masquerading as fiction or poetry. Or vice versa. The scandal of A Million Little Pieces and Oprah Winfrey reading its author the riot act is just the latest example.

I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that dealing with the Big Ideas of the human future is no less intrinsically serious than doling out the gossip of "characters" and calling it literature. I love the psychological realism of a Raymond Carver, say, but I don’t think even Carver would have appreciated seeing his voice replicated ten thousand times by as many would-be psychological-realist creative writers.

As George Herbert (that confessional, devotional poet) wrote,"God’s works are wide, and let in future times" – even if the literary establishment won’t. I still believe that "ancient justice" will "overflow" the "crimes" of those who write in any and all genres – including literary fiction, the genre whose writers do not consider themselves genre writers.

I have little hope of seeing that blessed day of truth and forgiveness, however, until the dead hand of psychological realist orthodoxy is lifted from the schools and off the shoulders of all the arbiters of culture.

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