I gave two readings today. One wasn't really a reading - it was in my writers' group. We're getting our pieces together for a reading in February (Yeah, we plan ahead.) and I read "Three Nights in the Micro-Universe of John Coltrane." It went over really well! Everyone said it was very impressive, emotional and effective. It was a great feeling. It needs a little more work in spots, but overall I'm very pleased.
Then I read "Family Plot" tonight in downtown DC...
(Actually I read half of it, since we’re only allowed five minutes each. But I found a good stopping point that worked well.)
Understand that most of tonight’s performers read poems about relationships with people or with God. Nothing wrong with that at all. But then I step up to the microphone and read this weird story about a girl coming home from a party with blood all over her teeth...
Didn't go over too well...
I think I'm pretty honest with myself and know when I've written a good story and when I've written a turkey. I have to say, this is a pretty good story. One of my good friends who does read speculative fiction was very excited about the story when she read it last week. But I think it's pretty safe to say none of the people tonight read spec. fic. I wish I knew some people in the DC area who DO read spec. fic. I'd like to hang out with some local genre people from time to time.
So will I keep performing my genre works for non-genre audiences? Yes. I think I'll learn what stuff will be accepted in the "mainstream" and what stuff will sink to the bottom of the pool. (I sure learned tonight!) We must press onward...
Speaking of the genre, I'm reading outside of it right now - James Ellroy's 'The Black Dahlia.'
Now Playing = The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery
1 comment:
I think certain spec-fic stories can pass by the eye of the mainstream crowd.
-Ellison's "'Repent Harlequin,' said the Ticktock Man"
-Tolkien's "LOTR"
-LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas".
-Bradbury's "Farenhiet"
And some various others. I think it's 40% marketing, 30% how obvious the metaphors and certain themes are, and 30% how the story is presented.
Remember what Nancy Kress was telling us about beginnings when she first came. Often you can instantly tell a Spec-fic story from a more literary story from the very first paragraph. Not that Spec-fic can't be literature, but I do think they have a different feel. Even a Spec-fic story that is Lit with a capital "L" feels more like Mainstream Lit than it does Spec-fic.
But I've also read a lot to also believe a lot just has to do with how it is marketed. If it is marketed as Lit, all of a sudden the mainstream audiences will suddenly "get it". It's an amazing phenomenom. An interesting personal article by Nick Mamatas on a topic related to this in the very first issue of Tim Pratt's 'zine, Flytrap.
And also think in someways the metaphors have to be more obvious for a Mainstream reader. Because if I make a dragon into a symbol of bad relationships or the chaotic little problems that life throws at you, and only give it a few mentions, twenty bucks says a Spec-fic reader might understand the metaphor, but a mainstreamer will just view it as a dragon. Instead I would actually have to hint multiple times that the dragon represents this metaphor, in much more obvious ways, by possibly paralleling the dragon with his past problems everytime he shows up.
Not that I think mainstream readers need OBVIOUS themes in general, but think about Ellison's "Ticktockman" which has been his most mainstream story and taught in variously different schools. A moron could figure out the theme behind it! "Sticking it to the man!" "Don't be an automoton.
Think of LeGuin's "Omelas", I think the theme in that one is also pretty obvious. "Everything good comes with a price" "You need to sacrifice to have your dreams", etc. But I think you had to be pretty dumb to miss some of the themes in that too.
Now, I've read things in Spec-fic that have less obvious themes, deeper themes. With Spec-fic situations that ask DEEPER questions such as Gaiman's "The Wedding Present", which ending situation asks the deepest question of all. Would you kill your other family members, live a crappy life, just to have your one true love husband back, even if when he returns he isn't going to love you anymore?
Yet, you really have to think about all the thematic and philosophical questions the story presents at the end by using a very simple spec-fic element of a wedding present story that shows how a couple's life COULD have been. I think that story would have been lost on a mainstream audience, yet it is one of the deepest stories I've ever read in some ways.
Just some food for thought.
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