This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Why aren't the unambiguous literary achievements of Nabokov, especially Pale Fire and Lolita, on this list? If the defining feature of postmodernism is a metatextual nature and unreliable narrator, well, um, let's include king of it. Hell, there is quite a bit of Faulkner that is pretty close to postmodernism, too, including Absalom and As I Lay Dying, two of his very finest works. I personally view the critical achievement of Ferrante's Neapolitan novels as resting heavily on unreliable narration, though this might be more controversial and my idiosyncratic interpretation. In SF, it is precisely the postmodernism of Wolfe that puts him on a tier far above all others.
In your list, I really only see Vonnegut as having true critical achievement, so I am concerned that this is far more a critique of middlebrow than it is postmodernism.
Man I like Wolfe, and he's undoubtedly got a gift for the striking image. But I remember reading a critique once that said, basically: Wolfe takes a fairly conventional sf/f plot and storyboards it out a-b-c-d. Then he decides which parts of the structure to remove or obfuscate to get the reader to play literary guessing games. Ever since then, that critique has always been at the back of my mind. I think it works, but I get why some people thinks it's a writers parlor trick.
This criticism of Wolfe's obfuscation as a parlor trick reminds me of Wallace Stevens' critique of TS Eliot, with Stevens saying that Eliot fails to make "the visible a little hard to see". Not that Eliot's poetry is particularly obvious to interpretation, but I would argue that some degree of obfuscation is actually quite important for artistic achievement, kind of like how there is not much purpose to a merely photorealistic painting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
On what list? Did you mean to reply to the OP?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link