Samuel R. Delany is one of those criminally under-read science fiction authors, the size of whose readership seems inversely proportional to the quality of his writing. Part of the reason, I think, is that Delany writes literary-intellectual science fiction: “intellectuals” tend to turn up their noses at anything even vaguely associated with genre-fiction, while hardcore sci-fi fans want more guns & fewer inquiries, say, into the nature of language. Well, too bad for them.

When I find someone interested in picking up some Delany, I always recommend Babel-17 (& its accompanying novella, Empire Star) as a point of entry into Delany’s peculiar worlds. Babel-17 can be described either as the adventure of interstellar captain & poet Rydra Wong as she tries to track down the alien threat that’s been sabotaging the galactic system or as an extended inquiry into the ways in which language drives—either to promote or to limit—thought, from the ontological & existential base-structure to the nuances of social chat. The novel is, in fact, both, & holds up under examination from either angle. Lyricism, referentiality, complexity; drugs, sex, space-fights. The only bad thing about Babel-17 (which won the Nebula) is that Delany wrote it when he was 23—no one has any right to be so talented.

[originally written for publication over at plasmapool.org]

nokia has produced a sort of amazing commercial for one of its new products. it doesn’t really matter which one, but the advert is actually worth watching, because it’s a fine example of a strange phenomenon in advertising that i’m struggling to pin down in my own thinking.

the advert is hosted (by youtube) at its own website for something called the maemo project, which apparently has some whole community of participating users, in an attempt, clearly, to harness the community power of the internet to do development, which isn’t a bad idea, if it actually works. good for you, nokia, at least you know that the internet exists. too bad about that iphone thing, though.

anyway. back to the matter at hand. advertising as a concept is something that i think i’ve lost track of, somehow. it must be the internet, & the fact that i don’t really watch videos on it. but a 2.5 minute advert that takes its sweet time to sell its product? that obviously took a pretty talented design team? with its own website, the url for which rings “avant-garde viral thing”, when it isn’t? this shit is wheels within wheels, people.

think about it: this is an advert, for a phone, made by a giant corporation, & you can practically close-read it. not that your reading would be all that complex, but there are definitely elements of this short film that can’t be explained away as clever marketing, that seem to point to some weird science-fictional dystopian narrative where bright people get locked up & then questioned in order for—companies? the government?—to R&D new tech: this doesn’t sound like a commercial at all. it sounds like a novel. maybe not the most literary or inventive novel, but a novel nonetheless.

in short, this advert creates an immanent narrative. it’s a vignette that participates in what is clearly a thought-out fictional universe, where characters in the vignette perform roles that are alien to us but interlock in a way that suggests an orderly universe. in some ways, i think you can claim that all advertising participates in some kind of fictional universe, but i think they vary in kind.

most advertising imagines a universe in which you, the consumer, have this product, & oh my how everything has changed. weirdly, i think that car commercials & certain alcohol commercials (e.g. smirnoff) get away from this most easily, partly by hiring the industry’s best design teams, & partly because some car & booze companies recognize that their product is in no way indispensable, & have decided to make their product look like, well, art (if you accept that art can also be a commodity, which i think is pretty obvious).

but what nokia’s doing here is not that. rather, they’ve taken the time to imagine a science-fictional future in which their product not only exists, but is a natural production of that world. it’s a curious choice, because they’re deliberately casting the advent of their product in a dystopian future with surveillance-state, restriction-of-information overtones. but it’s smart, right? nokia’s target demographic here is clearly the people—people, i think, specifically of our generation, who are the last to remember what life was like before the internet, & with whom, i think, this particular flavor of dystopian future still resonates—who identify with our locked-up but bright nerds, & who are basically totally comfortable with dystopian futures. hey, guys, in the dystopian future that is inevitable, in which we are hunted for being clever, nokia will be there!

i’m not saying that the thinking behind this advert was that conscious, though it’s possible that it was. but i think what really interests me here is the profligacy with which it’s become possible to invent worlds that we only ever access for, say, 2.5 minutes, but that are clearly still worlds. it’s something about the success of viral marketing, to be sure—which has made it so clear that people respond to narrative, & that we’ll pretty much invent a narrative for anything if you give us a half a chance, because that’s how we make sense of the world around us—but it’s also got to be something about the conditions of possibility for narrative that the internet liberates in some way.

we are no longer frugal with worlds. we toss them off for an advert, a series of pseudonymous twitter accounts, one-off concept art. we no longer need to be frugal with worlds. the ubiquity of media on the internet means that one’s creations are just as likely to be noticed if it’s one really great image as if it’s a whole art book, & the short attention span that the internet encourages sometimes makes it more worthwhile, here, to just make one, to give a glimpse into a world—abstract, mysterious, pure—

i know that a lot of people hate advertising simply because it’s advertising, & fine. but there are a lot of really talented people working in the field, & something’s happening to it lately that is at once fairly exciting from a literary standpoint & sort of darkly, vaguely disturbing. i’m interested in this proliferation of worlds, but i don’t know what to make of it, really, not yet.

[video via grinding.be]

neil gaiman is, as ever, sensible:

I don’t think immediate tragedy is a very good source of art. It can be, but too often it’s raw and painful and un-dealt-with. Sometimes art can be a really good escape from the intolerable, and a good place to go when things are bad, but that doesn’t mean you have to write directly about the bad thing; sometimes you need to let time pass, and allow the thing that hurts to get covered with layers, and then you take it out, like a pearl, and you make art out of it.

i think this is exactly right. people say to me, sometimes, they do, “oh, i had my heart broken so i am going to write a poem about it,” or something along those lines, & i think that writing because you have been hurt is all well & good but that the name of that writing is rarely, say, “a poem” & is, instead, “a journal entry.”

which is fine; but you have to know the difference between them.

see, it is not only that immediate tragedy is too difficult to make art out of because it’s un-dealt-with, though gaiman’s right that tragedy is one of those things that resists being packaged-up & art-ed. it is also that tragedy is essentially incommunicable: others, no matter how empathetic, can never really get there, so to speak. you add Fact A to Event B and wind up with Tragedy P, & everyone can understand the mechanics of that—but good luck with Affect Y, which attends, but only for you, Tragedy P.

certain kinds of writing are not meant for the public eye. just because a thing is incommunicable doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write it down; simply putting a thing on paper is therapeutic for many people. but that’s precisely it: it’s therapy, not art. art is, in its most basic definition, an act of communication. if you can find a way of making your tragedy (or whatever) communicable—a little less personal, a little more social—then no matter how much it partakes of you, it will have that je ne sais quoi of art in it that makes things interesting.

if not, it’s not art. which is, again, fine. but no, i don’t want to read your poem about how your girlfriend dumped you.

gaiman’s bit about indirection is exactly the thing. if one is a writer, & one experiences a tragedy, it is difficult to keep that tragedy out of one’s writing altogether. writing is empathic; that is part of the point. & moments of emotional stress, rupture, fragmentation, et cetera are frequently the spark that makes good writing go. but it is necessary to let things take their course. all poems about breakups, if they are only poems about breakups, are the same poem. so stare at something else for a while. you’re not going to be able to not think about it anyway, so there’s no need to fixate explicitly.

writers have enough explicit fixation problems as it is.

the lurkers do not support me in email! oh no!

from a correspondent:

The three-book version of 2666 is actually cooler than the hardcover? I don’t believe you—please explain.

so i have tried. what follows is from an email &, as such, is in a rather different style. forgive me. i am lazy.

well:

for one thing i just do not like hardcover editions all that much. they are bulky & hard to carry around, which for a graduate student who has to carry around an ass-ton of books all the time is a big enough deal. also as objects they are sort of off-putting in that monolithic way. & they are more difficult to read in bed, as they require propping-up.

for things that are published in a series (e.g. if you are, as i am, a science fiction fan), QPs released by a single publisher can have a v. nice look to them on a shelf. i cite, e.g., orbit’s ongoing re-release of iain m. banks’s novels, which are quite lovely. a good QP has a durable & flexible spine, too, & is definitionally printed on acid-free paper, so the two major drawbacks of paperbacks (spine-creasing & paper-aging) are not in play. (NB: mass market editions SUCK.)

with respect to the bolaño release, specifically: for one thing i think it is superlatively awesome that FSG released both editions. some people are just hardcover fans, & that is their prerogative. but i think the boxed set is really nice for a couple of reasons. in addition to the reasons cited in the first paragraph, 2666 also has its own peculiar history for which to account, as i am sure you are well aware. now, i do not like to be dogmatic about these sorts of things, so the people who tell you that the novel was “supposed” to be published serially & therefore “must” be or “really had ought to have been” are being silly, & the whole affair is rather less straightforward than that. see the note from the heirs in the front-matter to 2666. but, as i am sure you know, the novel DOES have a strange relationship with its own seriality, if one can even call it that; though the novel is surely, well, a novel—a single entity that should probably be read as a whole in order to guarantee maximum reading pleasure & that surely does not make sense if read only partially (insofar as it can be said to “make sense”; i haven’t finished my read-through yet)—it does participate in seriality, or in, less elegantly, sectionality (the chronological progression implied in “seriality” may not in fact suit in this case), in a way that strikes me as programmatic. i do honestly like how the physical discreteness of the 3-volume QP reinforces the disconnect between the various strands of the narrative while maintaining sequential (rather than volume-specific) pagination & section-numbering—the implications of which contrast i am sure you do not need spelled out for you, even if you choose to discard my thinking here as being either a: over-thinking or b: overly attentive to the impact that the physical object has on its so-called “content.”

another, much more minor, point is the correlation between this sort of novel & its unexpected traction in the sci-fi community, which is known for loving a good serial, comic-book or otherwise.

& i don’t have a problem with the decision to divide the novel into three volumes instead of five (as there are five sections), as the first three sections are indeed much shorter than the final two, & the effect of the division is the same (except, perhaps, in terms of what might be called physical pacing) whether there are three or five (though, in the logic of seriality, having only two sections would imply something v. different for the structure of the novel as a whole).

as a last note, the v. lovely artwork for 2666 gets full display in the 3-vol. set, as each vol. is entirely devoted to one of the works, whereas in the hardcover, i believe, only the first predominates, while the second & third are relegated to the inside of the dust jacket.

i could probably live without the “praise for 2666” all over the box, but the box design is quite nice; besides, it is not really visible when on a shelf, but having the box is, i think, a nice final touch.

::

in other news i am thinking of beginning a campaign in support of QPs, as hardcovers are still & for no reason retaining their privileged place at the top of the publishing hierarchy.

YOU MUST READ THIS.

roberto bolaño’s 2666 is killer. i’m only part-way through the first book¹ (what with finals & all) but well hell i just have to recommend it right this instant.

a teeny tiny excerpt, to whet just the edge of your keen interest:

What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows and spurs us on, amid blood and wounds and mortal stench.

i’m not going to write a review of the thing, as i haven’t finished it & i hate book reviews. but the impulse is almost overwhelming;—which is, perhaps, recommendation enough.

it kind of makes me want to tear my hair out.

–
1. you should most definitely acquire the 3-volume boxed set of the novel, as it has been released in both that form & in hardcover from farrar, straus & giroux, & both forms are (in typical FSG fashion) lovely, but the thing was originally plotted to be in five parts & released sequentially anyway, & anyway the little QPs are easier to carry around, & it just looks so much more badass.

once more posting on the run, as is my wont:

netlabel rope swing cities has released an album by eleven steps called one week early, which you should run right out & download here.

rich warm tasty guitar-heavy soundscapey ambient. think i’ll probably lie in bed & have a listen right now.

steve’s website is here, & it has links to another release, as well.

overmetaphorization
leads to foolish & facile equations
the logic is flawed
its proponent a fraud
the conclusion an abomination

::

one occupies an ideology
which is modified methodologically
or one holds some beliefs
be they lengthy or brief
they may well emerge pathologically

—c.

01. If it doesn’t look human, it probably isn’t.

02. When encountering alien species on earth, remember: sympathy is overrated, and empathy is impossible. Automatically assume hostility. When encountering alien species off-world, try not to be a dick until you have to.

03. Talking to a potentially hostile alien life-form doesn’t always help, though sometimes it does.

04. Even if it looks human, it might not be. Never assume a human shape isn’t just a host.

05. Creepy people are creepy for a reason. Children are automatically creepy and are much more prone to accepting contact from alien life, hostile or otherwise.

06. Sometimes humans are the most alien of all.

07. Never question someone immortal, nearly immortal, or just bloody old. Especially if he has really great hair.

08. Get your snog on while you can, but try not to fall for someone of another species. Especially if you work for a top secret organization that specializes in alien technology and neutralizing potential alien threats. Do try not to shag the opposition.

09. However, do stay as close to them as you can. Unless they’re trying to kill you, which may or may not be obvious.

10. If you think you hear or see something, you probably did.

11. Really do try not to get separated.

12. Bring an extra flashlight.

13. The things in the dark are real.

14. Don’t turn your back. Don’t look away. Don’t blink.

15. Stay out of the shadows.

16. On the other hand, bright lights tend to be less friendly than you would think.

17. When in doubt, run. In fact, “run” should probably just be your default setting.

18. If your phone stops working, run. If the lights go out, you know what to do.

19. Learn how to use a gun, but it probably won’t do you much good.

20. Sometimes it’s smarter just to shoot to kill and ask forgiveness later. Or not ask forgiveness later.

21. Sometimes you just gotta drive a car into a building.

22. Never leave your keys in the ignition.

23. Never underestimate the value of a well-timed kick to the crotch.

24. Avoid London on Christmas. Avoid Cardiff in general.

25. If you find yourself in the midst of a particularly horrifying situation and/or you realize it’s the 51st century, blame Steven Moffat.

26. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity (cf. SEP)—nor of human courage and innovation.

27. Be clever. Use that unstoppable gob.

28. Each person has their own time at which to die. Trying to prevent the inevitable is a bad idea. Bringing people back to life is an even worse one.

29. The universe is full of strange and wonderful things, and some really horrible things, too. The past can be as strange as the future. Life is impossibly sad. But that’s life.

30. If you haven’t told someone you love them and you feel you should, for god’s sake TELL THEM ALREADY.

More great stuff on the so-called death of the book, this time by Clay Shirky, who reminds us that not only is it “impossible to be pro-book and anti-revolution”; being pro-book also entails recognizing that the form of the book is subject to change.

Prior to Gutenberg, most of the books in Europe were the Bible; scribal production was so slow that simply recopying that one book took up much of the available output. After Gutenberg, publishers began experimenting with new forms—novels, scientific papers, periodicals of all sorts.

That is, the kinds of information that effectively counted—that were of sufficient (or potentially sufficient) importance to merit a run on the printing press—expanded rapidly & irreversibly. As Shirky points out, a whole lot of garbage flowed into that vacuum & scandalized everyone.

But we managed, even though the volume of garbage hasn’t been reduced all that much. We’ve learned to identify the kinds of publications that interest us, & we’ve seen that a lot of the good stuff still rises to the top. Of course, some truly horrible shit still sells well; that’s the price you pay when you open up the means of production. But that’s been the case since the printing press took off, & trudging through the cesspool still seems infinitely more desirable than being handcuffed to the pre-Gutenberg Church monopoly.

It’s worth noting that most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient. Readily available translations of scripture did destroy the Church as a pan-European institution. Most of the material produced by the new class of publishers was flyweight. Scribes did lose their social function. And so on, through a battery of transformations including public scrutiny of elites, the international spread of political foment, and even literate women.

The thing I want to point out here—Shirky doesn’t take this tack explicitly—is this: while the current Most Loud Wringer-of-Hands (the literary establishment, which is part & parcel with the humanities) doesn’t actually need to control the means of literary production, it’s going to get itself into some Gutenberg-era Church-style trouble if it continues to insist that it does. The humanities has no good reason, really, to believe that we’ll all be out of a job if we fail to prevent the “death of the book.” When did we forget that our job isn’t to talk about books but to talk about thought & the words that express it?

This doesn’t mean that the literary forms to which we’re accustomed are going to wither & die. I doubt that people will stop writing novels & stories (& maybe even poems). I also doubt that people will stop reading such works. Will everyone have a filled floor-to-ceiling bookcase? I doubt that, but that’s a different question entirely.

What I do know is this: it’s altogether too late for the literary establishment or anyone else to enforce this notion that the physical book should be the privileged form for literary output. If we insist otherwise, we’re going to be in a fix, because there’s nothing we humans like less than being told what we can & cannot think or read. & the literary establishment has a great deal less clout than the Church had when it comes to enslaving people’s minds & enforcing censorship. But that’s the cast that a great deal of this death-of-the-book nonsense has taken on, & it’s really unbecoming.

Here’s the other thing: we’re supposed to be the least trammeled when it comes to freedom of thought & expression. We like thinking new thoughts & learning new things. Well, new things are happening, & if the literary establishment is going to keep telling us that the things that we’re interested in “don’t count”, then that’s too damned bad, but there’s a whole lot of really interesting artistic work being done & damned if I’m going to miss it. If the humanities won’t have us, we’ll take our clever little brains & go someplace that will.

The humanities only has one other choice: to change. As Shirky puts it:

It is too early to tell whether the internet’s effect on media will be as radical as that of the printing press. It is not too early to tell that there is nothing that happened between 1450 and now that comes close. It is also not too early to tell that we are in for a significant transformation of intellectual life, and the lesson from the last revolution is that the way to make society better is not to try to preserve the old forms, but to experiment, wildly, with new ones, including hybridization of the book with the web.

These are exciting times. This is, in fact, supposed to be the very stuff that we literary-critical types should be getting all in an excited, ridiculous, hopeful lather about. Technology is allowing us to innovate in ways that have never been possible, & we’re lucky enough to be here to watch these patterns emerge. Simple example: we’ve struggled for centuries with the problem of how to tell a four-dimensional, non-linear narrative within the constraints of the necessarily-linear page. We’ve seen remarkable solutions to this problem, from Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1756) to Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet (which doesn’t even have a publication date, really), to Milorad Pavic’s Dictionary of the Khazars (1984, which was published in two versions, male & female). These works aren’t going to get any less compelling than they already are; but the internet’s virtual nature allows us to remap space & even time with something as simple as a link. Really amazing things could happen in fields like genre or narratology (but that’s a rant for another time). For now, I’m just pleased to be here, excited at the prospect of seeing new forms of art & of learning to feel comfortable reading & thinking in ways that currently overclock my mental CPU to even consider.

But right now the humanities can’t seem to be able to look past its fearful visions of the upswelling of dross that we’ll have to sort through, or how much money we’re going to lose in our already-negligible book sales, or the horrifying idea that we might find ourselves, along with everyone else, having to learn how to read again.

I’m sorry, but that’s just bullshit.

(Thanks to Jacob from Conventioneers! for linking this in comments.)

this is just to say:

helios’s 2006 release eingya is basically a perfect album. if you’re unfamiliar with it, i highly recommend you go pick up a copy.

listen to &/or purchase tracks from the album on his myspace. (NB: the music player seemed to be kind of janked, so i don’t know if it just selects songs randomly from his oeuvre to play; some of his other stuff—especially stuff with vocals—i don’t think is quite as good. there’s a tracklisting for eingya here for reference.)