*The Picture of Dorian Gray*: Literary Aesthetics, Fantasy, and the Undecided Text

A couple of days ago I tried out a book club on the West Side of Cleveland. Here's their webpage on meetup.com:  a ne{o}lit book club. The book club was great, and for my part (if you live in the Cleveland Area) I highly recommend coming to a meeting.

The book they were discussing was Oscar Wilde's famous, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). I've always loved this book! I find it really intriguing because, like Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (a ghost story), it is a text that is generally categorized as "literature" while at the same time it has many genre or weird elements.

Intuitively, I jump to describe The Picture of Dorian Gray as a fantasy. Not a "second world fantasy" like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It's definitely a fantasy, though.

Consider the premise: there's a magical/supernatural painting the preserves and extends the youth of a young man. All of his horrible actions--all the stains on his soul--appear on the painting rather than on his body. The painting is a kind of "objectified soul" that Dorian can look on and meditate on. This is fantasy! Wilde has definitely deviated from the reality principle here.

It's so interesting, though, that folks rarely file this novel under the rubric of fantasy. This novel seems to announce itself as literature, as high literary art. In fact, the preface to the novel is often cited in anthologies of literary criticism and aesthetic philosophy as inaugurating or at least anticipating the highest of the high literary art: aestheticism or High Modernism. Very often, folks who believe in the importance of aesthetics and literature hearken back to this preface and cite it as a kind of articulation of first principles. Here's a link to the full manuscript of the preface: The Preface to Dorian Gray. See if you disagree with me.

I'd like to highlight a brief passage from this preface: "They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty." Why is this significant here? Well, genre literature--or "weird literature" (science fiction, fantasy, supernatural horror)--has often been criticized and dismissed by literary scholars because of its apparent disregard of "literary beauty." Genre writers, the argument goes, write in a pulp style. Genre writers aren't concerned with form, only content. They don't experiment with literary aesthetics. Unlike High Modernists writers, genre writers aren't concerned with experimenting with the capacities of literary art (e.g. poetic language, narrative, genre, etc..).

I'll be honest. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue. As much as I love weird literature, there's indeed something to this knee-jerk argument. There are lots of genre writers who just don't give a fig for literature as "art." Their project, their productions, the commitment is first and foremost to entertainment--to spinning a good yarn. To be more specific, genre writers seem more concerned with creating an emotion, what literary critics might call an affect (i.e. the fantasy stirs wonders, the horror stirs horror, the science fiction stirs feelings of the sublime or vastness).

The reason why I find The Picture of Dorian of Gray so interesting it that it seems to disrupt this clean framework: (1) genre writers are clumsy writers who aren't concerned with art; (2) high modernist writers are concerned with art and their concern with art can be glimpsed in their focus on language and form.

Dorian Gray is a fantasy, an example of what I like to call "weird literature." And yet--it tends to be framed in a way that runs contrary to how genre literature--fantasy, specifically--is often described, as aesthetically naieve, as pulp. Hmm...This is why I think it's "undecided."

The Weird History of the Novel (Part 5): *The Hobbit* and the Juxtaposition of "Epic" and "Realistic" Narrative Modes

Tolkien's illustration of "the Lonely mountain"

So, today was the third day in the "History of the Novel" class that I'm teaching that focused on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. We have one more day with it. And in the course of the discussion my take on The Hobbit crystallized. I'm taking this post as an opportunity to get it down, before it flies the coop of my brain, if you will. What is a "Web Log" for if not to log such things, I ask?

Here's my thesis put simply. I'll back up my claims below. The Hobbit represents an important moment in the history of the novel because it combines two types of narrative: (1) the realistic mode and (2) the epic mode. Let me explain what I mean by this.

We started the class with Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. This novel is often cited as "the first novel," and it represents a new kind of narrative for a variety of reasons. To make my case I need to list some of its characteristics.

Main Characteristics of the "Realist Novel"

(1) The characters featured aren't aristocrats (lords, ladies, knights, warlocks, etc.); rather, they are middle class men of business.

(2) The narrator spends time describing the micro-details of the fictional world. Lots of time in Robinson Crusoe is spent on details like what Robinson eats, how he gets his food, what kind of shelter he builds, what he wears, etc.. We take it for granted now that this level of detail is treated by novels.

(3) The narrator spends time on "psychological introspection." Robinson often reflects on his life, where he has been, what kind of person he is, and how he should change. Also, he undergoes some changes.

(4) There are no mythical elements. No dragons. No wizards. No ghosts.

Let's compare these elements to the other kind of narrative I think The Hobbit incorporates.

General Characteristics of the "Epic or Romance" 
(As an example, let's think of, say, Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur)

(1) Characters are aristocrats and royalty.

(2) The narrator does not spend time on micro-details of life and dwells, rather, on "globally significant things" like political alliances, personality conflicts, love affairs, and hatreds.

(3) The characters are not psychologically introspective and therefore appear psychologically flat. They do not undergo any apparent changes. Crisis rises from the interaction between static personality traits.

(4) There are indeed mythical elements: magical knights, fairies, wizards, giants, magical items.

***

The innovation of The Hobbit is that it combines these elements together. It strikes both an "epic" and "realist" tone. Let me highlight a few ways that it does this.

(1) Bilbo isn't an aristocrat. He's a middle-class fella, a kind of gentleman akin to Robinson; and yet, he interacts with epic characters like Elrond, Beorn, the Goblin King, the King of the Eagles, the King of the Elves, Bard Bowman. Bilbo is a normal fella. And yet he rubs shoulders with the "shakers and movers" of the world who usually populate epic narratives.

(2) The narrator spends time on micro-details, like how Bag End is built; indeed, pages and pages will be given over to meditations on what, say, the Elvish King's hall looks like; and yet--in spite of this slow narrative pace, entire battles can be glossed in a paragraph; epic battles with dragons can be related in a few sentences. We have both narrative registers: the focus on the surface-texture of the world characteristic of novels. And, we have epic narrative pacing--Esgaroth is destroyed in a paragraph; the battle of five armies is related in a few pages. And so forth.

(3) There are characters who undergo changes in this novel and there are characters who stay the same. Beorn, the Elf-King, Bard Bowman, the Master of Laketown, the Goblin King--these guys don't change. They are who they are. Bilbo and Thorin, the dwarves and Gandalf--they are psychologically complex in a way only modern "novelistic" characters can be: inconsistent, self-questioning, surprising, evolving.

(4) In The Hobbit you get meditations on both the quotidian and the epic. There are long descriptions of how many coat pegs Bilbo has; there are passages relating what he eats and his genealogy. AND! And there are passages portraying fights with giant spiders, goblin armies, encounters with strange unknown monsters (i.e. Gollum), dragons, wizards, wargs!

In sum, we have in J.R.R. Tolkien's novel an important moment in the history of the novel because he brings together two separate narrative modes: the realist and the epic.

The Weird History of the Novel (Part 4): Comparing *The Hobbit* to *Robinson Crusoe*

So, this afternoon I begin teaching *The Hobbit* in my history of the novel class. I feel like this is an important moment because that book is what got me into reading and writing in the first place. I purchased a copy of it from a book fair in the 7th grade on a whim. I'd read novels before that, but none of them stirred me the way this one had. After *The Hobbit* fantasy literature had become one of the major obsessions in my life.

***

Realism and Mythology

Where does *The Hobbit* fall in the history of the novel? Well, I think *The Hobbit* represents an important innovation in the history of a novel. In *The Hobbit* you have a mixture of two styles: realism and mythology. For me, *The Hobbit* (along with a lot of other texts--particularly Robert E. Howard's Conan stories) inaugurates a tradition of literature that combines realist conventions with mythological conventions.

What do I mean by "realism"? In terms of literary art we can perhaps mythologize the beginning of realism in the first book we looked in my history of the novel class, namely, Daniel Defoe's *Robinson Crusoe.* We can think of realism as both a style and a thematic content.

The Style of Realism

In terms of style, we have a slow narrative pace. Defoe spends a lot of time in his novel talking about the surface texture of the world. He refers to measurements and the quantities and the texture of the sea. I'm not saying this sort of reference didn't take in past literature. I am suggesting, though, that the way Defoe refers to the surface texture of the world is unique here. He just describes it baldly and not through allusion or simile: "e.g. the wine-dark ocean". He does not use the flourished style of the epic poet; rather, he uses the "journalistic" style of a natural philosopher or surveyor.

The Thematic Content of Realism

In terms of content, we have a narrative focused on a "normal guy." Robinson Crusoe is a middle class guy who attempts to make a fortune through an entrepreneurial enterprise. He gets stranded on the island and has to survive. Thus, we hear nothing about gods and goblins but a lot about how he gets his food, what he wears, the weather, his attempts to build a shelter. Sure, there are elements where he talks about his spiritual thoughts; and yet--these thoughts suggest less the epic mode and more the introspective, inner-focused psychologizing of later Victorian novelists.

Comparing *The Hobbit* to *Robinson Crusoe*

To a large extent Bilbo Baggins is a perfect parallel to Robinson Crusoe. Bilbo is "well to do" but he's not royalty or aristocracy. He lives in a comfortable, secure environment; Crusoe begins his life in England to parents who are going to set him up in law. In terms of style, the first part of *The Hobbit* hews pretty closely to the realism pioneered in *Robinson Crusoe*. What do the first passages relate? Dinner plans. What the dwarves and company eat, drink, and talk about. To a large extent the first chapter of *The Hobbit* ("A Unexpected Party") is more a "novel of manners" suggestive of Jane Austen's works than any epic poem or adventure fiction.

There is an important moment, however, when the dwarves begin singing their song about the coming of Smaug. Here we have the epic mode entering into the narrative. These passages are versified. There are strange, lyrical syntaxes and rare words are used. Dragons show up and exaggerated emotions are evoked. When the dwarves start singing about the desolation of Smaug we have left the novel of manners and moved into the epic.

Conclusion

I'm going to write more about *The Hobbit* as I spend time on it in class. I have this week and next set aside for it. But here's my hunch at this  point: the aesthetic power of *The Hobbit*--why it is an important "stop" on the journey of the history of the novel--derives from its "mixture" of two distinct narrative registers, the mythological and the realistic.

The Weird History of the Novel (Part 3): "Whether devil or man I knew not"

So, I have a complicated argument I want to make in this post, but I don't have the time to really "get into it." There are a lot of premises that I probably need time more laying out and substantiating. Let me just be forthright and lay those premises in a schematic fashion:

Premise 1: Weird fiction (by which I mean modern fantasy, supernatural horror, and science fiction) is genealogically linked to realist literature. This is because weird fiction takes as its first principle the deviation from reality. You need a bedrock of reality to deviate from before you have weirdness and strangeness.

Premise 2: Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defore, is one of the inaugural texts of realism. It's a good text to consider the "beginning of realism" in fiction.

Premise 3: If something evolves from something else (e.g. reptiles evolve from fish), then within the originary element we can perhaps retroactively glimpse elements of what will evolve from it. Let me stick with my fish and reptile example to further demonstrate what I mena. We can see in the "cold-blooded" nature of fish the cold-blood" nature of reptiles.

Considering these three premises, here's my argument: we can glimpse in Robinson Crusoe, what I am framing here as the inaugural moment of realism in literature, the shape of "weird fiction" literature to come. The fetus that will become modern fantasy, supernatural horror, and science fiction is growing within the stomach of early "realist" texts.

Let me try to make a case for this by supplying an example of what I mean. As my example I offer an analysis of an extended passage from Robinson Crusoe. Some context: Robinson is gathering some wood and he has a very strange experience:

While I was cutting down some wood here, I percieved that behind a very thick branch of low brushwood or underwood, there was a kind of hollow place; I was curious to look into it, and getting with difficulty into the mouth of it, I found it was pretty large, that is to say, sufficient for me to stand upright in it, and perhaps another with me; but I must confess to you, I made more haste than I did in, when looking father into the place, and which was perfectly dark, I saw two broad shining eyes of some creature, whether devil or man I knew not, which twinkled like two stars, the dim light of the cave's mouth shining durectly in and making the reflection. (174-75, my emphasis).

Here you have a moment of uncertainty. Robinson encounters something and he's not sure what it is. We can describe this experience in terms of his ability to interpret the world, to know it--his cognitive faculties. Here his cognitive faculties have failed. He's confronted with something that he is struggling to interpret: "Whether devil or man, I knew not."

This moment, when our "interpretive frameworks" fail us, i.e., when our ability to understand the world fails us, these moments are considered by famous literary Tzvetan Todorov as "the fantastic." The fantastic for Todorov is that experience where we are no longer able to know the world. Something handicaps our ability to know reality. Therefore, reality becomes an uncertainty. This is the fantastic.

Thus, the argument I want to begin to make with this post is that a kernel for modern fantasy, supernatural horror, and science fiction can be glimpsed as emerging alongside realism.

We can see something in early realism, in the first novels: it's as if when the first literary light was cast on reality this reality necessarily cast many shadows, shadows that were strange, and confusing, and occasionally wonderful, and occasionally horrifying.

The Weird History of the Novel (Part 1): Robinson Crusoe and Reality

Introduction: So, I decided to try and "thread together" my professional life (teaching, literary scholarship) with my hobby/obsession (creative writing, weird fiction). And so, I'm starting a new post series, "The Weird History of the Novel." This will basically be a running commentary on the class I'm teaching this semester at Case Western Reserve University, "The History of the Novel." Though the class is an introduction to the history of the novel, this post series will have a thematic "slant" to it.  

Meta-comment/Blogging comment: Sorry for the crappy banner. Doing hand-drawn ones is taking up more time these days than I have. ::sigh:: I did, however, want to highlight this series as something I'm returning to. And, I've been told banners "brand" series and kind of make a commitment to your blog readers that this is an issue/line of thought you aim to return to.

Anyhow...

***

I started re-reading Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe this morning. I'm starting my history of the novel class with it. This novel (along with a press of coffee) made me start thinking about "realism" and how "realism" is just as important for the weird genres as "deviations" from realism. Let me explain.

Robinson Crusoe is often cited as being an example of realism because, unlike the literary works that preceded it, it cites no mythology or legends nor does it overtly cite any previous literature; it's completely new, completely novel. Thus, it's considered one of the first true novels.

I like this way of defining the novel. Very often people define the novel in terms of what it is: a long narrative; lots of description; characters who come from the middle class. It's useful, though, to consider what novels aren't. In the case of Robinson Crusoe, the suggestion is that novels are realistic; that is, they represent the world as it is, devoid of mythology or the obfuscations of legend.

Hmm. It's true that some literary historians describe the first novels as a reaction against non-realistic literary genres like the romance. And yet, to say that the novel is necessarily preoccupied with the "realistic" is to set oneself up to argue that science fiction novels, fantasy novels, supernatural horror novels, aren't novels at all. I'm not sure what's at stake in this claim. For now, I'll table it.

But it's interesting. If we accept Robinson Crusoe as an example of one of the earliest novels, then we can use it to frame the novel not just as another media vehicle (e.g. the play, the song), and not just as another literary genre (e.g. the epic poem, the sonnet). In other words, we can begin to define the novel in terms of a discrete theme.

What is that theme? Reality.

Is it useful to think of the novel, the earliest novels, like Robinson Crusoe, as being thematically preoccupied with the real? Is the novel, by its very nature, preoccupied with a kind of reality principle?

Aesthetic Analysis of Genre Fiction (Part 2): The Rule of the Scalpel

The extended holiday visit to Columbus continues.

I spent the day with my little brother drinking coffee at a Columbus, Ohio institution: Stauf’s Coffee Roasters in Grandview. It’s a great coffee house but also a very fine roaster. 

Public service announcement (not an advertisement! I swear!): they’re shipping for free until the end of the year. If you like Ethiopian coffees, do yourself a favor and try their Baba Budan roast. They were brewing it today. I had about four cups and feel quite ready to proceed with some blogging.

In my last post I attempted to articulate what I am calling “the aesthetic analysis” of genre fiction; that is, I’m attempting to articulate the nature of the artistic effect this work provokes in its readers. In other words, I’m trying to put into words just how science fiction, fantasy, and horror moves us.

But there are some loose ends that need tying up before we proceed.

I’ll focus on the first loose end in this post: terminological precision.

Science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, tragedy, comedy, the picaresque: generally speaking these are taxonomical concepts developed by literary historians for the purpose of organizing and making sense of Western literary production in all of its diversity and plenitude. 

In large part, they are fictions, mere interpretive apparatuses.

I believe we should conditionally be suspicious of such taxonomies.

Anytime someone categorizes they downplay differences and foreground similarities. Thus, the categorization of literary genres, aesthetic effects, thematic preoccupations, stylistic propensities, etc., are necessarily simplifying, reductive—some would say disrespectul to the full richness, plenitude, and subtlety of authentic pieces of literary art.

Before you call hypocrite on me (I am, of course, happily using such taxonomic devices), consider this: in spite of my description of genre categories and literary historical models as simplifying and disrespectful, I fully acknowledge they are useful. 

Dissecting a frog isn’t necessarily respectful to the frog; nevertheless, dissecting a frog does teaches us a lot about frog anatomy! 

Put a little more directly: categorizing literature may do a disservice to its full richness, but it is too useful of a practice to forsake.

So one of my first principles is that of suspicion of genre distinctions. Because of this I rely on a rule I call “the rule of the scalpel.” This is a simple enough metaphor if I spend a little time unpacking it.

Here goes:

If, in order to understand literary art, we need to dissect it, then it is best to use the most subtle carving implements, yes? Scalpels rather than chainsaws. The question becomes, “How do you make interpretive apparatuses as subtle as possible?” Or, “How do you make them scalpels rather than chainsaws?”

You do so through specificity: historical, stylistic, thematic.

For example, when using the term “fantasy” to refer to a specific genre of literature there are, I think, two general ways of approaching things: a general way and a specific way.

I would be using it in a general way if I understand “fantasy literature” as any literature that represents deviations from reality. Thus, The Odyssey—with its cyclops and spirits of the dead—becomes just as much a fantasy as The Hobbit. I resist this (although I can imagine a completely valid argument for this proposition).

To use "fantasy literature" in this way, I think, is to use an interpretive apparatus that is more like a chainsaw and less like a scalpel. Both, of course, get the job done.

To use “fantasy literature” like a scalpel you need to bracket the general concept and prefer the more specific concept.

Let me offer this alternative though no doubt draft definition of fantasy literature:
"fantasy literature" is narrative fiction of the 20th century written in the tradition of Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien that combines a stylistic reliance on the conventions of realism with a glaring disregard for the reality principle.

This definition combines…

(1) stylistic idiosyncrasies—the conventions of realist literature
(2) a specific historical tradition—the work of Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien
and
(3) a thematic preoccupation—deviations from the reality principle.

We can quibble about the details of these specific categories. For example, does the historical tradition of modern fantasy begin with Lord Dunsany? Does every piece of literature that we define as fantasy rely upon the conventions of realist fiction? For a work to be a fantasy how much does it need to deviate from the reality principle? In other words—is one goblin enough?

In order to understand how “fantasy literature” moves us, i.e. in order to describe as precise as possible its aesthetic effect (so that we can recreate it, intensify it, master it) we first need to know what, precisely, it is we’re talking about. 

I don't feel fully confident defining "fantasy literature," "supernatural horror," and "science-fiction" in this post. I'll take a more focused stab at it tomorrow.