The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [155]
This is not the crest of a high and beautiful wave ― it's a sub-genre with a lot of developing to do. Good writers are going to do what they do regardless of others' labelling and they'll outlive any fad (if this really exists, and if it is a fad).
Rick (last name unknown): I have to confess that this thread represents the extent of my exposure to the New Weird. So far my initial reaction is similar to Jonathan S's. Apart from the new label (Oh good, another new label.), what is new? Judging by Steph's explanation above, Clive Barker and Christopher Fowler have been newly weird for years, and possibly Banks as well sometimes. You might even be able to get away with hiding some of Moorcock's antiheroic stuff in there too -although perhaps not stylistically. A list of influences and sources from which borrowing is identifiable does not bode well for an exciting new movement.
The healthiest stuff has always mixed and matched or mismatched without regard for labels. With determined disregard for labels. A new movement. Apart from stuff like cyberpunk and space opera, which have the definition built into the label thus making it really easy for everyone, many of the movements that have gone before seemed to represent more of a shape-shifting, natural mutation: magic realism, Brit new wave, slipstream. All reactionary, but with blurred or easily disposable manifestos.
New labels and sub-genres encourage people to try to write what fits fashion. Cyberpunk should have made that clear (shudders). Don't like labels. Don't like canons. Like beer.
Harrison: Hi Jonathan. The old dog learns to amuse itself wherever it can, sometimes by learning new tricks, sometimes by the copious use of irony, sometimes both. I believe I'm an honorary New Wave Fabulist, yes, along with about twenty other puzzled people. Generous of Brad Morrow to bestow that laurel on me after I so repeatedly savaged his New Gothic in the TLS [ Times Literary Supplement] in the 90s. As Steph remarked, "MJH, how many revolutions have you been part of?" Two or three, I suppose, and sometimes I was there and sometimes I wasn't. That history gives me satisfactions, along with a point of view on names and naming, that you can't have.
One thing is, I think it reductive to describe China or Justina or Al Reynolds (neither do I think you will be able to describe Steph herself), as a mere regrowth from some buried root. You may be able to describe many US Next Wavers as that, I'm sure. Were you intending to be reductive there, Jonathan, or was that just an accident of prose? Reductivism can be so close to belittling, can't it? Don't you find?
Another thing is, in misreading my opening post here (and ignoring the actual information contained in my second one) you underestimate not just the cheerful ironic glee of new-movement-naming; you underestimate the amount of agenda involved. If I don't throw my hat in the ring, write a preface, do a guest editorial here, write a review in the Guardian there, then I'm leaving it to Michael Moorcock or David Hartwell to describe what I (and the British authors I admire) write. Or, god forbid, I wake up one morning and find you describing me.
There's a war on here, Jonathan. It's the struggle to name. The struggle to name is the struggle to own. Surely you're not naive enough to think that your bracingly commonsensical, "I think it's a lot of old cobblers" view is anything more than a shot in it? One more question, and I think very pertinent to that last one ― Why do you want us to remain in the dark where we belong, Jonathan? What might your unconscious motive be for wanting that, do you think?
Rick: Steph: "they're too smart to feel limited by the fact some reviewer has bounded them together". definitely. The danger is probably for new writers who have yet to build confidence, literary identity and voice.
Mike: your last post is scary. You describe a literary/political struggle that cries out for canons. Another weapon of ownership surely.
For the record, I think China M is brilliant both as a writer, and in his willingness