The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [158]
Well, I would say that rather than misreading [your "cheerful ironic glee"], I took a particular approach.Mike, the only way I'm interested in describing you is as you. Fiction by Mike Harrison is Mike Harrison fiction. It may echo something here or there, but it's still mostly Mike. As to the need to seize the labelling day, as it were ― I understand and sympathise. I guess it's just my instinctive reaction to try to beat back the labellers and prevent the very war you mention.
"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?" Not at all. I understand, but it rankles. I don't think the war is a productive or intrinsically worthwhile thing because it leads to a reductive view of art rather than an attempt to understand what is actually being achieved by the artists in question.
"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?" I think this is your sense of mischief coming to the fore. I don't think you seriously believe that by ridiculing an attempt to drum up a label for work that may have some vague commonalities that I'm in any way trying to keep anything in the dark. If I have an unconscious motive, it's to not have to go through the whole stupid cyberpunk thing again and live through a decade of people with very little talent dressing their latest trilogy up in new weird drag. Besides, what's the matter with the dark.
Harrison: I agree with everyone here on the basic point. It would be difficult not to, having said so many times that fiction should be written by individuals.
But two things: there is a struggle to name, whether we like it or not, and that struggle is also a struggle to define and own. I think labels are crap, but I'm not willing to give up my own definition of what's going on without a fight. Especially, paradoxically, since one of the best things going on with this form of fiction is its genuinely unlabelable (is that a word?) quality, the sense I have of real, lively writers doing exactly what they want to do. So please excuse me, all of you, if I go over the top a bit about this sometimes.
I think I agree most with Justina and Cheryl's pragmatism here: anything that does a job for the fiction, I'm in favour of.
Steph, I take your point about ownership: I just don't ever intend to wake up being owned by someone else ― otherwise, why be a writer in the first place? The New Wave named itself (or stuck itself to the best label it could find from those on offer), not just for publicity purposes, not just as a flag, but because to name yourself is to take responsibility for your ideas. That's a way to prevent commercialisation and carpet-bagging, especially now, when we're surrounded by middlemen who live by that kind of parasitism.
Henry: I so wholly agree with this: "I reckon that it's more useful to think of the New Weird as an argument. An argument between a bunch of writers who read each other, who sometimes influence each other, sometimes struggle against that influence. Who don't ever agree on what the New Weird is, on where it starts and stops, but are prepared to harangue each other about it. Describing the New Weird in these terms involves its own kind of codswallop, but at least it's a less constricting kind of codswallop."
Jonathan: you're right, of course, there was deliberate mischief-making in both my posts; and, yes, it was designed to get us all baying at one another; and yes, I wish to God we could have our cake and eat it. This whole process is as undignified as hell, especially right at the start of something that might get no further but which has to describe