Steve Wilson has a typically hilarious take on the question of comic books and Homer, an issue that arose on John C. Wright’s LiveJournal.
I don’t think readers will go too far wrong by following John Wright’s prescriptions (Take Homer more seriously than comic books or genre fiction!), but I’m not sure that I can go along with his argument. For instance, I’m quite certain that a couple of genre books by Le Guin (Left Hand of Darkness and A Wizard of Earthsea) are permanent additions to American literature, worthy to take their place on a shelf next to Melville and Twain.
One of the reasons why I don’t think comic book series could attain the level of great art is because of their lack of seriousness about death. If Robin dies, you get another Robin. If Superman dies, he’s not really dead. Likewise Dr. Xavier, etc. There is never any change that can’t be changed back in the serial comic book plenum. They can change the dayglo uniforms, the improbable anatomy, the processes by which color images are printed, the women in refrigerators, but they can’t change this feature of open-ended serial fiction. In open-ended serial fiction the need to go on with the show overrides every other consideration.
(Some serial fiction does become part of the permanent canon, pace JCW: Sherlock Holmes, for instance; or Philip Marlowe. But Lew Archer, eh, maybe not, because there are other Marlowe-wannabes in every generation. That’s the mark of a serial fiction classic: it sets up a type that lesser writers try to remake.)
Serial fiction does not have to be open-ended, of course. Damon Knight’s distinction was, I think, between template series and evolving series. Template series are: practically every scripted show on TV. (This week, Bosco “Binky” Sorenson , agent of D.A.R.E., is dispatched against the radioactive socialist weasels of R.U.S.S.K.I.; next week, he fights the mutant reticulated grandmothers of G.R.A.M.; the following week he struggles against Acronymic Enemy To Be Named Later. Each episode begins begins with an actiony teaser, followed by an expository scene where Binky receives his assignment from his boss, who humorously refers to Binky as a “loose canon,” due to his habit of shelving genre fiction with the accepted classics of world literature. Each episode concludes with Binky sharing a laugh and a few minutes of final exposition with his glamorous-and-tough-but-not-too-tough sidekick, Charline “Chick” Chickley.) (Sorry, that parenthesis sort of got away from me.)
An evolving series allows the characters and the setting to change to such an extent that, at some point, the series may not be able to continue. Knight’s example was Blish’s “Okie” stories, which he called “evolving with some template features,” a fair cop. Lewis’ “Space Trilogy”, Le Guin’s Hainish books or Aldiss’ Hothouse stories might be other examples or (in more recent work) the Stross stories that went into Accelerando, Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun” or his “Latro” books.
Evolving series will not necessarily produce Great Literature in the Mortimer-Adler-moderates-the-Great-Conversation sense. But it seems to me that they may, since they at least permit the inclusion of permanent death, real loss, real grief, which are the essentials of human life that must be excluded from open-ended “template” series.
Of course, not everything in sf/f is part of a series: standalone books and stories, as well as evolving series, should have the opportunity, if not the necessity, to confront the dark abyss that awaits everything and everyone we know or are. So why isn’t more sf/f Great Literature that Mortimer Adler would be proud of?
I think I know the answer to that, but this entry is already too long.
SF/F great literature question…
My answer is simply that the genre hasn’t existed all that long, and true classics don’t come along every day. When I say “true classics,” I mean the works that are read because people read them — The Iliad — not works read because they’re going to be on the final — Moby Dick. For instance, I don’t think Hemingway is going to be seen as a writer of classics for more than a couple more decades. I think he’ll be seen as one of a group of stylistic innovators (Hammett among them), but I think the literary romanticism with the 20’s Lost Generation writers is fading fast. And science fiction has existed as a genre for such a relatively short time, and the writers had to make up so much of the rules as they went, that there’s been precious little time to produce any writers who were innovative, creative, stylistic, and who also had something interesting to say. (Note my clever avoidance of the phrase, “the human condition,” possibly my least-favorite literary expression of all time.) For my money, the only all-around great writers of fantasy & science fiction in the past century have been: Leiber, LeGuin, Ellison, possibly Bradbury, R.E. Howard (if he’d lived long enough), Terry Pratchett (true comic geniuses are rare!), Heinlein (especially his early stories), a few others.
But I like your point about death and comics and genre fiction. Pulp fiction had the same attitude about death as comic books and TV series. Kill off one character for a cheap thrill, and plug in an identical character, or one nearly identical enough as to make no difference. I think that explains why I’ve re-read “Watchmen” numerous times, even though I couldn’t stand it during my first reading. In that one, characters killed are stone-cold dead, and they ain’t comin’ back. Gave it a sense of grounding that most comics lack.
Re: SF/F great literature question…
I like your list; I guess I’d add Zelazny and Vance. But not too many, and not all the works or any of these guys: as you say, classics are, by definition, rare.
Most Hemingway makes me tired, but I really liked A Farewell to Arms. On the other hand, I’ve never reread it, which is usually the sign that a book has gotten under my skin. (Like Moby Dick, for instance… De gustibus non disputandum, I guess.)
I’ve never read Watchmen, but I was thinking about limited run comics when I was writing the original post on this thread. Someone (or a group of people) who set out to tell a story and tell it over a limited arc have a chance to escape from the tune-in-next-week trap.
Not that everything has to be Great Art. I’d much rather read a capable writer telling me a good story than immerse myself in the swamp of some would-be-genius’ pretensions.
[edited for format]
One of the reasons why I don’t think comic book series could attain the level of great art is because of their lack of seriousness about death.
This is one of my most serious problems with most comic book series. There are two reasons for this situation: one positive and one negative.
The positive one is that superhero comics take place in a world of possibilities. In the typical superhero world, there are so many ways of cheating death (or apparent death) already established in one or another story that it is understandable that apparent death might not be for real.
On the other hand, most superhero comics (as opposed to science fiction or science fantasy) cheat because they only apply these wondrous technologies or magicks to popular heroes, villains, or supporting characters. There is never any serious consideration of what the “insta-scan and reload into clone” technology will mean for society, because it only gets used when required to bring back MenaceMaster or the hero’s love interest or whoever.
This trivializes the serious questions about possible immortality or resurrection technologies. What’s worse, it trivializes death itself.
The negative reason is that comic book series are series, and they can’t ever just leave a plot threat resolved. If a hero’s relative dies, causing emotional anguish, you just know that he’ll be resurrected / impersonated / duplicated from another universe, or whatever it takes to keep beating the hero over the head with his emotions regarding this death. If the hero marries, you know that his wife will die / leave him / disappear, or whatever it takes to keep the status of his love life up in the air.
This is beause the series demands plots, and writers of limited imagination (usually not the ones who started the series in the first place) find it easy to simply recycle old plots. And old characters.
The result, of course, is a curious pointlessness about a comic book series. Nothing is ever really resolved, for good or evil, so what (when all is said and done) is all this running around and hitting people and declaiming speeches for?
Imagine Hamlet, done as a comic book series several hundred issues long, with dead characters constantly reappearing and every time things get too boring, crossovers with other Shakespeare plays …
… who would care, after a while?
Right on all counts. And I would say (and I think Wright would say) that something not being Great Literature does not make it bad or worthless. The dreams and reckless pulpy inventions of sf/f (and comic books) give works in these fields a unique vigor and excitement. This quality could easily be lost without making the fields en masse into Great Literature.