A mark of literary success is the independent existence of the work. For example, China Mieville's Perdido Street Station isn't just a novel, it is a living world. A real multidimensional landscape populated by real things that we can continuously imagine in different poses, actions, reactions and combinations. Much of this activity occurring off-camera as it were. In a plane much wider, longer and higher than the papery confines of the novel itself. That is what a work of art should be. Far more than the thing itself. An object. With a life all its own. One we cannot ever fully grasp. Or its creator the possibilities exhaust. The fathoms plumb. The depths illuminate.
Mieville's second book in his Bas-Lag trilogy, The Scar, is equally a success by these modest measures. This object illustrates another facet of the living world that is an object of art. This object is animated by objects. Each character here is an object with its own virtual life to live free from Mieville's machinations (I could say the same about Perdido Street Station but I find the objects in The Scar even more stunning out of pure personal preference and nothing more!). Uther Doul. The Lovers. Kruach Aum. The Ghosthead (who are these things from their freezing fiery world harnessing the wild, wierd and haunting powers of possibility?). The gryndylow. All the cast. We can fill out their backstories in our own imaginations. And give them destinies beyond the page. They exist in the same way anything exists...
How is that? Speculative realism is a new school of philosophy which is, well, too complicated to summarize briefly but let's just say that one part of it can be defined as 'object-oriented philosophy.' It is realistic, that is, it wants to return philosophy to speculation on the nature of the real world instead of getting lost in language. Looking at the nature of objects as non-human aspects of reality is a thing speculative realism does. And philosopher Graham Harman is one of the main proponents of this object-oriented approach.
Now really looking at objects is harder than it sounds because it means trying to think of them as independent and non-human things, which means going beyond the anthropocentric view to see the thingness of things. The Wikipedia article on Harman says it well when it describes how he 'affirms the autonomy of objects while aiming to 'allude' to their shadowy underground life and covert interactions by means of metaphor.' So allusion and metaphor are ways we can describe the indescribable objecthood of objects.
And literature as the main domain of allusion and metaphor can then be a tool to help us find a few hints and clues as to the nature of the objects around us. Harman definitely uses literature to do this. And he looks to literary characters as well. 'Characters, in the broadest sense, are objects,' he writes. 'Though we only come to know them through specific literary incidents, these events merely hint at a character's turbulent inner life--which lies mostly outside the work it inhabits, and remains fully equipped for sequels that the author never produced (p. 15).' Objects are more than what we do with them: 'Let 'object' refer to any reality with an autonomous life deeper than its qualities, and deeper than its relations with other things (p. 16).' They 'cannot be reduced to the definitions we give of [them], because then the thing would change with each tiny change in its known properties (p. 16).'
Objects define reality. Harman applies a simple reality test: 'unless a character gives rise to different interpretations, unless a scientific entity endures changed notions of its properties, unless a philosopher is entangled in contradictory assertions over one and the same concept, unless a new technology has unforeseen impact, unless a friend is able to generate and experience surprises, then we are not dealing with anything very real (p. 16).' So...now you know how to tell whether the things around you are real or not! Good to know.
Irony aside, the inclusion of characters in this list of objects is fascinating. It fits with our earlier stated intuitions about real works of art and literary success. The great work is a living world with an independent existence inhabited by unique objects. China Mieville's Bas-Lag trilogy is full of this sense of autonomous existence. Think of any of your favourite books and characters and you'll feel the same thing.
What is really interesting here is the link between fiction and reality. That link is a facet of one of Harman's main arguments: 'My thesis is that objects and weirdness go hand in hand (p. 16).' Fiction and reality are, in short, equally weird: 'Reality is made up of nothing but substances--and they are weird substances with a taste of the uncanny about them, rather than stiff blocks of simplistic physical matter. Contact with reality begins when we cease to reduce a thing to it properties or to its effect on other things (p. 17).' When we see it as having an 'autonomous life' and indescribable thingness. That is the core of its weirdness. It is something beyond our ken.
So reality itself is very weird. How very gothic! But then we already knew that, didn't we, my fellow gothlings?
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