I was reading Derik’s Bane by MaryJanice Davidson on the bus this morning, and, despite not being caffeinated, my brain started a major rumination. One of the characters has the gift of premonition, and as an illustration of the range of that gift, MJD writes that she predicted a tax audit, and September 11th, 2001.
I imagine people have a range of feelings regarding locating contemporary storylines, be they fantasy or not, in the present-day reality using real news events to establish time and location. Personally, I find that there’s a certain limit to how much reality I’m able to swallow in my fiction, but where specifically that limit is, I have a hard time defining.
Not to pick on MJD, because many authors use current events to ground their fiction in contemporary reality, but here’s an example of reality I can deal with. A few pages prior to the 9/11 reference, another character was able to analyze where Bin Laden is/was, and contacted a werewolf cabinet member to go get his behind. Heh – funny. Werewolves can figure out where Bin Laden is, but the US government intelligence cannot, even after five years.
But the reference to how a character was able to warn the pack to “stay the hell out of New York on September 11, 2001?” That gave me chills and yanked me right out of the book. This is probably because I was on a bus heading into New York City at that moment, and because even after five years, 9/11 is not something I quite know how to deal with, in fiction or in reality.
But then, Nora Roberts wrote in Blue Dahlia that the heroine’s husband was killed in a plane crash in September of 2001. There were no specific references to 9/11, but later the reader learns it was a small plane crash, and not one of the jetliners that was hijacked. But yet I was somewhat perturbed that there was a plot detail SO CLOSE to 9/11 and yet no mention of the actual day, because surely any American who was reading the novel noticed the juxtaposition of “September” and “2001” and mentally filled in the “11.”
How close can you get to something so horrible and so real, and still retain the reader’s attention? Does anyone else have the problem of locating news events in contemporary fiction? Does it yank you out of the story?
I have to wonder if it’s references to domestic terrorism that affect me specifically because I was totally fascinated by Stephanie Feagan’s parallel Enron-esque company in her first Pink book, Show Her the Money. The company Pink blew the whistle on wasnt Enron, but it was close enough that you knew the circumstances were a fictionalization of the reality. But events like 9/11? There’s no fictionalizing that, really. I couldn’t even watch the promos for the recent movie “Flight 93” that retold what happened to the people on the plane that were able to call loved ones after it was hijacked but before it crashed. The promos made me nauseous.
To be honest, now that I think about it some more, this might be a quirk of Sarah, since I’m usually trying to ignore the threat of terrorism by reading romance on the subway. I’ve mentioned before my theory that romance fantasy and paranormals are popular right now because it’s soothing to be able to clearly identify the bad guy, because h/she has fangs or fur or a really big freaking gun. In the current reality, you don’t know if the bad guy is the dude with the backpack on the R train, or the lady with the big ass purse on the bus next to you.
So perhaps the mentions of 9/11 in fiction give me chills because I’m in and out of an inadequately-prepared terrorist target every workday, and thus it may be unfair of me to try to draw a line in the sand, so to speak, as to where references of reality cross the line into “too much reality.” However, I’m curious as to what the Bitchery has to say about this one. Am I being asshattedly sensitive or does anyone else feel that way at times as well?
Stop making Greenblatt sound so good! I have stuff to read that is so dull I’m discovering a new-found interest in ironing my socks, so it can’t go up the list any further. ‘Cos the Bhabha, he is only for dabbling, and I’ve been hoping to come across something like this for ages.
I cannot force myself past the barrier of his extraordinarily convoluted prose to really parse through what he’s trying to say
Bhabha’s biggest problem, I reckon, isn’t the convoluted prose as much as the complete lack of space in his writing. The only way I’ve got through it without twisting my brain inside-out into one of those weird 4-dimensional shapes is to read at the rate of about one sentence a day, and then ponder for several hours. Preferably with a copy of the Dummies guide to Poststructuralism to hand. And we shall not speak of those mind-bending conferences where it’s entirely possible to come away with the impression that nothing has been absorbed after a few hours’ listening because it’s apparently English, but not as we know it.
By the way, have you read Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain?
It’s interesting that you mentioned her, because I’ve just finished doing a mini-blitz on the subject of pain, culture & religion mainly centred on her, David Morris’ “The Culture of Pain” and Ariel Glucklich’s “Sacred Pain” (stronger biological/neurological focus, but very interesting, nonetheless). Because of Glucklich’s focus on pain in religious contexts, I didn’t find his approach as essentialist as Scarry’s, despite the biology.
She’s also interesting on torture as well, don’t you think? Since part of my background is post-colonial history, this tied up with some of reading I’ve done on the French in Algeria (Fanon and the like), which has a certain resonance today.
As for Derrida, have you seen the documentary on him?
Haven’t come across this but will look out for it. Would love to get more of a handle on him.
I feel more head bangingly frustrated than anything.
Ohhh… don’t get me started on the use/misuse/ignorance of history. That’s a big rant for another day. In any case, pointing my finger across the Atlantic in this case would be a case of “pot, meet kettle”. The UK may have a strong sense of history, but it doesn’t always treat history with much sense.