MARNIE GALLOWAY AND MONKEY-ROPE PRESS
Earlier this year at the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo, or S.P.A.C.E., in Columbus I met the exceedingly talented and incredibly charming Ms. Marnie Galloway of Monkey-Rope Press. Moby-Dick was an obvious point of connection for me (see the 'About' page on her web site for an explanation of the name and how it is a direct reference to chapter 72 of the great book) but her art, her prints and her comics were exquisite as well. Marnie was wonderful to talk to, and she was recently awarded a well-deserved Xeric Grant Award for her comic In the Sounds and Seas. There are currently two issues completed out of a projected six, and these are lushly beautiful eerily powerful wordless tales. I am smitten. Take a look at this spread from volume two of In the Sounds and Seas...
You can see why I was so drawn to them, and why I really think you will be as well. You can read more about Marnie's books and comics here and you can buy them, as well as many other prints and books and the like at her Etsy shop here. And if you are so inclined, you can follow Marnie and Monkey-Rope Press on Facebook here.
ZDENEK BURIAN
An artist whose work I have long adored without even really knowing it is the Czech painter and illustrator Zdenek Burian. As a child, I was obsessed with mythology, monsters and dinosaurs, and I had stacks and stacks and stacks of books about each. I've been looking at Burian's dinosaur paintings for longer than I can remember, but only recently did I discover who he was. That was a real shock of recognition. Better yet, there is a blog devoted to sharing a wide variety of Burian's paintings and illustrations right here. It's well worth checking out, and I learned that Burian did far more than simply paint dinosaurs, as this gorgeous piece titled "Cruel Diana" demonstrates...
LALA ALBERT
A third artist, who has apparently been all over the place for a few years but completely outside of my awareness until now, is Brooklyn's LaLa Albert. Her illustrations sit in some queasily oversexed glam-rock alien dimension and are simultaneously unsettling, magnetic, erotic, disturbing and chilling. An example, titled "Demon March"...
Fortunately, LaLa does have at least two fantastic art zines available, titled Alien Invasion 1 and Alien Invasion 2 which you can buy from this blog post.
NO WAY OUT FOR A FAMILY OF FIVE
Continuing in this disturbing vein, writer Sean T. Collins and artist Jonny Negron have crafted a sickeningly good and absolutely horrific short comic titled No Way Out For A Family Of Five. You can, and should, read it here and if you need just a taste first, here is the first page...
IN DEFENSE OF CRAP
At times, I am deeply embarrassed and ashamed of how pretentious and elitist I can be. It's also a paradox because for every work of classic literature I praise, there is a Mighty Thor graphic novel lurking in the background. In 1999, Fantagraphics' own Kim Thompson addressed the need for, well, crap in his short essay A Modest Proposal: More Crap is What We Need. The essay addresses what Kim sees as an increasing marginalization in comics, one that will ultimately be the death knell for everything. An excerpt...
Comics need Dean Koontzes and Robert Ludlums and Leon Urises and that Clear-and-Present-Danger guy, Tom what’s-his-name. They need stuff that’s kind of dumb but also a little bit smart, not particularly adult but not totally juvenile. They need a middle ground somewhere between Utter Shit and Great Art. Otherwise the marginalization will continue, and the genre stuff will turn into modern network TV (i.e. horrible beyond belief) and the good stuff will turn into modern poetry, and we’ll all be fucked.
This piece is well worth the five minutes it will take you to read, and I think it has implications well beyond comics. What's especially interesting is that this piece is even more relevant today, 13 years after it was first written. This may not convince me to ever watch that abortion Jersey Shore but perhaps I'll be a little less scathing toward fans of James Patterson.
TAKING TWO NAKED DOLLS AND MASHING THEM TOGETHER
And from the above defense of "crap" to this. I am absolutely mystified by the widespread popular appeal of the 50 Shades of Grey books and having read portions of the first one myself I remain flummoxed. They seem to be dreadfully written, rather pedestrian, and ultimately pretty horrifying in terms of their depiction of gender roles. I don't get it. Anyway, Britt Hayes has written an amusing and pretty harsh article about the books and the upcoming (shudder) movie adaptations. It's fluff, yes, but good fluff and delightful schadenfreude if you're into that sort of thing. (Yes, sometimes I am).
22 comments:
The Fifty Shades article's description of fan fiction is exhausting bullshit, albeit the same kind of exhausting bullshit I've been reading for eons about a form I love and respect, produced almost entirely by intelligent and highly secretive women for the consumption of their friends -- in every genre, including plenty of porn, though with a surprisingly limited amount of heterosexual porn.
Fanfic is a way of illuminating (in both senses) the failed and unfinished parts of a work, of criticizing it, of praising it, of parodying it, of using its archetypes to explore new ideas, and of adding more fucking. There's an element of it in all writing, but it's a different form than original fiction, an interpretive form, a little closer to acting. I think, honestly, that it gets so little respect mostly because our culture doesn't respect things that women do for free.
Honestly, re: Shades of Grey, I'm torn between a strange, almost vicious pleasure that a fan work with minimal changes is at the top of the Times bestseller list, and an eye-rolling, can't-help-but-be-amused kind of disgust that it's so godawful and such a shitty representation of the fan community. America deserves better smut.
I also think this article's terrifically mean and dehumanizing to women of all stripes, despite being actually written by a woman. For one thing, it keeps subtly returning to this idea that women, even as they read pornography, do not care about sex or want to read about sex. All the unrealistic things that this book will apparently teach women about (are we being taught by the books we read; are we fucking children?) are unrelated to the aspect of the book that's about sex, which near as I can tell is all of it.
Oh MAN! I'm not sure if I need to apologize, but this really seemed to touch a nerve and at the very least that wasn't my intent. A bit of an explanation is in order.
Fan fiction is utterly alien to me. I have never read it and have no real desire to read it. Your description of it as "Fanfic is a way of illuminating (in both senses) the failed and unfinished parts of a work, of criticizing it, of praising it, of parodying it, of using its archetypes to explore new ideas, and of adding more fucking" seems to show that it at least does have some value although again, on a personal level, those aspects don't appeal much to me. Well, maybe the fucking, but I usually just read or even watch mainstream pornography to sate that appetite. I can't articulate why, I've just never had even the slightest desire to read about or even see the handful of literary characters that I have had a prurient interest in engaged in any kind of carnal activity beyond what may have been present in the initial work. That's not a judgment, it's just an aesthetic preference. In a strange way, I actually prefer to NOT know anything more about characters or creative works beyond what lies within the boundary of that work as it was first presented. I've had a longstanding mental wrestling match with myself over whether my own Moby-Dick project is little more than a form of visual fanfiction.
Anyway, I ramble. Although I smirked and laughed all the way through the article, ultimately it was a cheap and forgettable thrill. I hope this doesn't offend you but I don't care much one way or the other what happens to the world of fan fiction because it simply doesn't intersect with my own world. So when I laugh at articles like this, it's the same kind of schadenfreude as laughing at a YouTube video of someone getting hit in the nuts with a golf ball. Funny, but forgettable.
One thing I seem to have been obviously wrong about is that fan fiction seems to be primarily the domain of female creators. Is that really true? And if so, is fan fiction somehow being portrayed as something feminist?
Jeez, I'm not even done with your first two paragraphs here, and I'm alreayd jumping back. One thing I will contend with you on is this: "produced almost entirely by intelligent and highly secretive women for the consumption of their friends." Given those parameters, yes, external critique and judgment is invasive, unasked for, and unfair. But the very act of making any kind of fan fiction publicly available, even on a blog, automatically opens it up to judgment and critique. We can split hairs all day long about intent, but to be crudely blunt, when you put it out there you are asking for an opinion and you are giving up control. It's like when an athlete gets busted for drugs and domestic violence and they pull the bullshit "I'm not a role model" excuse. Again, bullshit. They are a role model. They are a public personality, paid millions, and in an arena where people of all ages will be curious about them, emulate them, and want to know all about them. Athletes and actors and so on DO have a degree of responsibility for their public actions and how they impact others. (continued)
And that applies to me as well. I've been really really fortunate, but I knew that when I put my art online and on a blog, I was inviting judgment. It was no longer "for the consumption of [my] friends." It was public. And I knew that even more so, once the art was published in a book, there would be a greater degree of scrutiny and judgment. So in that sense, the opinions raining down on "50 Shades" are fair because if the author didn't want that, the author should not have accepted money to publish it and share it.
I am reminded of something I read about the Suicide Girls web site once. A number of them were giving interviews describing how completely different they felt that their form of erotica was. To them, it wasn't porn, it wasn't about jacking off, it wasn't about giving guys boners of feeding the ravenous mainstream porn machine. It was about independence and female empowerment and a new standard of beauty that would challenge conventional standards. To which I though "Bullshit." If that makes those girls feel better about taking off their clothes and spreading their labia for money and a camera (something I have no problem with at all) then fine, let them have their delusions. And there are probably a great number of Suicide Girls site subscribers who feel that way. But there are also subscribers who are creepy overweight balding 52 year old men who jack off every day to the new photoshoot and imagine pissing all over some pretty little moppets tattoos. The point is, once they put their photos out there, those models have NO control over how those pictures are perceived, judged, and ultimately (ick) used. (continued)
I alluded earlier to my paradoxical and embarrassing pretention and elitism. In general, I am always deeply suspicious of anything popular. The track record for the last decade or two (Justin Bieber, Jersey Shore, Lady Gaga, Twilight, Transformers movies, and so on) is not terribly reassuring in terms of our nation's aesthetic tastes. So I was immediately predisposed to be suspicious of 50 Shades because EVERYONE seemed to love it.
Again, it's a personal preference I guess, but I take no pleasure - vicious or otherwise - when work of substandard quality is rewarded, financially or culturally or in terms of popularity. It makes the job of those (and I don't mean me) striving to constantly improve their craft much harder. You even admit that 50 Shades is "shitty" and not even very good smut. I'm guessing that some of the better smut writers out there are quite angry that they have to keep waking up to do whatever they do, whether it's build databases or serve coffee, and find a few hours to write in the evening after the day job while the 50 Shades woman probably bathes in hundred dollar bills for churning out dreck. (continued, one last time)
I do agree with you that this article has a bizarre streak of internalized misogyny, which is indeed especially curious given the gender of the writer. I think her portrayal of women not caring about sex or reading about is curious, wrong, and damaging. I know plenty of women who like pornography and sex and they seem to be quite happy and well adjusted.
One last difference of opinion though. Sadly, I truly do think that an unfortunately wide variety of people do take their cues whole and with no critical thinking from pop culture. People really do want to be like Snooki or Kim Kardashian - popular for no reason, with no skills, and with no goals other than shopping and being rich and partying and drinking and having sex. Sure, those are all enjoyable but isn't there something more? I don't think the danger from 50 Shades is as great as this article's author seems to think it is, but I do believe a lot of people with no real desire to do any critical thinking will plunge headfirst into BDSM relationships with no clear understanding about what any of that really means, pro or con.
DONE!
Oh, and this. I LOVED your comment. And I hope my replies did not offend you. In some ways, you and I seem to almost share the same DNA (odd given our difference in gender, age, geography, and on and on and on) while in others we differ almost violently. That's good. I hope you never feel as if you need to curtail your comments on this blog. Feel free to disagree with me and attack my points of view whenever you want. I value these exchanges a great deal.
I can't articulate why, I've just never had even the slightest desire to read about or even see the handful of literary characters that I have had a prurient interest in engaged in any kind of carnal activity beyond what may have been present in the initial work.
Literary novels very rarely attract women's fandoms of the kind I'm discussing, though Harry Potter is a stratospherically popular exception -- even today, I'm told. Part of the pleasure of this kind of embroidery and exploration is, again, in finding a new creative path through semi-failed stories that are full of accidents and lacunae, and that's better suited to the world of film and TV -- but also to certain popular novels like Potter.
For the record, though I have written/read/enjoyed some fanfic with sex scenes, I've never really seen the appeal of the purely/largely pornographic work either.
That's not a judgment, it's just an aesthetic preference. In a strange way, I actually prefer to NOT know anything more about characters or creative works beyond what lies within the boundary of that work as it was first presented.
Huh! That's a vast gulf between us, then. I'm not even actively involved in "fandom" anymore, but most of my friendships and much of my internal life is bound up in extrapolating and bullshitting about other people's characters. That's how I learned to make my own.
I've had a longstanding mental wrestling match with myself over whether my own Moby-Dick project is little more than a form of visual fanfiction.
Fanart, more properly, but no -- I think the law is that if it's good, and/or if the original an old or culturally prestigious property, it's not publicly considered fan work. That's why Sherlock Holmes fans don't write fanfic, they write pastiches, and works like Chris Adrian's The Great Night and Wide Sargasso Sea and most of the works of Alan Moore avoid the tag.
One thing I seem to have been obviously wrong about is that fan fiction seems to be primarily the domain of female creators. Is that really true? And if so, is fan fiction somehow being portrayed as something feminist?
Well, it's interesting. I am told by people outside the community that fanfic is a thing for teenage boys, but within my actual community -- a limited and self-selecting community, true, but still a very large one that I've been on the periphery of for fifteen years -- I have encountered exactly three male writers, one of whom I later learned was a (non-trans) woman with a male online persona. I would say, yes, that where I've done most of my fan activity -- Livejournal/Dreamwidth/Archive Of Our Own/the Society for Transformative Works/long-ago roleplay communities on places like InsaneJournal -- it's women as far as the eye can see. Whether women rewriting men's work (and it's very often men's work, just because men are the ones who write films an TV) is inherently a feminist activity, I don't know. I don't think it can be. I think it sometimes is, but it depends.
But the very act of making any kind of fan fiction publicly available, even on a blog, automatically opens it up to judgment and critique. We can split hairs all day long about intent, but to be crudely blunt, when you put it out there you are asking for an opinion and you are giving up control.
Well, a lot of fanfic isn't publicly available, but I'm not saying that this stuff is inherently private and shouldn't be critiqued because it's private (in particular, I'm not saying this about Fifty Shades, but more about this later). I'm just saying that most fanfic writers I've met are writing for self-selecting niches of between one and a hundred people, and make no effort to find a larger audience, even if they put their work up in public, where anyone who wants is certainly free to say what they like about it (but nobody will, because the public is not interested in these things and will not find them by accident).
But, and I should've made this clear -- I don't think the woman who wrote "50 Shades" was doing this, writing for this kind of niche audience. She's a Twilight fan, and the Twilight people have memorably broken the reserved mold of women's fandom -- they have no historical ties to us, and they're out and proud, to the point where I've repeatedly seen mainstream commentators mistake them for a new paradigm, the first fandom...for girls...! Which, of course, they are not; women were trading Star Trek zines in 1969, and they were trading Blake's 7 zines in 1984, and I'm sure a few of those same women are writing Doctor Who fanfic today, though it's been a while.
So in that sense, the opinions raining down on "50 Shades" are fair because if the author didn't want that, the author should not have accepted money to publish it and share it.
Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't critique this execrable novel because most traditional fan writers are private people writing for their own community. This writer obviously is not, or she wouldn't have changed the names and put her work out there for money. When I emphasized the insular nature of traditional women's fandom, I just meant to say that that's the reason it is invisible. Though its sheer invisibility may mean that my "women do it for free" hypothesis is void; most people don't seem to know that these women actually exist.
Again, it's a personal preference I guess, but I take no pleasure - vicious or otherwise - when work of substandard quality is rewarded, financially or culturally or in terms of popularity.
It's a precedent. It says, "It's okay to change the names and publish your work; this is a legitimate form of art/criticism." Maybe someday my friend whose work makes me give a shit about X-Men: First Class will be rewarded for the same practice.
I'm guessing that some of the better smut writers out there are quite angry that they have to keep waking up to do whatever they do, whether it's build databases or serve coffee, and find a few hours to write in the evening after the day job while the 50 Shades woman probably bathes in hundred dollar bills for churning out dreck.
I know a couple of those, and yes, they are very unhappy about it.
I seriously can't overemphasize the fact that I'm not defending Fifty Shades on any level. It's the "eew, it's fanfic!" argument that I can't stand. Of all the things wrong with Fifty Fucking Shades of Grey, let's not get stuck on its genre.
(No worries, though, I'm not taking this conversation personally.)
Coming back to this after a night's sleep, I wanted to add: is fanfic an inherently feminist act? No, but being part of a subculture of women commenting on a popular culture that largely marginalizes women (whether through fanfic or just bullshitting with friends) is. And that's why I cringe at knee-jerk dismissals of the practices of that subculture. Women's fandom has always been an incredibly valuable intellectual haven for me, without which I'd be much more depressed and isolated. I struggle with it often, of course, as we all struggle with our families; I've never been particularly close to its center, not a particularly active participant. But it's always been there for me.
Part of the pleasure of this kind of embroidery and exploration is, again, in finding a new creative path through semi-failed stories that are full of accidents and lacunae, and that's better suited to the world of film and TV -- but also to certain popular novels like Potter.
Hmmmm, see, here is where I think there may be another vast gulf between us. To me, calling another writer's stories "semi-failed" and "full of accidents and lacunae" that can somehow only be redressed through one's own work smacks of fan entitlement, a growing phenomenon that I despise with a hatred that burns brighter than the light of a million exploding sons. It's one thing to say to one's self something like "Superman's origin always seemed kind of stupid and improbable to me," and it's actually fine to say to one's self "I'm going to take this Superman idea and make some comics for myself and my friends showing how I'd like to see it done" but it's something completely different and insulting egotistical to say "Siegel and Schuster had no idea what they were doing and I'm going to show the world how to do Superman RIGHT."
Fan entitlement seems to rear its ugly head much more often in the world of comics, I think (hence my choice of example) but I don't think it's ever palatable in any medium. And I write that because I see fan entitlement as something vastly different than criticism, which is important even when it is savage.
Huh! That's a vast gulf between us, then.
Indeed it is. I puzzled for some time yesterday as to just why I don't want to dig much deeper than the boundaries of what the original creators / authors / artists laid out. I think it's because I have a deep and abiding respect for the act of creation (not saying that you don't, just following a line of thinking for myself here) and part of that respect means honoring their boundaries. If Gene Wolfe chooses not to write a book about the years Severian spent as Autarch, married to Valeria and leading the Commonwealth, I am content to leave it at that despite my curiosity. Don't get me wrong, when creators themselves choose to revisit these things and explore their stories and characters further later on, such as Neil Gaiman returning to the earliest days of the Sandman in his upcoming miniseries, I am always curious and will generally investigate those works. Beyond that though, I leave the world's boundaries where the creator drew them and I don't transgress. That comes from a hybrid feeling of deep and perhaps groveling respect for great creators and a kind of jealous possessiveness of my own creations (Solar Brothers, Spudd 64, Strange Satellites, etc.) I don't mind other artists exploring those ideas and sharing their OWN vision of what these things I've made might be, but honestly I'd be absolutely offended and furious if someone created a comic where they addressed what they thought were the mistakes I made in my own. Honestly, I don't see how anyone else other than maybe my wife could have any idea what might be going on in my mind as I am creating my Spudd 64 stories.
I'm not even actively involved in "fandom" anymore, but most of my friendships and much of my internal life is bound up in extrapolating and bullshitting about other people's characters. That's how I learned to make my own.
In that sense I see the value of it, but that's like...I don't know, sketching maybe? Every artist I know learned how to draw by imitation at first. Whether you are influenced by Jack Kirby or Rembrandt, we all ape our influences at first. And, as you said, we eventually develop our own skills and styles from that. It's when it doesn't go beyond that where I start to have some serious misgivings. When a story is basically a thinly veiled riff on something that someone else worked hard on, and all the new "author" has done is change a few names and hair colors. That's just masturbation which, again, is fine. But call it masturbation because ultimately it is only self-gratification.
Fanart, more properly, but no -- I think the law is that if it's good, and/or if the original an old or culturally prestigious property, it's not publicly considered fan work. That's why Sherlock Holmes fans don't write fanfic, they write pastiches, and works like Chris Adrian's The Great Night and Wide Sargasso Sea and most of the works of Alan Moore avoid the tag.
This still troubles me, in the context of my own work. I can't figure out why yet. The distinctions seem arbitrary and unfair. I've enjoyed these Conrad illustrations, but after this, whether it is published and / or successful or simply remains something I xerox and sell myself, I really hunger to do something original with my own characters and ideas.
I am told by people outside the community that fanfic is a thing for teenage boys, but within my actual community -- a limited and self-selecting community, true, but still a very large one that I've been on the periphery of for fifteen years -- I have encountered exactly three male writers, one of whom I later learned was a (non-trans) woman with a male online persona. I would say, yes, that where I've done most of my fan activity -- Livejournal/Dreamwidth/Archive Of Our Own/the Society for Transformative Works/long-ago roleplay communities on places like InsaneJournal -- it's women as far as the eye can see. Whether women rewriting men's work (and it's very often men's work, just because men are the ones who write films an TV) is inherently a feminist activity, I don't know. I don't think it can be. I think it sometimes is, but it depends.
An excellent answer and one which helped a great deal to inform and clarify my understanding of fan fiction. As you could no doubt already tell, I have next to no experience with or knowledge of fan fiction, hence my surprise at your initial comments and the length of this exchange.
It's a precedent. It says, "It's okay to change the names and publish your work; this is a legitimate form of art/criticism." Maybe someday my friend whose work makes me give a shit about X-Men: First Class will be rewarded for the same practice.
Again I think this is a difference between you and I. I can't see changing names of popular characters and publishing the work for money as a legitimate form of art or criticism. Unless perhaps it is parody, which is something entirely different and not something I am very well versed in either.
I seriously can't overemphasize the fact that I'm not defending Fifty Shades on any level. It's the "eew, it's fanfic!" argument that I can't stand. Of all the things wrong with Fifty Fucking Shades of Grey, let's not get stuck on its genre.
I think that is very fair, entirely legitimate, and absolutely justifiable. And in that sense, even though I have no real desire to read or create fan fiction, I don't like to see it attacked or vilified on flimsy pretenses like this.
(No worries, though, I'm not taking this conversation personally.)
Good. I suspected you wouldn't but given the nature of online communication and the complete lack of nonverbal qualifiers to enhance meaning, I often worry about how my words are taken.
Coming back to this after a night's sleep, I wanted to add: is fanfic an inherently feminist act? No, but being part of a subculture of women commenting on a popular culture that largely marginalizes women (whether through fanfic or just bullshitting with friends) is.
You framed that very well and I agree. In that sense it absolutely is a feminist act and for that reason it deserves attention and merit. It is unfortunately too easy for me, as a white man, to still have a blind spot for how frustrating it must be for a woman, regardless of ethnicity, to so rarely see positive and accurate reflections and representations of herself in popular culture, whether it is comics or fiction or television or movies. So even fan fiction as commentary is essential and valid.
And that's why I cringe at knee-jerk dismissals of the practices of that subculture. Women's fandom has always been an incredibly valuable intellectual haven for me, without which I'd be much more depressed and isolated. I struggle with it often, of course, as we all struggle with our families; I've never been particularly close to its center, not a particularly active participant. But it's always been there for me.
Very very well said, and I wanted to preserve this part of your comment because of that.
You know that it's very hard for you to offend me, since I always recognize that we have a mutual right to be blunt with each other in discussions like this, where our inherent perspectives are radically different and very unlikely to change, and the main purpose is to try to understand each other -- or at least set things out. And also, I know I've put everything very bluntly and harshly and familiarly. You're reacting in a reasonable way to these flat statements that I haven't been explaining in a sufficiently thoughtful or humane way.
But it's starting to get to me (a little) that you've described a beloved creative outlet that I miss very much as fraught with "masturbation," "fan entitlement," and as a phase to be grown out of. I quit publicly writing fanfic a few years ago (though I've done a little work in private and probably won't stop doing that) because I wanted to be taken seriously. Like I say, they're different forms with different satisfactions, and I don't know if "wanting to be taken seriously" is a good reason to cut off a form that gives you satisfaction and joy. It's a decision fraught with regrets and even a sense of self-betrayal.
I do have a further word about fan entitlement:
It's one thing to say to one's self something like "Superman's origin always seemed kind of stupid and improbable to me," and it's actually fine to say to one's self "I'm going to take this Superman idea and make some comics for myself and my friends showing how I'd like to see it done" but it's something completely different and insulting egotistical to say "Siegel and Schuster had no idea what they were doing and I'm going to show the world how to do Superman RIGHT."
I agree with you, and I think most fan writers would as well. It is difficult for me to imagine a fan writer who has the ego to think that Superman's original writers were clueless hacks, and hasn't just applied for a job at DC, where radically egotistical revisionism every few years seems to be the norm (though I should admit here that my interest in superheroes is right up there with your interest in fan fiction).
Though I have to admit that I think ego is important to good writing, and I guess that means good fan writers should have it, too. As time has eroded my ego, writing has become much harder on me psychologically. You have to have a certain amount of ego to think you can fix your own work's problems, much less anyone else's. I've wasted a lot more time dithering since I started to assess myself reasonably, and I have to force myself to take risks that once came easily and seemed intuitive.
Almost every story has some sense of incompletion. I've never yet found it in Lolita or Hamlet -- the best stories are very nearly self-completing, but the rest of them have a sense of -- okay, not incompletion, and I shouldn't have said "failure." They have a sense that there's another way to go. There's another way to interpret this; there's another way to explore the characters that the author visibly didn't take, rather than an almost-perfect-work's sense that everything that occurs is inevitable.
Here, I'm not talking about "doing Superman right." I'm talking about looking at a certain kind of story as a window into a larger world. Kirk and Spock presumably talk about something when they're not on a mission. That one intriguing female character showed up in that one episode, and her problems were ostensibly solved by getting her together with the right man, but obviously that couldn't have been the end of things. There was that guy played by the charismatic actor who said that one great line, and then he was killed off just as we were getting interested in him; what was his life like before he died, and who misses him now, and what if he'd lived? Or lived...in medieval France?
I think fan work is a collaborative act when it's done right. I think it's the opposite of masturbatory, and yes, if I ever manage to publish anything that inspires fan work, I will be delighted and flattered. The work itself won't change. I've finished it as well as I can.
You know that it's very hard for you to offend me, since I always recognize that we have a mutual right to be blunt with each other in discussions like this, where our inherent perspectives are radically different and very unlikely to change, and the main purpose is to try to understand each other -- or at least set things out. And also, I know I've put everything very bluntly and harshly and familiarly. You're reacting in a reasonable way to these flat statements that I haven't been explaining in a sufficiently thoughtful or humane way.
But it's starting to get to me (a little) that you've described a beloved creative outlet that I miss very much as fraught with "masturbation," "fan entitlement," and as a phase to be grown out of.
I'll do my best to approach this as articulately and completely as possible. An apology is necessary, but it must be accurately constructed. I am not sorry that you and I have vastly different feelings on fan fiction, and an apology along those lines would be insincere. Don't forget that as someone who has been reading comic books since the late 1970s, I too have suffered my share of "Ewwwww, you're into THAT garbage?" from scores of friends, family members and yes, dates. So I am not immune to the sting of those words. However, I am truly sorry that I chose my words poorly. I should not have simply and patly labeled it as "masturbation" and implied that anyone serious about creativity grows out of it. A more apt description would be that if I were to engage in it, I would feel like I was doing little more than mentally masturbating and I would have sought out a different creative outlet to satisfy whatever needs I had as a creator. Everyone makes art, stories, movies, whatever, for different reasons. Mine are clearly different from yours and I am a different person than you are so it is understandable that we would set our hands to different creations.
I understand the "wanting to be taken seriously" aspect, and I actually think that, depending on your goals, that is a necessary consideration. If your goals are purely personal (i.e. it doesn't matter to you whether your stories / art / etc. are ever seen by anyone else, for free or in professionally published and distributed ways) then you are the only one whose opinion matters. If you decide that "taken seriously" means being published and paid for your work, then you have to understand and adjust to the nature of the market. I met with my literary agent face to face in December and we spent some time talking about the future. This Conrad illustration deal was coming together but he, with great gravity and seriousness, urged me to begin thinking about my own characters and my own ideas. He stopped short of stating this explicitly, but the implication was clear: my publishing career is unlikely to be long-lasting and profitable unless I find some way to offer something completely new and original. I appreciated the honesty, but it is daunting.
I do have a further word about fan entitlement:
I agree with you, and I think most fan writers would as well. It is difficult for me to imagine a fan writer who has the ego to think that Superman's original writers were clueless hacks, and hasn't just applied for a job at DC, where radically egotistical revisionism every few years seems to be the norm (though I should admit here that my interest in superheroes is right up there with your interest in fan fiction).
Though I have to admit that I think ego is important to good writing, and I guess that means good fan writers should have it, too. As time has eroded my ego, writing has become much harder on me psychologically. You have to have a certain amount of ego to think you can fix your own work's problems, much less anyone else's. I've wasted a lot more time dithering since I started to assess myself reasonably, and I have to force myself to take risks that once came easily and seemed intuitive.
In that sense then, I think we are rather closer in agreement on fan entitlement than I had previously imagined. I perhaps took your comment "semi-failed stories" too directly and misunderstood the meaning. Fan entitlement is something that is especially rampant and especially obnoxious in American comic books, a world that you have admitted you are quite alien to. Which is actually a blessing in disguise since, save for a few gems, it has become a reeking clubhouse of over-sexed babymen with deep psychological problems and bizarrely rigid thinking patterns.
Almost every story has some sense of incompletion. I've never yet found it in Lolita or Hamlet -- the best stories are very nearly self-completing, but the rest of them have a sense of -- okay, not incompletion, and I shouldn't have said "failure." They have a sense that there's another way to go.
This is a brilliant and very valid point. The difference may be in what the reader does with that. Personally, I enjoy the sense of ambiguity, the frisson of never really knowing the entire story. For me, there must remain some sense of mystery, some gap in the story, some blank spaces in my understanding, or I will consider the story too simple and ultimately will never have any idea to return to the original text, re-read, re-re-read, and continue to explore. None of that is a value judgment on those who do not share the belief (and the bolded word was not intended to seem strident or correcting)...it's a description of my personal reading preferences.
The Gormenghast Trilogy is an absolutely perfect example, especially since you are reading them now. Peake died before he could complete the third book, and he left behind stacks of barely legible notes on that third book and potential fourth, fifth, sixth and more books. It seems that Peake intended for the story of Titus to continue indefinitely. It is very sad that Peake was taken before he could give full life to his visions, but in spite of my aching desire to read those unwritten stories, I would never ever want to hazard writing them myself. On a personal level, I would gain nothing from that. I might even feel like I had committed some kind of offense against Peake. Some kind of presumptuous act. I know, it's a very different mindset from those who do write fan fiction. It's something that is just not in any way for me.
There's another way to interpret this; there's another way to explore the characters that the author visibly didn't take, rather than an almost-perfect-work's sense that everything that occurs is inevitable.
Here, I'm not talking about "doing Superman right." I'm talking about looking at a certain kind of story as a window into a larger world. Kirk and Spock presumably talk about something when they're not on a mission. That one intriguing female character showed up in that one episode, and her problems were ostensibly solved by getting her together with the right man, but obviously that couldn't have been the end of things. There was that guy played by the charismatic actor who said that one great line, and then he was killed off just as we were getting interested in him; what was his life like before he died, and who misses him now, and what if he'd lived? Or lived...in medieval France?
Yes, I can definitely see the appeal of that line of thought. And again, I am not judging it on anything other than a purely personal lever. It's just that I have never been interested enough in that kind of thinking to either pursue creating it myself or to seek out what others have created. I'm more interested, I guess, in reading what others have written about the extant work and even that kind of writing can, to me, seem like masturbation. It's so odd to me that what took Melville 600 pages to say, give or take, has been rehashed by scholars over hundreds of thousands of pages.
I think fan work is a collaborative act when it's done right.
I have a question for you then. Not disputing your above point at all, but why not collaborate on something original? I am curious about that.
I think it's the opposite of masturbatory, and yes, if I ever manage to publish anything that inspires fan work, I will be delighted and flattered. The work itself won't change. I've finished it as well as I can.
I'm not sure how I would feel. It hasn't happened. I suppose it would depend...actually, hold that thought. I really can't answer that question because I have not thought the entire thing through as thoroughly as the question demands. In principle, I completely support the argument that no amount of fan fiction, re-imagining, re-booting, and so on changes the original work. You are correct there. What I worry about, and not at all with my own creations (which would be arrogant and misguided) is that in taking something like Moby-Dick or To the Lighthouse and using it as grist for mousepads, t-shirts, videogames (a Virginia Woolf videogame! Ha!) and so on, the multiple and more visible pop culture iterations water down and diffuse the importance of the original work. And yes, I worry that my own contributions to Moby-Dick may have added to that, but I wrestle with that book daily and probably shall forever so that question may never be answered for me.
Above all RF, one last thing. I am not an arbiter of taste or culture. I have no more say over what is artistically valid and what is not than you do. Simply because I have been lucky enough to have one book of art published with a second on the way means nothing. It does not put me on any higher plane and doesn't make me more qualified to decide what is the right creative path to follow. You and I may forever disagree about fan fiction. Other than hopefully clarifying and apologizing for some of my more poorly chosen words, we may never find much common ground. But then we also disagreed, although not as virulently, over Death Note. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's okay if you and I disagree, it's okay if you sometimes think I'm a jerk (as long as I apologize...because I am a jerk sometimes) but in the end, don't let anyone, especially me, decide for you what's good and what's not. I don't think you have, and I don't think I really have any influence over what you think, but don't let anyone else's opinion wear you down. Follow your own inner voice. Stop eroding your own confidence. Don't let things like this get you down. Yes, by all means, head out with fists raised if you feel there has been a gross misunderstanding or mischaracterization of something (the way you did with the 50 Shades article and its portrayal of fan fiction) but don't let it beat you down. At all.
I am not sorry that you and I have vastly different feelings on fan fiction, and an apology along those lines would be insincere.
I understand. I'm not sorry about our difference of opinion, either; I know we're very different thinkers on this subject.
Everyone makes art, stories, movies, whatever, for different reasons. Mine are clearly different from yours and I am a different person than you are so it is understandable that we would set our hands to different creations.
Fair enough and well put.
This Conrad illustration deal was coming together but he, with great gravity and seriousness, urged me to begin thinking about my own characters and my own ideas. He stopped short of stating this explicitly, but the implication was clear: my publishing career is unlikely to be long-lasting and profitable unless I find some way to offer something completely new and original. I appreciated the honesty, but it is daunting.
That surprises me very much, actually -- I would think an illustrator (the closest professional category, I assume, to what you've done so far) would have more leeway to work as an interpreter, especially since that's how you found your primary audience.
Which is actually a blessing in disguise since, save for a few gems, it has become a reeking clubhouse of over-sexed babymen with deep psychological problems and bizarrely rigid thinking patterns.
And that's cover-blurb material if I ever saw it.
I know, it's a very different mindset from those who do write fan fiction. It's something that is just not in any way for me.
Maybe the word I'm looking for, with regard to stories, is not any kind of value-loaded word at all, but something like "porous." But, yes, I understand your perspective.
I have a question for you then. Not disputing your above point at all, but why not collaborate on something original? I am curious about that.
They're not mutually exclusive, and I've done both. I'm collaborating (albeit in a minor role) on an original work right now.
...multiple and more visible pop culture iterations water down and diffuse the importance of the original work.
It's a significant question. I know that the commodification of the great authors by corporations like Barnes & Noble (who I realize aren't a cultural force anymore, but certainly were when I was growing up, and I think the strategy has been taken up by others) can be a little grotesque. The cultural fate of Oscar Wilde is a good case in point.
You and I may forever disagree about fan fiction.
Frankly, one way or another, most of my friends disagree with me about fan fiction -- from one direction or the other, as some of them are far more bullish on it than I am.
Regarding this:
That surprises me very much, actually -- I would think an illustrator (the closest professional category, I assume, to what you've done so far) would have more leeway to work as an interpreter, especially since that's how you found your primary audience.
I tended to think so too, at first. However most if not all illustrators are freelancers and don't use or really even need agents. My agent represents several graphic novelists (the excellent Nate Powell among them) and I believe sees me more as that, especially since I came to art primarily through comics. So I think he feels that I should be exploring that personal narrative aspect more than simply illustrating pre-existing work, and while that terrifies me it is also, for me anyway, the most exciting creative avenue. Also, to be blunt, there was some self-interest in his remark as well since if I am a self-employed freelance illustrator I would probably not have a business relationship with him. If it sounds complicated it is and it makes my head swim every time I think about it. Especially because I have a career as a librarian that I quite love.
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