Why SF and Fantasy Exist
I wish I found this…
Good writing teases us with the possibility/impossibility of sharing the
intimacy and power of someone else’s invisible vision. . .[In mediocre
writing] we find ourselves at the conclusion. . . exactly where we knew we were
going all along. A familiar place. No surprises. No necessity to change
ourselves. Difference resolved, dissolved. What had been hidden behind the veil
becomes commonplace, unthreatening. . .Most of what passes for art, particularly narrative art, advertises
mainstream values and culture. . . This art tells us that other peoples’ lives
aren’t actually invisible, not intrinsically unknowable. We learn that anybody’s
story can be reduced to familiar terms, /our/ terms, the terms our way of
living prioritizes. Stories that do mount a challenge to our everyday
conventions and assumptions stir my blood. Not only because they are exciting
formally and philosophically, but because they retain for fiction its special
subversive, radically democratic role.
John Edgar Wideman