Just Don't Ask Me To Sing the Powdermilk Biscuits Song

[snurri]

Some of the things mrissa said in her review of Superpowers (see previous post), and barthanderson too, have started me thinking. It has become clear to me, to my slightly bewildered amusement, that to people who meet me at conventions and such that I am (or can be) a bit of a regional character. Which is to say, my accent (which I myself am rarely aware of) and, I assume, other personality quirks of mine are seen as particularly Midwestern or Minnesotan or both. Which, to be clear, I am entirely fine with, as to date this has not included assumptions that I:

1. know more cows than people;
2. am a casual bigot and/or cultural Stone Age-r of the sort which often represents Midwesterners in Hollywood (I am looking at you, Aaron Sorkin);
3. will never truly blossom unless I move to New York, L.A., etc.

In other words I'm fine with being a type, as long as it's not a stereotype. I can't deny that I am a Minnesotan and a Midwesterner, even if I'm not sure how that looks to other people. I'm proud of it, and sometimes a bit defensive. At times I am provincial about it, but this does not particularly worry me. (In my experience--to make a somewhat recursive statement--the most provincial people of all are from New York City.)

It's begun a bit of a re-identification, though, and that's interesting. (To me, at least.) I've always thought of myself, politics and patriotism aside, as a very American writer, and that's been a conscious thing. As a fantasist (fabulist? imaginist? wanker?) this can be tricky, because the genre is so very rooted in works from Europe and particularly the UK. Works that I love, but which it feels very strange to claim as my own and to build on, because I am not European (at least, not in the sense of being from Europe). There's a disconnect in writing about kings and queens and ancient ruins, because these are not part of my daily life or even my accessible history. Which is not to say that I haven't done it and won't keep on doing it, because at this point it's idiom, and it extends beyond place into folk and fairy tales, and it's something that's immediately understood by readers. But I feel the need to do it slant. To give you an idea of my zeal for this, at one point I made the decision to ban the spelling "grey" from my writing, because it was (from my perspective) reflexively used by so many American fantasy writers in an attempt to borrow gravitas from the British fantasists.

This is not meant to be a diatribe or a criticism of how or what anyone else chooses to write. I think "choice," though, is an important word in this context. For me, someone who spent his first eighteen years in essentially the same place, place is important. The exotic is important in my work, but it begins to lose that value unless I stay aware of where I'm from. I think this is a mistake that beginning writers make; they borrow someone else's context. Imitation is a legitimate way to learn, but if you are from Texas and you're borrowing Tolkien's worldview, or from St. Paul and borrowing Garcia Márquez's (ahem), you're only going to go as far as mimicry can take you. One of the dynamics of maturation, at least for me, has been reconciling myself to my past, which depending upon your viewpoint was stable or boring or safe or sheltered. (Not all of our autobiographies are dense with material.) It's in those early years that we learn how to look at the world. That is sometimes what we have to unlearn, in order to see clearly. It may not be a matter of standing still to look--some people spent their childhoods constantly on the move, and maybe that means a multiplicity of simultaneous perspectives. I can't say. But I think we have to choose to acknowledge the various lenses that we see through in order to account for our personal distortions.

What I'm seeing right now is that perhaps I am a Midwestern writer first, and an American writer second. This feels true because--for one thing--I know that I'm much more likely to get my back up when someone slams the Midwest than I am when someone slams the U.S. (Hell, I'm usually the one slamming the U.S.) But also because--and this is probably what I'd say if I sold a story to one of the Interfictions anthologies--there's one lesson that is brought home very clearly when you grow up in a place that other people refer to as flyover country. The lesson is that when things are happening in the world, almost without exception they are happening somewhere else. And while I'm guessing there are many places that feel like that, and most of us probably feel like that when we are starved for excitement, it's something that's built into the culture of the U.S. Television shows take place in L.A. or New York. Movies make fake snow out of potato flakes (I can always spot it--it's in how it reacts to being driven on) and pretend that Vancouver is Iowa or Detroit. Yes, there is Chicago, but Chicago is in some ways both the epicenter and glaring exception to the Midwest. We aren't the flyover states so much as we are the Between States. Which, now that I look at it, implies transformation, and mediation, and connection. Which is hopefully what all of this is about.

(Revisions, you ask? Why they're going so well that I took the afternoon to write this post instead of wrestling struggling with weeping over the next chapter that needs to be completely fucking rewritten.)

Comments

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Seriously, though, the thing that gets me about Anglo-American writing, and particularly about Anglo-American fantasy writing? Is the zeal with which we seem to thrust our European-derived mythologies (fairies, white stags, knights, Greek gods, Vikings, etc.) onto American landscapes, all the while ignoring that there were deep, already-existing mythologies already associated with those landscapes. It seems like a low-level-but-constant cultural rehashing of the imperialist conquest of the New World, and it increasingly makes me very uncomfortable.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on that, although it's something of a double-edged sword; for many people it is decidedly Not OK, for instance, for an Anglo-American writer (to use your example) to "borrow" Native American figures and tropes for their fiction.

I think that the melding of different so-called Old World mythologies and legends can be interesting in an American context--American Gods if, say, American Gods had been good. But you've struck on the problem exactly, in that part of the problem of coming from such a young culture, or a young blend of older cultures, is that the sort of deep resonance you want for your mythic work is much harder to reach.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Marguerite did a good job with this in "Angels of a Desert Heaven," I think:

http://literary.erictmarin.com/archives/Issue%2024/angels.htm

[czakbar.livejournal.com]

I think the key to this is in exactly how you put it: "we seem to thrust our European-derived mythologies onto American landscapes..." Yup, that we do. I think you can see it two different ways, though. The way you've interpreted it (which I think is incredibly valid) and also in the way that it mirrors not just the imperialist conquest of the New World, but the immigrant experience as well, bringing their mythologies with them, rather than thrusting them onto the landscape. Usually it's the thrusting I see in fiction, though, not the "bringing over". I'm not as bothered by the "bringing over" type as I am by the "thrusting" sort that pretends these mythologies were always a part of this landscape and culture.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree about the immigrant experience thing. And Dave's point, too, about how it's often seen as offensive to simply appropriate the Native/Amerind experience... I mean, it's impossible to escape the fact that Europe is the cultural tradition from which we hail--just as it is impossible to escape the fact this is the landscape in which we live.

I guess what I'd like to see is more white American writers who are aware of and willing to acknowledge that we are a nation full of recently displaced peoples, not all of whom have been happily living side-by-side. Because that's a much more complicated, potentially much more interesting story to tell. (As well as a truer one.)

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Right; this is what I was going to say. The Irish brought the sídhe with them; this is not imperialist, this is just bringing your culture and beliefs along with your extra change of clothes. We changed them into twee dancing cartoons, us Americans, which is where I think the imperialism starts to raise its head.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Have you read Marguerite's "Angels of a Desert Heaven?"

http://literary.erictmarin.com/archives/Issue%2024/angels.htm

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Yes I have! Hey, we've even talked about it, you & I... yes, she does a good job. "How to culturally appropriate appropriately."

What I'm complaining about is more, say, Gaiman's American Gods. Or Windling's The Wood Wife.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I thought we had.

Confession: I'm pimping her story in case someone else is reading the thread. Also I have a terrible memory and I wasn't sure.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

On second thought, the Windling really isn't so bad--it's really one of those more complex cases, closer to what you'd want.

In which case, let me change the foci of my complaints to Gaiman's American Gods and Emma Bull's War for the Oaks.