Thanks, Nicholas! It’s an irony that newspapers are supposed to report truth, and authors are supposed to write fiction, yet the latter are often more true and honest. I think probably authors have genuinely more freedom than journalists. Shielded behind the premise of “fiction”, they can safely go ranging across the entire landscape of life, ethics, and morality, without worrying about what people will think—since, after all, it’s only a story. And at some level, it really is only a story, while at another level, it’s far more.
You mentioned grimdark at the outset (which was the focus of your last stream), and I wanted to add my sympathy to including works of grimdark within the canon. But I think that any grimdark would have to include a core element of redemption, or “integration” (to use your term), that somehow lifts the story out of the grimness and darkness. Anyway, that’s just a side thought. Thanks again for your illuminating insights.
I think that's a good point about the freedom of novelists. I would push back a bit on the assumption that journalists are not free, or less free. That may be true, but I would argue that there is no serious external force that limits their freedom to report the truth. The forces that are twisting serious journalism into a caricature of its former self seem to me primarily internal. Not pressure applied by a reading public that expects or wants this or that kind of reporting, but internal ideological pressure to conform to a new, postmodern "orthodoxy". I keep coming back to that remarkable Munk debate on whether or not we can trust the media, where Malcolm Gladwell made an absolute fool of himself, and the audience responded by switching away from his point of view in record numbers for the Munk debate.
Thanks, Nicholas! It’s an irony that newspapers are supposed to report truth, and authors are supposed to write fiction, yet the latter are often more true and honest. I think probably authors have genuinely more freedom than journalists. Shielded behind the premise of “fiction”, they can safely go ranging across the entire landscape of life, ethics, and morality, without worrying about what people will think—since, after all, it’s only a story. And at some level, it really is only a story, while at another level, it’s far more.
You mentioned grimdark at the outset (which was the focus of your last stream), and I wanted to add my sympathy to including works of grimdark within the canon. But I think that any grimdark would have to include a core element of redemption, or “integration” (to use your term), that somehow lifts the story out of the grimness and darkness. Anyway, that’s just a side thought. Thanks again for your illuminating insights.
Thanks for the Exogenesis mention as well!
I think that's a good point about the freedom of novelists. I would push back a bit on the assumption that journalists are not free, or less free. That may be true, but I would argue that there is no serious external force that limits their freedom to report the truth. The forces that are twisting serious journalism into a caricature of its former self seem to me primarily internal. Not pressure applied by a reading public that expects or wants this or that kind of reporting, but internal ideological pressure to conform to a new, postmodern "orthodoxy". I keep coming back to that remarkable Munk debate on whether or not we can trust the media, where Malcolm Gladwell made an absolute fool of himself, and the audience responded by switching away from his point of view in record numbers for the Munk debate.
I look forward to your delight and response to the rest of the novels in this world! B.