is this real?
Reality is Real, Probably
A happy confluence occurred in the last few weeks. Don't let "confluence" deter you; this is fun! I decided to pick at a collection of essays by a cranky, pretty-great literary critic named Joseph Bottum titled Pulp and Prejudice. I don't know anything about the guy, really, except America's best-read human, John Wilson, recommended his work. It's good! I'll spare you the details of why. We don't have time for why—there's a confluence we're trying to approach!
I was picking at these essays while listening to the latest Big Read podcast, in which my friend Bill and I talk about our Year in Reading for 2021. The Confluence began with a 20-minute audio essay, more or less, that Bill ad-libbed about a certain kind of "Is it or isn't it real?" phenomenon he thinks is trash. And he's right! There's a certain, fact-checker hermeneutic out there that likes to ask such questions of films like The Witch as, "Is there really a witch or is everyone simply going insane from a bad crop?" Of course there's a witch in The Witch, Bill more or less says, otherwise the metaphor the project is attempting to create is undermined, and the thesis "Young woman wrongly oppressed must find solidarity outside cultural norms" becomes "Puritans couldn't farm! Whoops!" (It really is a great bit, and begins about 1hr 29 minutes.)
Minutes after re-hearing and re-agreeing with this sanest of takes, I returned to an essay by Bottum about a children's fiction series for science nerds. The essay is about a certain kind of American inventiveness that has been transferred from the concrete (rockets!) to the abstract (Metaverse!). In an aside, Bottum notes that the books in question lost their charm as a series when they gave up "a whimsical, science-doesn't-know-everything element of fantasy." One book ends "with a hint that maybe a dinosaur egg really could hatch," while another "finishes with the suggestion that maybe ghosts actually exist." Is the supernatural content real or not? A confluence!
Look, for my own benefit, I'm trying to keep this as basic as possible. I'm trying be as practical and direct as Bill and Bottum. I think they're both correct. I think they're identifying cousin phenomena, the tingles of satisfaction one gets from the suggestion of mystery. Is there a witch (like, who has powers) in The Witch? Yes, but the topic demands a certain uncertainty, if only so one doesn't talk down to one's audience. The projects Bill discusses are all literary or artsy in some way, are forms of realism making room for the supernatural or fantastical. And when dealing with the fantastical in a realistic and serious manner, acknowledging *some* doubt seems necessary in order both to disarm and charm the intelligent reader.
Here's where actual confluence (no, I didn't just learn that word!) occurs: Bill and Bottum agree! While Bottum is making a little point and Bill is making a bigger point, both are arguing for the persistence of mystery. The problem with "Is there a witch in the Witch??" isn't that initial question, or even its lingering after-tang, the problem is when readers or the projects themselves give a closed, irresolute negative. This is an argument about reality, in the long run, about a world in which materialism is the final answer or is always a little in doubt. To reject the supernatural horror of The Witch and insist that the characters are simply misinterpreting material conditions beyond their knowledge, is to reject the breadth and degree of terror that those folks actually experienced. It diminishes the work because it puts an artificial limit on life as we actually, internally suffer it.
I'm not saying there were real-life witches who flew off into the full-moon sky in 17th-century New England, not in this newsletter at least! But how are we supposed to depict the reality of that fear, the spiritual plane (because necessarily abstract) along which such extreme human experiences operate? I don't think making monsters and ghosts and witches literal is the only answer for storytelling, but there's an emotional (and yes, spiritual) reality to being alive that's uniquely accessed by these stories.
But let's continue being grounded, simple. What Bill and Bottum both suggest, and which they are both correct regarding, is that a work's meaning should run toward frisson, toward the possibilities of its own premises. Are you writing about witches or ghosts or a monster caged in an asylum? Don't take the easy out! "There's no witch/ghost/monster, people are just crazy!" Are you writing a fun book for kids about the wonders of the world? Let there be wonder, including something as silly as dinosaur eggs rattling mysteriously at tale's end.
The queen of this game, of course, is Muriel Spark, and her masterpiece on the dubious tensions of "is it real or not?" is The Comforters, which every single person on the planet should read.
Reading: I just finished re-reading Lord of the Rings, and—surprise!—it's great! I might write about why I thought so more than ever in a different newsletter. Besides Bottum's aforementioned essays, I'm in a bit of a slump, which a recently arrived Muriel Spark package will hopefully correct sooner than later. If you haven't read Spark, The Comforters is not only her first novel, but a great place to start. She's most famous for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and for good reason. It's one of my favorite books, and about as quick and fun a read as you could ask of any masterpiece.
I love you all. Happy start of 2022.