SHALLA: Writing the Slipstream Story
Slipstream (a term coined by author Bruce Sterling) has also been called North American Magical Realistm, Contemporary Fabulist Fiction, Surrealism, Transrealism, or Interstitial Fiction.
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It's writing that blends literary tropes with
the fantastic and in the porcess, frees fiction from the limitations of realistm.
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Practitioners include Karen Joy Fowler, George Saunders,
A.S. Byatt, Michael Chabon, Kelly Link,
Ray Vukcevich, Judy Budnitz, and Robert Olen Butler.
Practitioners include Karen Joy Fowler, George Saunders,
A.S. Byatt, Michael Chabon, Kelly Link,
Ray Vukcevich, Judy Budnitz, and Robert Olen Butler.
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HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Love,
The ShalladeGuzman Writers Group
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#1
Online writing by Mr. George Saunders
Slate Diary, Russia, June 2000
A Rememberance, from Quarterly West
Short Stories Available Online
"My Flamboyant Grandson," New Yorker, Jan. 2002
"Sea Oak" in English and Spanish, Barcelona Review, Sept-Oct 2000
#2
Karen Joy Fowler On-line Excerpts, Stories, Interviews, & Reviews
Novel Excerpts
The Jane Austen Book Club: Prologue
Sister Noon: Chapter One
Black Glass
Sarah Canary
The Sweetheart Season
Stories
"Private Grave 9" [Excerpt]
"The Elizabeth Complex"
"The Elizabeth Complex" Text Only
"Standing Room Only"
"Standing Room Only" Text Only
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by
Live!
Mad Hatters' Review
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Edgy and Enlightened Literature, Art and Music in the Age of Dementia.
Shalla in Mad Hatters Review?
Issue 6
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Award-winning authors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel team up as editors to define a genre that ... well ... isn't
By John Joseph Adams
So what is slipstream, anyway?
Kelly: We make the point in our introduction that slipstream isn't really a genre at the moment and may never be one. What it is, in our opinion, is a literary effect—in the same way that horror or comedy are literary effects achieved by many different kinds of dissimilar stories. What is that effect? We borrowed the term cognitive dissonance from the psychologists. When we are presented with two contradictory cognitions—impressions, feelings, beliefs—we experience cognitive dissonance, a kind of psychic discomfort that we normally try to ease by discounting one of the cognitions as false or illusory and promoting the other to reality. But in some cases we aren't well served by this convenient sorting out.
By John Joseph Adams
So what is slipstream, anyway?
Kelly: We make the point in our introduction that slipstream isn't really a genre at the moment and may never be one. What it is, in our opinion, is a literary effect—in the same way that horror or comedy are literary effects achieved by many different kinds of dissimilar stories. What is that effect? We borrowed the term cognitive dissonance from the psychologists. When we are presented with two contradictory cognitions—impressions, feelings, beliefs—we experience cognitive dissonance, a kind of psychic discomfort that we normally try to ease by discounting one of the cognitions as false or illusory and promoting the other to reality. But in some cases we aren't well served by this convenient sorting out.
We think that what slipstream stories do is to embrace cognitive dissonance. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." We believe that such an ability is necessary to cope with life in the 21st century and that stories that ask us to exercise that ability are an expression of the zeitgeist. Do you really need a definitive answer as to whether an electron is a wave or a particle? Why? Maybe it's time to make room for uncertainty in contemporary fiction, even if the stories do make you feel very strange. Slipstream may use metafictional techniques to estrange us from consensus reality, they may rewrite history, they may mash up different styles or genres. But that's the point, as we see it. Slipstream has no rules, it has only results.
Kessel: One of the things that's come to me as I've thought about this is how often slipstream stories feel like parables. "The Little Magic Shop" starts out as a parody or deconstruction of the many traditional tales about magic shops and deals with the devil. Then in the end it turns into an allegory about fantastic fiction as art vs. publishers' attempts to make it a commodity. The main character saves the fusty proprietor of the old magic shop and brings him into the contemporary world, the way writers like Bruce Sterling seek to haul science fiction out of its musty traditions and make it face the 21st century. I like this double nature to slipstream.
Kessel: One of the things that's come to me as I've thought about this is how often slipstream stories feel like parables. "The Little Magic Shop" starts out as a parody or deconstruction of the many traditional tales about magic shops and deals with the devil. Then in the end it turns into an allegory about fantastic fiction as art vs. publishers' attempts to make it a commodity. The main character saves the fusty proprietor of the old magic shop and brings him into the contemporary world, the way writers like Bruce Sterling seek to haul science fiction out of its musty traditions and make it face the 21st century. I like this double nature to slipstream.
Slipstream stories always seem to be doing more than one thing at any time.The other thing that strikes me is how often they are funny. This is one of the things I've always liked about Kafka—the first thing you think about him is that he's terribly grim. But there is dark humor everywhere in his work. That humor is in slipstream stories like "Sea Oak" or "Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-planes' by Benjamin Rosenbaum," or "Bright Morning."A story should give delight, pleasure and mystery. It should get at things that can't be gotten at any other way. We put a quote from Kafka on the cover of the book: "A story should be an ax to break the frozen sea within us."
Where did slipstream come from, and why do you think it's so prevalent (and relevant) today?
Kessel: I think Jim's point about cognitive dissonance is part of the reason it's common today. Many people feel that the world doesn't make sense according to the structures that held during the 20th century. Maybe it never has made sense, to a person of a certain sensibility; there have been individual stories that resemble slipstream around for a long time, from writers like Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges and Shirley Jackson outside of the genres, to say nothing of so-called genre writers like Damon Knight, Barry Malzberg and Fritz Leiber.
For more: SciFi
Where did slipstream come from, and why do you think it's so prevalent (and relevant) today?
Kessel: I think Jim's point about cognitive dissonance is part of the reason it's common today. Many people feel that the world doesn't make sense according to the structures that held during the 20th century. Maybe it never has made sense, to a person of a certain sensibility; there have been individual stories that resemble slipstream around for a long time, from writers like Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges and Shirley Jackson outside of the genres, to say nothing of so-called genre writers like Damon Knight, Barry Malzberg and Fritz Leiber.
For more: SciFi
Like to read a Slipstream Story? Slipstream Stories
posted by Shalla at 1:47 PM
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