Comments on: With One Bound We are Free: Pulp, Fantasy and Revolution

By: Crooked Timber » » Women and men; servants and masters; England and the English

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:39:11 +0000

[...] I’m going to begin as China Miéville did with a kind of disclaimer. In fact I’m going to pick up on something China said at the beginning of his piece. He says: [...]

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 10:45:09 +0000

The Paris Commune! Of course—kicks self for not having spotted it earlier. In re rich puchalsky, China, I hope you don’t resolve the tension between the pulps and the politics because the struggle has been great for the work and will definitely keep me coming back for more.

By: Jackmormon

Jackmormon — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 09:14:41 +0000

Thanks to the organizers and to China Mieville for courageously participating (and of course for the books). I have one question to throw out: why does The Scar seem to provoke less analysis than the New Crobuzon centered books? And if Mieville himself is still out there, I’d be interested in hearing how much of that novel was planned before the ugliness of 2001 and 2002.

By: Rich Puchalsky

Rich Puchalsky — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 01:26:21 +0000

With regard to the pulp points, I’ve been thinking about my own question, and I have a possible answer. Maybe the pulp stereotypes are valuable if what you’re trying to do is reimagine the world of childhood fiction as if it had always had a socialist cast. Let me illustrate what I mean with an analogy using the Residents, my favorite musicians. Ordinarily I’m not much for people doing covers of other people’s work, for the same reasons that I find repetition and imitation to be generally bad in most art. But the Residents have done covers of parts of most basic American pop music: 60s-70s pop, James Brown, Hank Williams, Gershwin, Sousa, Elvis, etc. And it works, because listening to it you can almost start to imagine an alternate universe in which all American pop music was inflected in their style—in which the Residents versions were the originals. It’s the ultimate in escapism, because it invites you to imagine that all the background music of your culture was interesting and countercultural rather than ordinary. So, back to pulp. If what you really like growing up is pulp of one kind or another—Westerns, say—there come three distinct modes through which you might have to sadly give it up. One mode is when you get tired of the structural elements of the pulp. That’s when you say hey, the cavalry always ride to the rescue, and I’m so tired of that predictability. Another is when you get tired of the technical ability of the people writing the pulp, where you say that you still like the cavalry, but they’re always described the same way. The last is when you get tired of the politics embedded in the pulp, where you say the cavalry always ride to the rescue in the books, but in reality they were vicious killers and I’m tired of them being glorified. So let’s say that you’re a good writer yourself, and therefore don’t face the second failure mode for pulp because you can write your own stuff. And you’ve hit the third failure mode but not the first. Why not, then, re-write pulp as if its politics always had been good? You can start to imagine a whole pulp universe as if it had been written by the Paris Commune (or whatever other entity that you agree with). This is getting too long, and I hope I haven’t been insulting (with the “growing up” business). It would be an interesting project, if this is really what’s going on. I for one would love to see, say, E.R. Burroughs re-written with a feminist absurdist bent (the hapless Earthman always arrives to find that the Martian Princess has rescued herself, and after awhile gives up and turns to writing poetry while she dispatches the guards in an exciting fight sequence somewhere). Or E.E. “Doc” Smith re-done with the good guys being the anarchist drug-lords. Wait, Iain Banks already did that one. But I don’t think the project can finally be sucessful unless you finally give up on the strictures of the pulp and start using it only as a source of—flavoring, let’s say. E.E. “Doc” Smith had a simple sequence of technological advances going ever bigger and better that Iain Banks thankfully doesn’t put us through. And, as previously remarked, his bad guys aren’t always fully bad. I for one would much rather have seen, say, the Mayor in PSS be a “good” guy, and have seen how none of that mattered because hey, he can’t go against the profit motive and the property rights of the guy with the slakemoths. If you nationalize the slakemoths, what will be next? In that context personal “goodness” just becomes another inadvertant weapon of the system; it is, after all, easier to fight against people who really are killing the workers for their eyes.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 00:03:49 +0000

China, you’re definitely on my ideal dinner-party (and manning the barricades) companion list.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:58:52 +0000

This has been great, and fascinating—thanks all of CT and to China (and a great big hug to you for Cutter and Low’s relationship). The freezing of the train—Low’s godlike move (which is fitting given his slippery power in and outside of the Council—we always need golems, but they’re so limited and flawed), the doomed revolutionaries, the already-failed revolution in town, the already-existing status of the Iron Council as an enduring myth and symbol of the power of the people and its success in that much at least (which was to be its most lasting success i think)…i could go on for ages on all this. A great and ultimately very chewy and satisfying novel on so many levels…and i wondered when i started reading it (the swampland stuff, etc)—it came together so surprisingly, yet so like life in many ways. : >

By: China

China — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:57:08 +0000

Glenn: Touchy? Gah. Wasn’t meant to be. Sorry (I don’t think I’m very good at communicating tone on this sort of medium). Rich, I’m still chewing over your (very good) pulp points. Sorry not to be able to come up with a good response yet (ever…?).

By: Glenn Bridgman

Glenn Bridgman — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:20:06 +0000

So, erm, that was a touchy response. I think you miss my point. Regardless of which particular brand of socialism you practice, there were a multitude of points throughout the book where you could’ve twisted the socialist knife to make your point, whatever it was—likely plunging the book into a Rand-esque polemic. The fact that you manage to stay on that edge gives the book a delicious tension which vastly enhances it.

By: Rich Puchalsky

Rich Puchalsky — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:28:39 +0000

Interesting responses. China Mieville (how do you write that accent mark in a comment box, anyway) clearly is putting a lot of effort into getting his work closer to his artistic vision. Accordingly I’m sorry that I haven’t yet read IC and am still basing my comments on PSS and The Scar. The most important comment I’d have at this stage is that the word “pulp” seems to be concealing a multitude of artistic virtues and sins. A lot of what CM writes about is the struggle to avoid the expected, the stereotype, whether it’s the cheap morality of characters being punished for their actions, or the trite sneering of a wadical (love that word) saying “can you take it?” But pulp is nothing but a set of these expected stereotypes. When CM writes that it was inevitable that the Cavalry Would Ride to the Rescue in Iron Council, isn’t that just like saying that it’s inevitable that the capitalist characters are all baddies and that Lin the sellout was going to get it? What gives one set of stereotypes value, and makes the other a set to be assiduously avoided?

By: China

China — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:48:05 +0000

My sincere thanks to everyone who posted. It’ll sound sycophantic, but I’ve learnt a great deal. Of course I can’t do justice to most of what’s been said, so I just want to respond to a few points. Rich Puchalsky: The point about sales-people being the baddies is one that doesn’t hold for IC (Cutter is a shopkeeper). I’m disappointed it seemed so simplistic for the other books, actually. Colin Brush, Al, PinkDreamPoppies, Glenn Bridgeman: The point about unduly punishing Lin (whether for ‘selling out’ (which I don’t think she did)) or not, is crucial. You’ve all given me serious thought here. What I’m striving for is precisely for bad things to happen to people but that are not punishments. Bad things happen to them, whether or not they did things that are reprehensible. Having said which, I acknowledge that the structure of narrative, particularly tradition three-act narrative is to a certain extent intrinsically moralistic, so whether I intend it or not, that may be a ramification, but fwiw, I’ve been trying not to punish. (Also why IC is furthest from the three-act structure of all the books. I think Colin’s point about the ending of IC isn’t unrelated to that, and may mean that my attempts to inflict but not to punish are becoming more successful.) The question of whether I’m too harsh on Lin et al is knotty, and I can’t come up with a neat answer. I clearly overstepped a line for some people. All I can plead is that I was always conscious of the line, and if I overstepped it, it wasn’t because I wasn’t aware of the issue. (Worth remembering that it’s never unequivocally stated that Lin was raped – it’s only clear that Isaac believes she has been.) PinkDreamPoppies, you made me wince with embarrassment with your stuff about ‘’this is what life is like, can you take it?’ In fact, in my house the phrase ‘Can you take it?’ is commonly trotted out as a parody of trite self-important self-styled ‘radical’ (or as I tend to render it in this context, ‘wadical’) ‘gritty’, sneery, etc point-scoring. I blush that I came across that way. Wasn’t intentional. And again, I was aware of the danger, and tried to walk the line. Clearly, for some, I failed. Glenn Bridgeman: In brief, I only want to say that I’m glad that I never came across as sloganeering to you. (Worth mentioning that your surprise that I evaded ‘stodgy socialist orthodoxy’ may be a function of the fact that many US libertarians seem to have a partial or flawed conception of the socialist tradition beyond a very narrow trench. Of course I can’t speak for you, but in my experience of debating with libertarians, often the viewpoint they’re arguing with is not mine (it’s usually Stalinism of some species, of which I am of course an implacable enemy).) And thank you for the recommendation, no, I haven’t read Martin, but I know that’s a terrible omission, and many people keep telling me I must. I will, I will… yabonn: There’s always room for ‘mr miéville, i love your books’. Thank you. And yes, the issue of what happens now with the council is very tricky – any further returns to NC will necessitate politically locating the city vis-à-vis the council. I have some ideas. agm: Part of my whole approach is to stress that readers can criticize things on grounds I wasn’t conscious of. But yes it’s a grey area, that necessitates judgement calls – on occasion, I may think that someone has simply applied inappropriate criteria (if someone said, for example, that IC sucked because it was a failed attempt to mirror the structure of Huckleberry Finn, I’d say they were wrong), but often it’s precisely the application of things I hadn’t thought of that I learn most from. iotar: (Hi, btw.) See Henry’s and Al’s responses, which I think are excellent (though of course I disagree with Al about revolution as being an impractical inspiration). I’d add though that basically I think iotar has a point – I think my conception of revolution is touched by the romantic/transcendent. (See my footnote on Harrison.) I think this is related to my unabashedness about Marxism’s relation to the utopian tradition. I’m also very conscious of the dangers of this position – I don’t want to turn into a flake. But I don’t think that conception necessitates being a kind of Marxo-hippy wittering on about transcendant realms. I had an argument once with Ken Macleod during the course of which (as far as I remember – I don’t want to misrepresent) he said that if we couldn’t lay down a fairly clear and detailed blueprint for a post-revolutionary society, it was unconvincing , because after all, we’re the same people who’d be living there so it shouldn’t be unimaginable to us. To which I replied that I disagreed, that I thought precisely we would not be the same people living there, because the experience of transforming the world is one which also inevitably leads to the self-transformation of the transformers. (I think you can see that historically – in feudalism, there were plenty of utopian/egalitarian movements, but it was in the actual processes of radical change that concrete models of alternative societies got most coherently articulated.) Doug M. et al: I’m sorry, I don’t think I was very clear. I don’t think Tolkien thinks everything is ok, I think he knows it isn’t but wishes it were so he performs a kind of tragic lullaby. I absolutely agree that his vision is tragic, and it’s one of the things that I think makes his view of the world considerably more interesting than that of many of his grandchildren. Also worth noting that a tragic view doesn’t preclude consolation or ‘eucatastrophe’, which was always more complicated than sometimes depicted, and to my mind is more about insisting on the world existing within a meaningful moral schema than about it simply being a ‘happy’ ending. There’s a very interesting comment by Sebastian Holsclaw after John H’s essay where he quotes Tolkien on consolation. It’s noteworthy that Tolkien says that the joy and grace of eucatastrophe (far more powerful and religiose (in this context I don’t mean that as a diss) than just ‘everything turns out nice’) are ‘miraculous’, ‘never to be counted on to recur’: but he also says of eucatastrophe that it is the ‘true form’ of fairy-tale (which here also means his kind of fantasy), its ‘highest function’, and that crucially, he’d almost insist that ‘all complete fairy-stories must have it’. In other words, it can never be counted on, except that you have to have it. I’m not trying to score cheap shots, I’m trying to say he was trapped in a conceptual conundrum, whereby he wants consolation both to be truly redemptive grace, which necessitates its non-inevitability, but he also needs it there as a policy prescription for fantasy. Al: Al makes several excellent points in his long post, particularly I’m very impressed with his corrective to me vis-à-vis my invoking Iain Sinclair. Al’s quite right, without someone writing uptown NC, my writing downtown is always partial. But I’m also impressed with his alternative suggestions, that my writing downtown NC is more meaningful in terms of locating it within ‘the broader world of “fantasy”’, and that NC is coded London. Phew – now that’s my kind of criticism: one that contains its own get-out clause. Al, I’m in your debt. And yes, the Butch Cassidy reference was deliberate. Doug: Yes, the history of real revolutions was in my mind, but at a conscious level at least, didn’t loom as large as, say, the Paris commune. Perhaps in part precisely because the aestheticising effect of fiction is somewhat analogous to that of history. This is already far too long – I’ll draw it to a close with thanks again. China PS: I’ve kept this response to david g to a postscript, because his points are more like political provocations and have little to do with the books. Nonetheless, here for anyone interested I respond in brief. This could easily lead to a long and fruitless political debate, which isn’t suitable to this forum, so in this context I’ll probably let these be my last word on these matters. This isn’t a ‘refusal to debate’ but an attempt to respect this particular forum’s purpose. i) ‘Fallen human nature’ is of course the most common argument against socialism, and is to my mind utterly inadequate. Presumably, if we’re going to marshall that vague, nebulous, untheorised and unfalsifiable ideal-type to ‘explain’ social forms, then ‘human nature’ must ‘explain’ not only the presumed failure of socialism, but also the success of capitalism, the constant failure of capitalism, the crisis of feudalism, the preceding several centuries of success of feudalism and its hierarchies, the clan/tribal structures of ‘dark ages’ Britain, their later collapse, the rise of the Roman republic, the fall of the Roman empire, the egalitarianism of many gatherer-hunter societies, and America’s war in Iraq. Anything which explains everything like that explains nothing at all. ii) In case it needs to be said, I am neither unmindful of nor unmoved by the many millions dead at the hands of self-styled socialist regimes (and am insulted by the perhaps unintentional insinuation that I am). I have historical analyses for what happened in these cases. iii) To say that WW1 was a unique trauma has nothing to do with suggesting that it was ‘the worst war ever’ or that those who fought suffered ‘worse’ than, say, those in the Thirty Years War (what would those statements even mean?). The point is that WW1, occurring as it did, after decades of misplaced faith in the ‘rationality’ of capitalism, being the first global war to turn the very progressive powers of capitalism to mass slaughter on a huge industrialised scale, represented a trauma in Modernity’s self-conception. I take this from, among other places, José Monleon’s excellent book (though one with which I have all sorts of arguments) ‘A Specter is Haunting Europe: A Sociohistorical Approach to the Fantastic’.

By: James Russell

James Russell — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 10:24:54 +0000

Though Lovecraft never saw war… …he did, however, attempt to enlist in the Great War around the middle of 1917. Fans of “what-if?” speculation can have hours of fun imagining the ramifications for his life and career had this attempt not been blocked.

By: Colin Brush

Colin Brush — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 22:03:29 +0000

Belle Waring’s complaint about the fate of Lin in PSS only scratches at the surface of something that has bothered me since reading that book: namely, that CM unduly punishes his characters, particularly when they make moral decisions that are questionable at best. Lin is only the most obvious example: by knowingly consorting with a criminal, for reasons to do with her own vanity, she has her mind eviscerated. Isaac, in his relentless search for a means to create a machine to make a garuda fly, unwittingly unleashes horrible monsters on the city and loses both his livelihood, home, many of his friends and his partner in the process – ultimately, he is forced to flee the city carrying the guilt of what his curiosity did to Lin, his friends and many other innocents. Judah Lowe condemns hundreds on the train to be frozen out of time, denying them freewill and the life/death they had chosen – for that he is killed by Ann-Hari. Bellis Coldwine in The Scar is duped into helping the New Crobuzon agent (whose name I forget, I’m afraid) in his attempts to destroy Armada. She enlists Tanner (I hope that’s right), both of them believing that they are saving their former home from a great evil. Their actions inflict a near fatal wound on the city. Both endure punishment – albeit mildly. Yag the Garuda raped one of his kind. It is his secret and he hides his shame. The chance to fly again is in the machine that Isaac builds, but Isaac refuses, abandoning Yag to the fate decreed on him by his people. His punishment continues. The remade are men and women that have transgressed the structures of New Crobuzon and so they have been punished by being turned into slave-monsters of questionable use to the society they are forced to serve. Those last three punishments listed above are meted out by the world and characters CM creates and as such are perfectly acceptable, but placed alongside the continual punishment of his protagonists it seems that hurting his characters is what CM, consciously or unconsciously, is repeatedly drawn towards depicting. The punishments of Lin, Isaac and Judah are directly attributable to their own actions but because they are protagonists, through whom we see the world, and because their fates could quite easily have been different had CM wished without significantly altering the stories meanings or dramas, I am left with the inescapable conclusion that CM is forcing punishment on his characters. This may well be, as has been suggested by CM, in part a reaction to most of the feel-good, everything’s-alright-in-the-end endings commercial fantasy usually churns out. However, it does seem to me as dishonest a depiction in its own way as endings that provide ceaseless flights of redemption. Though I know I am reading a story and it is not life – nor should it be an accurate depiction thereof – but if we are to have complex morality in our fiction then should it not come out of the characters rather than being a system of checks and balances imposed by the author? People do bad things but unless society catches up with them they often get away with it. Having to carry on your life as you left it and living and dealing with the consequences of your actions would seem to me a more satisfying and thoughtful end to some of these characters’ stories. On a positive note, with Iron Council I was heartened to see that Cutter and Ann-Hari, though thoroughly disillusioned and almost broken at the end, were actually allowed to be the flawed human beings they were without the story visiting further terrors on them. I hope this doesn’t sound too harsh (and I hope my argument makes some sense), because I have found CM’s books, particularly PSS and Iron Council, to be some of the most readable, inspiring, provocative and – I don’t use the word lightly – dangerous fiction around. Best Colin Brush

By: Colin Brush

Colin Brush — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 22:02:45 +0000

By: Colin Brush

Colin Brush — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 22:01:41 +0000

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 09:27:40 +0000

jq, aha, both drawing on the same historical source instead of CM picking it up second hand. Galloping to the past, rather than trotting through art.