The Pensive Penguin

This one’s pretty long.  It’s an essay I wrote a few months back with a very pretentious title.  Enjoy…

Inquiries at the Border Between Fantasy and Reality: An Artist’s Manifesto

I have always considered art as a socially introspective exploration.  To ask what the artist and audience are exploring is a deeply individualized inquiry that varies not only from one work of art to another but also from one artist to the next and one audience to the next.  We experience art as a communal audience, but we each have our own personalized reactions side by side. Whether it is literally in front of an exhibit in a museum or in adjacent seats in a theater or metaphorically when someone else reads a book I’ve read before, together we look inside ourselves and find something new. 

                The interesting facet of this social introspection is how much room it leaves for the manipulation of perception.  We each have our own way of seeing, interpreting and reconciling ourselves with everything around us.  What art has the potential to do is to (at least) temporarily alter that perception.  Thomas Pynchon, in The Crying of Lot 49 took the altered perceptions route directly, using drugs as a key plot element to add fantastical elements to what would have otherwise been a straightforward mystery.  His protagonist Oedipa’s quest for truth, and her struggles with the world around her are very common, very real aspects of everyday life that plague mankind, but they are presented in a new light to an audience which is experiencing these familiarities from an unfamiliar angle.

                This anchor in reality is what makes the Fantasy and Science Fiction genres so interesting.  The everyday person thrust into such extraordinary situations is such an intriguing idea because we identify personally with that real person and get the opportunity to experience something fantastic and have an adventure that otherwise could not have been more than a dream.  Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books, both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There are an excellent example of this.  They are children’s books, to be certain, with little in terms of depth beyond a fun adventure, but this escape is exactly what gives them their charm.  Alice is any little girl, a faceless, average child tired of the boring ebb and flow of the adult world rotating around her, and she escapes into each of these dream worlds to meet new, exciting characters doing new and exciting things that she and, by extension we, could only have ever dreamed of.

                The other side of this fantasy coin, in which extraordinary characters are thrust into ordinary situations, is equally intriguing because of the “how would somebody else have handled this?” factor.  It would be a rather difficult task, probably rather impossible, to find even a single individual who never measures himself in terms of others, and the idea of extending that notion beyond comparing oneself to average “others” into the realm of comparing oneself to non-average others throws a wrench into the machinery.  George Orwell asked us, “What if a farm-full of animals were to form a Democratic government?” in Animal Farm.  His answer that they would become just as corrupt when given power as humans tend to sends the reassuring message that it is not human nature, but nature in general that falls victim to the corruption inherent in holding a seat of power.

                Not all such fiction, though, is so warmly reassuring—so invitingly cuddly.  Philip Dick explores the “big” questions in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and the answers he implies are much less optimistic.  Dick questions the three most basic (and simultaneously most complex and mysterious) facets of the world we live in—humanity, divinity and reality.  That he does it over the backdrop of a fictitious future gives a sense that it all is just speculation, but that speculation lies at the root of concepts that have plagued mankind and its perception of the world for as long as mankind has been conscious of its perception of the world.

                For an even more direct look at reality and how we perceive it, I look to Haruki Murakami and his novel Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.  We get, in the parallel stories, one side which descends into the depths of one mostly ordinary man’s subconscious iteration of the world, and the other side where this same man is coming to grips with a reality that is a long way removed from what he had previously thought.  Part of the draw to fiction—what grabs us so violently and pulls us in—is escaping from the reality we have come to know.

                Another very strong pull fiction writing has is the opposite of escaping reality; inspecting reality—picking through it with a fine-toothed comb—can be just as rewarding as taking a vacation from it.  Admittedly, there are rarely any concrete answers or conclusions to be drawn from such inquiries, but that hasn’t stopped artists of all types in all media from peeking.  F. Scott Fitzgerald dove into the literary scene of the roaring twenties with This Side of Paradise, in which Amory Blaine runs the gamut of social stereotypes trying to find himself; trying to figure out the world weighs so heavily on this protagonist that in the end he concludes that, despite his best efforts, all he knows is himself.

                Trying to figure out the world, to understand what is really going on here, is the main theme for David James Duncan in The River Why.  His protagonist Gus Orviston thinks he has the world all figured out only to discover that he has everything wrong, sending him spiraling violently and painfully into an existential abyss.  As bleak as Gus’s situation may seem, it pales in comparison to the purgatory described in Father Arnall’s sermon from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  This sermon is one of many epiphanical moments Stephen Dedalus undergoes as he comes of age wondering just what to make of the world.

                Such questions of perception, reality, and our place as humans within that reality, as well as the effects of our perceptions on that reality are the focal theme of my own work.  Examining the world thusly, in ways that challenge the common mentalities that limit our thinking, is my goal in doing so.  The impetus in art is to elicit an emotional response in an audience, and the sum total of these works—where my writing wants to lead—is toward the mindful questioning of the reality to which we claim to be accustomed.

1). Carroll, Lewis. The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition. New York: Norton and Co, 2000. Print.

Alice is any ordinary girl who finds herself in what can only be called an extraordinary circumstance.  The adventures she has in Wonderland and inside her Looking-glass have been bending reality for delighted children for over a century now.  What is most delightful about Carroll’s bending is his simple use of non-sequitur.  What any adult understands to be an absurd interpretation of a common thought is warped into something altogether different and patently absurd, but at the same time exactly what might be expected out of context.  Take the riddle told at the never-ending tea party, for example.  A raven is in no way like a writing desk, and trying to link them is ridiculous, so Alice is chided for trying to give an answer.  Her mistake, of course, is in presuming that the riddle has an answer, something she has come to expect in her reality, but which cannot be counted upon in Wonderland.  The basic crash course in not counting on previously formed concepts is a terribly fun introduction to the fantasy genre.

2). Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. Print.

Faced with the question of whether androids can be said to be human, Rick Deckard begins to question his career choice.  How can he “retire” androids when the line between doing so and snuffing out a human life is so thin?  The theme of perceived realities being questioned pervades this story.  Rick had never questioned the ethics of retiring androids until he was made to see how similar it is to killing.  Similarly, the reaction of the key characters to learning that the fusion experience created by the empathy box is manufactured rather than spiritual is telling of the concept of faith in Dick’s fictional future.  The fine line between man (or animal) and machine he depicts blurs the reader’s concept of humanity the same way his depiction of the fine line between belief and reality blurs the reader’s concept of truth.  Is there any truth to be had anymore, or is it painted backdrops and ersatz facsimiles all the way down?

3). Duncan, David James. The River Why. New York: Bantam Books, 1983. Print.

Given the opportunity to choose any activity at any time, Gus Orviston will drop his bait in the river every time.  At least that is his answer at the beginning of this coming-of-age story.  He quickly learns, though, that there is far more to life than the immediate satisfaction of spending as much time as possible on a single favored activity.  Gus implements his “ideal schedule” which consists of nothing but a minimum time “wasted” on essential survival activities such as eating, sleeping and defecating, and a maximum of fishing.  Growing up, he dreamed of this. In his mind, getting the opportunity was heaven.  As he withdrew from the world he knew, he came to realize that all was not as it seemed.  The keyword in Duncan’s title, and peppered through the novel is “why?”  Questioning is the word of the day, and Gus learns this along with the reader as he comes to see that having an answer isn’t the closure he thought it would be.  As Gus climbs the mountain and sees the winding cursive “why” spelled out by the river he has been fishing for so long, he learns that the world is not made of answers, it is made of questions.

4). Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. New York: Knopf Inc, 1996. Print.

As is often the case with a self-exploration story, we meet the protagonist Amory Blaine early in life, and he thinks he has answers.  As is also often the case in these stories, Amory learns that the questions are far more complicated than he ever imagined, and his answers just don’t fill out his worldview.  As things start to turn out less ideally than he had planned, when his love marries another man because he makes more money, when his friend dies in a car accident, when his lifestyle begins to kick him in the pants, Amory comes to realize that what he thought he saw in the world was an illusion.  The wrench in the machine, though, is that even once he sees the illusions for what they are, Amory still can’t tell what is not an illusion.  Eventually, Amory decides that for all of his expensive education, all he knows is himself.  He only knows the world as seen through a prism, and that warped perception of reality lends him no means to know anything else.

5). Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man. New York: Penguin, 1991. Print.

                Joyce, a writer celebrated for his stream-of-consciousness style and use of epiphany, uses his two signature elements masterfully in this novel as he depicts the growth of Stephen Dedalus from a small child trying to make sense of the adult’s discussion of politics into a man searching for aesthetic beauty.  Each formative moment in his protagonist’s timeline builds upon the last.  As the sum total of his education, Stephen learns that, as P.B. Shelley said, the more he learns, the more he realizes he doesn’t know.  Eventually, Stephen gets to a point where he gets stuck.  He dedicates himself to aesthetics, studying beauty as an artist.  What we come to learn is that ultimately each of us is an individual with our own existence, our own beauty, and our own world; the only way to find our own is to search, seek and ask.

6). Murakami, Haruki. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. New York: Kodansha Intl, 1991. Print.

                Central to this annotated bibliography is the idea of a personal reality.  Nowhere is that more simply constructed than in the “End of the World” segments of this novel.  Presented in alternating chapters with the “Hardboiled Wonderland” segments, “The End of the World” is a construct of the world existing entirely in the narrator’s subconscious.  This is an extreme example, of course, but it represents the spirit of perceiving the world creatively, individually, and most importantly in a new way.  The “Hardboiled Wonderland” segments are not without their own fantasy elements as well, depicting a real world which would startle most people on its own, but juxtaposed with “The End of the World” the narrator’s reality seems downright normal.  This relative normalcy of a situation that would usually be deemed quite fantastical makes for an even more jarring effect of the altered perception of reality Murakami treats his readers to.

7). Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York: Penguin, 1996. Print.

                What if?  What if all the animals in a farm orchestrated a revolt and took over?  What if they were to try their hand (hoof?) at democracy?  The easiest way of seeing things in a different light is to pick up the lamp and put it in a new location.  Orwell clearly thinks our world leaders, at least the ones during his time, are no better than pigs, getting fat and lazy off the hard work of others.  Whether Orwell intended to or not, this begs the question, are the world leaders he satirizes no better than pigs, or are the pigs no worse than the world leaders?  One of the benefits of allegorical writing is its propensity to cast a new light, to highlight what was previously a dark corner that might have gone unnoticed.  The cornerstone to learning something new is to question what is already known.  Maybe it will hold true, maybe not, but if this anthology says anything, it is that the questions are far more valuable than the answers.

8). Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. Print.

                Oedipa Maas has a very tenuous grip on reality from the start of Pynchon’s narrative.  Questioning everything around her leads Oedipa on a quest for answers to questions she isn’t even sure are based on anything real.  The uncertain, hallucinatory nature of everything going on in this narrative leaves Oedipa and the reader wondering.  Even the ending doesn’t provide even an ounce of closure as Oedipa sits, waiting for a mysterious bidder in an estate auction who may not even exist, and if he does exist may not have any answers either.  The theme here is mystery and uncertainty.  Is there a secret underground postal system?  Is Pierce Inverarity playing a very elaborate practical joke from the grave?  There could be.  He could be.  The story is downright frustrating if it is combed for any answers that mean anything, but think of it instead as a manual on how to ask.  A guidebook for wondering, holding the reader’s hand and saying “this is how to search.”  Ask, but don’t ever be satisfied with an answer.  As the saying goes, the journey outweighs the destination.

Share on Facebook