"SF and Literary Tradition by Thomas Clareson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Award Stories 6)

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SCIENCE FICTION AND
LITERARY TRADITION

by Thomas D. Clareson

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, THE COLLEGE OF WOOSTER,
WOOSTER, OHIO

Although Edwin B. Burgum makes only incidental men-
tion of science fiction in his 1965 article, "Freud and
Fantasy in Contemporary Fiction," he does underscore
what may well be the primary cause for the ever-growing
interest in the genre. "The rise of the novel of fantasy,"
he writes, "is the most noteworthy innovation in present-
day fiction throughout the Western world.." 1 Until re-
cently, he continues, novelists accepted "the objective
existence of society as a common point of reference with
their readers, differing only in the technique for the use
of valid detail in its presentation." In short, what he calls
the "predominant tradition" in modern fiction has sought
to achieve a close verisimilitude to everyday life.
From its beginnings in the eighteenth century, modem
fiction has remained socially conscious. It has confronted
society in an effort to dramatize the problems of its times.
To do this, whether emphasizing the external world, as
did Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and DOS Passes, or the in-
ternal world" -inner space"-as did Joyce, Virginia
Woolf, and Faulkner, its writers have attempted to re-
produce in minute detail the quality of experience of the-
man-down-the-street in every-town, the world. The result
has been to increase concentration upon the analysis of
character, creating the convention of psychological realism
and producing those critics who would define the novel
solely in terms of character analysis.
(1) Edwin B. Burgum, "Freud and Fantasy in Contemporary Fic-
tion," Science and Society, 29 (Spring 1965), p. 224.
Until recently, writes Burgum. For two patterns have
emerged in contemporary fiction. On the one band, citing
both Heller's Catch 22 and Kafka's The Trial as suc-
cessful examples, Burgum points to .those writers who
have used "the preposterous" to convey more clearly "a
tenable interpretation of the social reality external to the
subjectivity of the individual." The word interpretation is
the key, for it both denies that an objective, external
"reality" has been captured, and implies that the novelist
has intentionally created a symbolic construct having
value only as it reveals something of .the human condi-