A Mysterious Manifesto

by

Don Webb

 
 
Not long ago, a good writer named Wendy Wheeler
interviewed me for 
Gotta Write Network Litmag
.  She asked,
When did I think a story was successful?  I started to
answer some flippant remark on the lines of, "I don't know
what art is, but I know it when I see it."  But whenever I
can escape and easy answer and look for the Real answer, I
try to do so.  That seems to be the root of all true
becoming.  So this was my answer: "A good story makes us a
little unsure of the world we exist in. It fills us with the
sense of the unknown. Probably my guiding light here would
be Russian critic Victor Shlovsky's remark, 'The technique
of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar,' to make forms
difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of
perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be
prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing  the artfulness of
an object; the object itself is not important.' Real art
creates the Unknown, not the Known. If I am stirred by the
mystery of what I read (even if I have written it), then it
is successful."
 
Although pompous, this answer gave my insight into
things that I like and create -- that are always around the
edges of the SF world but never in its center.  I like
writers who make the world mysterious -- examples coming to
mind are R. A. Lafferty and Ballard.  I like those works
which essentially violate the SF paradigm of plot revolution
through cleverness and explanation of some obscure (or
momentarily forgotten) physical law, and replace it with a
world of wonder that is essentially unknown.  Hence I've
always been a big fan of Samuel Delaney's 
Dhalgren
.  Now
I've noticed that if you champion those works that try for
an opening up of the world over the implication of order
upon it, you will invariably be confronted with a fan who
not only pooh-poohs your taste, but 
becomes angry 
while
doing so.  If you doubt this try championing Delany at the
next con you go to.  Now this isn't a simple rejection of
your taste, but an actual emotional disease of someone who
cannot face an open world.  This revelation startled me,
like most people who have spent their years among the
yellowing paperbacks of Sf, I had always thought that there
was an essential brotherhood of fandom.  That our motives
were more the less the same.
 
I have discovered that there are two sets of motives,
which create two almost entirely different literatures.  The
consumer that seeks fantasy and science fiction merely as
the drug of choice to end their focus on the workaday world,
and the individual who seeks it to increase his or her focus
upon the possibilities of the world.  I refer to these as
the members of the gray school and of the mysterious school.
 Now this may not be a new observation.  I am sure it
doesn't take long to realize the difference between the
reader of trilogies and dekaologies and the dedicated reader
that spends a kazillion bucks in specialist catalogs.  But
for people who don't want to think, but want instead the
comfort of a an easily described world, SF is not nearly as
efficient a drug as are videos, computer games and the now
arising possibilities of virtual reality.  Since these drugs
are already pulling in fatalistic youth, SF readership keeps
declining.  We must realize that it is in the interest of
everyone not to lure kids away from video games, but instead
to change the remaining print medium into a place where an
ever higher level of energy can be made.  It is time not to
try to tone novels so that they sell better -- in fact
they'll sell worse because the active reader will move more
and more into a field where he or she  finds the material
that is needed.  It is very important to not only to herald
the new -- such as the Black Ice series, but also to quietly
do away with that type of critic which dismisses these books
because they threaten him or her.
 
I'm not suggesting offing certain reviewers (well I
ain't against it you understand), but instead rendering them
helpless by giving them a new Nintendo game.  Abraham Maslow
in his 
Towards a Psychology of Being
 shows the conception
between self actualization and the mysterious:
 
'SA [Self Actualizing] people are relatively
unfrightened by the unknown, the mysterious, the puzzling,
and often are positively attracted to it... They do not
neglect the unknown, or deny it, or run away from it, or try
to make believe it is really known, nor do they organize,
dichotomize, or rubicize it prematurely. They do not cling
to the familiar, nor is their quest for the truth a
catastrophic need for certainty, safety, definiteness, and
order... They can be, when the total situation calls for it,
comfortably disorderly, sloppy, anarchic, chaotic, vague,
doubtful, uncertain, indefinite, approximate, inexact, or
inaccurate..."
 
The Aristos

makes this quite clear under the rubric of "Mystery" (p.28)
he writes: "Mystery, or unknowing, is energy. As soon as a         
mystery is explained, it ceases to be a source of energy. If
we question deep enough there comes a point where answers,
if answers could be given, would kill. We may want to dam
the river; but we dam the spring at our peril. In fact,
since 'God' is knowable, we cannot dam the spring of basic
existential mystery. 'God' is the energy of all questions
and questing; and so the ultimate source  of all action and
volition." 
 
Now this distinction should not be thought of as in
favor of the literary as opposed to the "nut's-n-bolts"
school of science fiction writing.  The capacity for the
mysterious can exist in any type of SF including nonwriten
material.  It is the 
function
 of the writing that is the
focus.  Does the reader pursue the story for a sense of well
being that could probably be brought on better by a cup of
Mexican hot chocolate?  Or does she read for the moment of
stretching the self?  That instant when presented with a
reality beyond the scope of the world she knows, she has to

create more of herself
 in order to take it in. For those who
seek the latter experience a visit to a an SF specialty shop
is interesting -- most everything is invisible in its
grayness.  There will be -- if the seeker is incredibly
lucky --  one or two volumes promising the mysterious
experience.
 
For those who shun the mysterious (out of an emotional
disease) the visit to the SF shop is promising.  Everything
is there in its glorious commodity, except for the
occasional weirdo book.  And if they should have the unhappy
experience of picking 
Dhalgren
 or 
Nine Hundred Grandmothers

or 
The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
, they will go on a
religious crusade against the book.  Because the book
stirred some of that mysterious darkness within, they will
devote an astonishing amount of time against the book -- if
they are active fans they will write LOC after Loc or flame
on BBS.  (Yes I have seen modern cyberspace filled in a
tirade against Poe).  Poe is an interesting test.  Ask
people what they like.  The seekers after the mysteries will
go for "Ligea," "The Fall of the House of Usher" and will
make a stab at reading 
Eureka
  because they wanted to get
inside Poe's head and share the vision of the mysterious
dark.  The dwellers in grayness will love the detective
stories, "The Raven" which they will explain to you as the
suicidal poet meeting a trained bird by chance, and will say
that Poe was completely crazy when he wrote 
Eureka
.  (in
fact they'll say it's a stain to his memory).
 
Now that I've put myself in the mysterious camp, what
can I say about the good it brings besides enjoyment?  It
took me a long time to discover the good in those writers
who exemplify the mysterious school.  Who can claim there is
good in the strained verbal style of an H.P. Lovecraft or
the silly season stories of R.A. Lafferty?  The great
transfromtive good in these fictions is that they tell us
that there is 
so much we don't know
.  Gray Sf teaches us
that we live in a world that is thoroughly determined by
facts.  If we can just get the facts we either have power
(optimistic "classical" SF) or we are absolutely screwed
(New Wave Sf such as 
Oedipus Rex
 by Sophocles). Gray SF
teaches us that there is much, much more within and beyond
us.
 
I suspect the love of the mysterious is hard-wired deep
in Indo-european culture with its threefold division of
producer, soldier and king/priest/magician.  All of us
possess all three divisions in ourselves, but the later part
-- the king/priest/magician part needs to be nourished by
the unknown.  farmer-producer needs the known -- when to
plant, when to harvest, how to treat a cow with the
staggers.  The Farmer-producer in us yearns for the cyclical
fantasy tale -- the hero that re-creates the sun's journey. 
The soldier wants the how-to of strategy -- a mode based on
"If I am smarter than my enemy."  This section of ourselves
yearns for the tale of deduction, cleverness, and strategy
-- this yearning being so powerful among us that it creates
the strongly militaristic school of SF firstmost, and the
"hard" school secondmost.  This also explains why the
enthusiast of one is usually the enthusiast of the second. 
Neither of the first two functions, farmer-producer and
soldier,  have any taste for the unknown.  It is the
king/priest/magician who must face the world beyond the
borders (whether beyond his kingdom or among the unseen
powers) that hungers for the unknown.  It becomes a
necessity to cultivate a sense of awe in such individuals. 
Without consciously raising the love of the unknown in
themselves they will turn from the hard job of facing the
unknown and sleep with the peasants.
 
In the Germanic languages the words for advice and the
mysterious are related.  I chose Old Norse examples for this
useful thought complex; since the modern English forms of
these words "Rown" to whisper is only used in the British
army for passwords, and "Rune" is regarded only as the
written character because of Blum's terrible books on the
subject (we may yet see a true runic revival in Modern
English from the likes of Stephen flowers and Edred
Thorsson). Look at Old Norse mysterious school words:
 
Run
: "a secret, mystery, secret or occult lore; a
magical character or formula." 
 
Reyna
: "to try, experience, examine, search, pry,
inquire into something." As a reflexive verb this means "to
be proven, or turn out by experience." !
 
Ryna
: "to pry into."
 
Raun
: "a trial, experiment, experience"
 
Runi
runa
: "secret adviser." The form in -i is
masculine, the one in -a is feminine. These are valued and
secret advisers-- or inner advisers from the subjective
universe-- some of which may manifest in the objective
universe from time to time. 
 
 The complex of thought I was trying to find in why I
like certain modern (and postmodern) SF is there.  It is
secret (


Run

), 
it represents a methodical "prying into" in
other words the characters want to know the answers rather
than just accepting them as magic (

Reyna

), and ultimately it
advises the soul (

Runa

).  When I walk outside and look up at
the stars after reading Olaf Stapledon, I have a spiritual
experience.  Not one based on faith or primitive emotions,
but based on a love of the strange I have properly
cultivated and purveyed.
 
Given the above that the mysterious school will
interest the smallest section of readers, what does this do
to the market place?  The question of writing as commodity
is seldom addressed in serious criticism, but I would like
to discuss what effect the gray school has not only on the
products we see, but the the creators thereof -- and then I
would like to discuss certain strategies that we 
in our
proper roles as kings/priests/magicians
 can use to insure
the production and availability of the substances we crave. 
That the gray school rules is obvious to anyone who can
count the number of sequels, "coauthored" books, and shared
world anthologies.  These will no doubt always ne with us --
unless the promised 500 TV channels of the future removes
literacy altogether.  But the dangerous phenomenon is that
use of money to change the the writer of the mysterious
school into a gray school hack.  The best example (I will
limit myself to dead men, because it breaks my heart to
point out this slow death in the living -- although two
living authors came to mind as I wrote these words) is Frank
Herbert, who produced two excellent mysterious school books
- 
Dune
 and 
Whipping Star
.  
Dune 
 has a high sense of the
mysterious, but since the mysteries are incidental to the
plot -- this high energy book sold well.  However its
energy, that is to say its mystery, irritated the
comfortable gray school reader.  So he demanded, and sine
demand = money, got a series of sequel each worse than the
proceeding explaining away the mysteries.  Herbert sensed
something was wrong and tried to pep up the books with sex
and drugs, which along with violence are used as cheap
susbtitues for mysteries.  An empty stomach is not a good
political adviser, indeed that the mysterious school exists
in Sf is due to the fact that almost all SF writers have day
jobs and it is essentially a literature produces by
dilettantes.  
Whipping Star
 did not conceal its mysterious
nature, and despite its excellence, not only went out of
print, but produced no critical notice as well.  The lure of
money can't be denied.  If you have to get medical
treatment, fix your cheap clunker car, etc.  It will be
there whispering bad gray advice.  So we have to change the
lure.
 
So here are nine ways to promote the mysterious school. 
Only you can save the sense of wonder.  If you let it fail
don't despair at all the gray people that surround you in
your old age.
 

1.  Read to your children.
  Do not let them listen to
Barney, do not let your school system take care of this --
the school system belongs to the grays.  get highly charges
mysterious books and read aloud.  As the Runa-word complex
illustrates hearing the advice is important.  Two books to
begin with 
Half Magic
 and 
The Cat in the Hat
.  Those who do
not read to their children are accursed.  Utilmately this
leads to certain Freudian mysteries which connect infant
sexuality with the wonder tale, and the ability to find
mates that give good story (and thus incarnate the mystery
of 
Runi
 or 
Runa
 mentioned above).
 

2.  Buy and donate mysterious hardbacks to your local
library.
  Make damn sure that there's a copy of Edgar Rice
Burroughs' 
The Gods of Mars
 for junior high school kids to
read, and a copy of 
Naked Lunch
 for that pervy High School
senior.  Fight the ban the books people toe-to-toe. 
 
 
3.  Never pass up an opportunity to use cultural
prestige as a tool against the gray book.
  If you review
books for the littlest fanzine, to your local BBS, to just
your friends -- you need to make a campaign of telling
people that to be sen buying or reading X or Y gray book is
to look stupid.  Cultural pressure will take care of the
rest.  Better books will be printed (although not read), and
the future grows more secure this way.
 

4. Write letters to publishers praising books for their
mysterious content.
 If you happen to find a book that
energizes your life through the sense of the unknown it
gives you, you must write the letter of praise to the
publisher.  If by some miracle of miracles you find the book
in a chain store, mention that fact explicitly "At the B.
Dalton's in Pinefart" and send a copy to the publisher and
the head of the chain. 
 

5.  Write letters to publishers and chains complaining
about any gray school book first appearance.
  If you can
stop the reprinting of a gray school book, you have
performed an important defensive action.  It is particularly
powerful to write when you see a good writer slipping. 
"Dear Publisher, whereas I loved D. B. Bowen's 
The
Cellophane Fawn
, because of its high sense of mystery -- I
feel his current 
Cellophane Fawn Chronicles
 is a a boring
book designed to fill in the "gaps" of the earlier classic. 
Why not let this one fade away, and encourage Bowen to
return his creative roots.  If not I know he will loose me
and thousands of others as a readers.  The concept of the
trilogy is frankly outdated in these new high energy times." 
This also suggests creative pranksterism when you see such
books displayed.  Now I would never advocate any illicit
acts (yeah, right), but let hose of you possessed of a
trickster nature follow the dicatates of your hearts.
 

6.  Make sure that used copies of gray books go to the
recycling bin instead of the used bookstore.
 

7.  Write (and cause to be written) critical articles
on mysterious school writers.
  The amount and direction of
critical thinking both encourages young writers in certain
directions as well insuring the print status of certain
works through the powerful force of cultural prestige (and
if you are a king/priest/magician determining cultural
prestige is your job).  Do not write that ten thousandth
essay on Ursula Le Guin, write about Lafferty, write about
Cordwainder Smith.  If you can't write (here is a secret
everyone can write) than demand these essays from such
critics and historians as you are apt to meet.  Better still
if you teach a class about SF, demand these essays from your
students.  
 

8.  Tie the demand for mysterious writing with other
demands in even the most unlikely places.
  Say you're
writing your congress about the Thor Power tool law, cast
your thought in the form of preserving the imaginative
mysterious wellspring of pour culture.  Anytime you can push
the idea push it.  This will have three benefits. Firstly it
will raise the love of the unknown in you.  Secondly it will
awaken the occasional seeker who has looked for this
articulation to explain her tastes.  Thirdly if you're a bit
of a wordsmith than it's likely that the congressman will
plagiarize you -- and you've released a n important meme. 
Release enough and keep the pressure on the world, and the
world will change.  This is a great secret of magic.   
 
 
9.  Learn to use the word Weird correctly and as a
complement.
  This is actually a way of changing the word-map
of the worlds through remanifestation.  It is hard to shift
a paradigm, because it requires subtle continuing work. 
Weird in the language of our ancestors' ancestors meant a
mysterious Becoming -- something happening in accordance
with a hidden pattern.  Nowadays we use the word merely to
indicate something odd as in "Man that was weird!" One guy
killing another guy with a sword is not weird.  One guy
happening to fins his heroic grandfather's sword on the
battlefield and killing twenty guys is weird.  That pattern
of the hidden becoming manifest was the source of wonder in
ancient tales, it still powers modern folklore -- and it is
the power which in its most artful refined form creates the
writing of the mysterious school.  It is powerful feeling
when you withhold certain parts of the message and meaning. 
It it pulls the other in.  If you want to experience that
hidden power as well as bring about more mysterious school
writing, here's your chance to shift some paradigms.  Only
use the word weird when it applies.  Talk about those things
which have a truly weird happening.  Forsake the use of the
word when talking about the odd.  This is a very difficult
exercise, don't berate yourself or others for failing. 
Merely try.  And when you have reclaimed that word, and
(through your hidden persistence) begin very sparingly to
use it as a complement for certain kinds of writing.  Do
this magic my fellow kings/priests/magicians and we can
create  that truly mysterious thing -- the Weird tale. 
 

.