PD Smith

Sea-Wind & Stone Gods

30 September 2007 | Reviewing, Science & literature, SF | 8 comments

I’ve just been review­ing Rachel Car­son­’s Under the Sea-Wind (1941) which has been re-print­ed for the cen­ten­ni­al of her birth. It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten book explor­ing the life of the sea shore and the ocean. Car­son was a zool­o­gist and her descrip­tions are won­der­ful­ly detailed and evoca­tive: a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of sci­ence and poet­ry.

Here is a pas­sage in which she is describ­ing that mys­te­ri­ous moment when an eel sens­es that it is time to begin the long return jour­ney to the Sar­gas­so Sea to spawn:

“Now it was autumn again, and the water was chill­ing to the cold rains shed off the hard back­bones of the hills. A strange restive­ness was grow­ing in Anguil­la the eel. For the first time in her adult life, the food hunger was for­got­ten. In its place was a strange, new hunger, form­less and ill-defined. Its dim­ly per­ceived object was a place of warmth and dark­ness — dark­er than the black­est night over Bit­tern Pond. She had known such a place once — in the dim begin­nings of life, before mem­o­ry began. She could not know that the way to it lay beyond the pond out­let over which she had clam­bered ten years before. But many times that night, as the wind and the rain tore at the sur­face film of the pond, Anguil­la was drawn irre­sistibly toward the out­let over which the water was spilling on its jour­ney to the sea. When the cocks were crow­ing in the farm­yard over the hill, salut­ing the third hour of the new day, Anguil­la slipped into the chan­nel spilling down to the stream below and fol­lowed the mov­ing water.”

And while we’re on the sub­ject of sci­ence and great writ­ing, there’s an excel­lent review of Jeanette Win­ter­son­’s nov­el, The Stone Gods, by Ursu­la K Le Guin in the Guardian. I like Win­ter­son­’s writ­ing and I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing her lat­est one, but I do sym­pa­thise with Le Guin’s crit­i­cism of “lit­er­ary” writ­ers like Win­ter­son who (appar­ent­ly) makes it plain that she hates sci­ence fic­tion “even as she open­ly com­mits genre” — the nov­el is part­ly set in a pol­lut­ed future world and in “Wreck City”, all that remains after an apoc­a­lyp­tic Third World War.

“I am both­ered,” writes Le Guin, “by the curi­ous ingrat­i­tude of authors who exploit a com­mon fund of imagery while pre­tend­ing to have noth­ing to do with the fel­low-authors who cre­at­ed it and left it open to all who want to use it. A lit­tle return gen­eros­i­ty would hard­ly come amiss.”

Ouch!

8 comments so far:

  1. LiteraryMinded | 01 October 2007

    Thanks so much for that PD. I am also inter­est­ed in Winterson;s work. I hope I get a chance to read this one some­time 🙂

    Angela

  2. Mary McMyne | 01 October 2007

    I love Win­ter­son­’s essays, in par­tic­u­lar the col­lec­tion ART OBJECTS: ESSAYS ON ECSTASY AND EFFRONTERY, but I hate to admit I’m not famil­iar with her fic­tion. When you say you like her writ­ing, do you mean you’ve read her fic­tion before? I’m inter­est­ed to know what you think of it.

    I love Ursu­la’s phras­ing there: “com­mit genre.” That’s one way to put it! And I think LeGuin could’ve made anoth­er stip­u­la­tion: the best “genre” fic­tion does­n’t “com­mit” these flaws, just as the best lit­er­ary fic­tion does­n’t. I don’t remem­ber Asi­mov using stilt­ed dia­logue to describe the world of the FOUNDATION TRILOGY. Nor do I recall Von­negut get­ting par­tic­u­lar­ly pur­ple in SIRENS OF TITAN. Iron­ic, yes. Humor­ous­ly over­wrought, yes (I’m think­ing of a sec­tion near the begin­ning about a goi­ter — a long sev­er­al para­graphs about a woman in a crowd with a goi­ter — it goes on and on — and it’s hilar­i­ous!). Hon­est­ly, it sounds like Win­ter­son­’s nov­el could’ve ben­e­fit­ed from clos­er study of the mas­ters of the genre her char­ac­ters claim to hate!

  3. PD Smith | 02 October 2007

    Thanks Angela — by the way, I very much enjoyed your piece on “Loli­ta” the oth­er day…

    Hi Mary: I haven’t read the col­lec­tion of essays you men­tion, but I enjoyed “Writ­ten on the Body” and “Gut Sym­me­tries”. She’s cer­tain­ly a pow­er­ful writer. I came to her work because she’s some­one who tries to bring sci­en­tif­ic themes into her writ­ing — not always suc­cess­ful­ly, it has to be said; but at least she’s try­ing! I’d def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend her work & look for­ward to read­ing her lat­est nov­el.

    Yes, I loved Ursu­la’s phrase too. I real­ly don’t know what it is about SF that so offends some lit­er­ary writ­ers. They don’t seem to have the same fear of the crime genre… As far as I’m con­cerned there are just two types of writ­ing: good and bad writ­ing.

  4. David Thorpe | 02 October 2007

    Have you read Tan­glewreck? What a mess! It’s like it need­ed about 5 more drafts — a tan­gle of ideas thrown into a cru­cible and only half cooked — instead of let­ting the ideas come through out of the nar­ra­tive and char­ac­ters, the ideas are all on the sur­face, in your face, and forc­ing the char­ac­ters and nar­ra­tive.

    Actu­al­ly they’re good ideas. But a lit­tle more time (not a delib­er­ate joke — the book’s about time and rel­a­tiv­i­ty but she does­n’t under­stand the sci­ence), thought and care to prop­er­ly inte­grate the ideas would­n’t have been amiss. I saw her read­ing from it at Hay last year.

    Le Guin has a point, and it was a very good review. But I’m not too both­ered when non-SF writ­ers step into the genre. The bound­aries are arti­fi­cial any­way. Gen­res are a mar­ket­ing idea. I nev­er think I am writ­ing SF. In writ­ing Hybrids I was just extap­o­lat­ing a few things and try­ing to get it emo­tion­al­ly right, polit­i­cal­ly right. And Ishig­uro’s Nev­er Let Me Go is fab­u­lous (now there’s a writer who makes every word count) and uses SF ideas, but it’s not SF either because it’s not a self-con­sis­tent sto­ry­world. In this style, where sci­ence ideas are tak­en by lit­er­ary writ­ers (and was­n’t HG Wells the founder one such?) and treat­ed metaphor­i­cal­ly or as a start­ing point for an imag­i­na­tive jour­ney, you might enjoy ‘One Hand Clap­ping’ by Lise Ler­oux.

    This is a fab­u­lous work, which she wrote after read­ing about a mouse some sien­tist had graft­ed an ear on the back of.
    (Inci­den­tal­ly she was for a while a neigh­bour of mine until some cow­boy mafia builders forced her into bank­rupt­cy)…

  5. PD Smith | 02 October 2007

    No, I’ve not read “Tan­glewreck”, but I think I know what you mean about the “tan­gle of ideas”: it’s true that her use of sci­ence is not always very sub­tle. Good point.

    I agree: I’m all in favour of writ­ers explor­ing sci­ence and SF ideas — the more the mer­ri­er! I just get a bit fed up with this snob­bery about SF.

    I don’t know Ler­oux’s book — thanks for the tip, David! It sounds fas­ci­nat­ing…

  6. Lise Leroux | 01 December 2007

    I just ran into this web­site when I was search­ing for some­thing else, and want­ed to thank you for your com­ment on One Hand Clap­ping! Hope you enjoy it. And don’t wor­ry, my next book is going to have sev­er­al Welsh cow­boy mafia builders who get turned into some­thing awful … Some­times it’s a very good thing to be a writer!

  7. PD Smith | 04 December 2007

    Hi Lise! Good to hear from you.

  8. Lise Leroux | 19 December 2007

    Thanks, PD … a plea­sure to run into anoth­er writer who writes in a sim­i­lar­ly cross-genre style …!