the general weirdness of fiction

I happened to notice that W., in one of his comments on somebody else's comments, mentioned the author Daniel Pinkwater, a writer I enjoy tremendously, who also qualifies as the single most surreal children's author to ever be published. A scene from his book young adult novel has sustained me in my moments of confrontation with authority for years: a group of high school students have printed and passed around their school some cards, reading "Horace Gerstenblut n'existe pas." Horace Gerstenblut is the principal, and calls them into his office, where the following exchange takes place. H: "Explain these." Student 1: "They appear to be cards." Student 2: "They appear to be in purple ink on white paper." Student 3: "They appear to be in French." H: "What is the purpose of these cards?" Student 1: "We can't tell you." H: "And why not?" Student 2: "Because you don't exist."

There are several people I have fantasized longingly about doing this to over the years.

The realization that Mr. Pinkwater has achieved enough popularity in recent years that I no longer have to comb used bookstores for his work gladdens me, but it also started me thinking about the sheer weirdness of most of the fiction I spend a good deal of time reading.

I came to the conclusion that I am addicted to poking holes in novels about conspiracy theories.

People write many, many novels about conspiracy theories. Most of them hold that the world is being run by the Bavarian Illuminati, or the Students for a Democratic Society, or Elvis, or something like that. Most of them are very bad. It seems to be some kind of rule that every single one of these novels must involve the Knights Templar, the original cult of the Assassins, Aleister Crowley, Madame Blavatsky, and H.P. Lovecraft. It also seems to be some kind of rule that the authors must either show a great and complex sense of humor, in which they continually indicate to the readers that somebody is putting them on, or have no sense of humor whatsoever. If I ever write a conspiracy theory novel, it will contain a scene in which the conspiracy of the authors who write conspiracy theories sit in their underground cave deep below Roswell and lay down the ground rules: "Now, you get to write about the lost continent of Lemuria, and you get to write about Timothy Leary... oh, you need Timothy Leary to make the whole thing hang together? All right then, the other guy gets William S. Burroughs..."

Why do I read these things, when I am the sort of person who honestly believes that Elvis is dead and that John F. Kennedy was probably not killed by the CIA? Because I love seeing what kind of structure, what fantastical interconnections, the human mind can produce out of any bit of trivia it can seize on, especially when it's historical trivia and history is so full of interesting odds and ends. With sufficient ingenuity, people can tie anything into a possible chain of cause and effect, but history is particularly easy, since small quantities of reseach will dig up interesting things the usual reader doesn't know about. (Sadly, each author usually finds the same set of interesting things, like the bit about the Knights Templar. Beginning of Digression: The Knights Templar were an order of warrior monks founded in the Christian kingdoms of Jerusalem post-crusade and sworn to defend the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They were the first organization to offer traveler's checks, as someone going from Israel to France or the other way round could deposit money with the Templar chapterhouse near their home, take a letter of credit from the Templars, and pick up the cash at the other end, so that fortunes would not be lost to robbery on the long journey. The Templars took fifteen percent and became staggeringly wealthy and powerful over several generations; eventually, Bernard of Clairvaux, who would probably not have been thrilled to know that somebody named a breed of dog after him, quashed the order with charges of heresy, witchcraft, unnatural practices and fraternizing with Muslims, so that his own order of Bernardines could take power in France. The Templar leader, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake. The thing that causes conspiracy theorists to pick up on the Templars is that, at the guillotining of King Louis during the early phases of the French Revolution, an unidentified elderly gentleman somewhere near the front of the crowd shouted "Jacques de Molay, you are avenged!" as the blade came down. This causes a certain type of writer to assume that the Templars merely went into hiding, caused the French Revolution, and are presently running the world, despite the fact that Molay is a place name, that the habit of naming people after their place of origins existed for centuries in France, and that Jacques is an insanely common French name. For all we know, the old man could have been talking about an unjustly jailed next-door neighbor. End of Digression.)

Still, the sheer balancing act that some of these novels try to achieve by stacking fact on fact on assumption on unproven rant is a very impressive thing that I watch with amusement and incredulity. Some of them even work reasonably well, notably Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, and John Crowley's Aegypt trilogy, all written by authors who have a sense of humor about the whole thing. I am also looking forward greatly to Ada's.

And spending waaaaaay too much time laughing at books by confirmed lunatics.

Man, fiction these days is odd.

Not that I mind.

Angst-O-Meter: giraffes.

the general weirdness of fiction

I happened to notice that W., in one of his comments on somebody else's comments, mentioned the author Daniel Pinkwater, a writer I enjoy tremendously, who also qualifies as the single most surreal children's author to ever be published. A scene from his book young adult novel has sustained me in my moments of confrontation with authority for years: a group of high school students have printed and passed around their school some cards, reading "Horace Gerstenblut n'existe pas." Horace Gerstenblut is the principal, and calls them into his office, where the following exchange takes place. H: "Explain these." Student 1: "They appear to be cards." Student 2: "They appear to be in purple ink on white paper." Student 3: "They appear to be in French." H: "What is the purpose of these cards?" Student 1: "We can't tell you." H: "And why not?" Student 2: "Because you don't exist."

There are several people I have fantasized longingly about doing this to over the years.

The realization that Mr. Pinkwater has achieved enough popularity in recent years that I no longer have to comb used bookstores for his work gladdens me, but it also started me thinking about the sheer weirdness of most of the fiction I spend a good deal of time reading.

I came to the conclusion that I am addicted to poking holes in novels about conspiracy theories.

People write many, many novels about conspiracy theories. Most of them hold that the world is being run by the Bavarian Illuminati, or the Students for a Democratic Society, or Elvis, or something like that. Most of them are very bad. It seems to be some kind of rule that every single one of these novels must involve the Knights Templar, the original cult of the Assassins, Aleister Crowley, Madame Blavatsky, and H.P. Lovecraft. It also seems to be some kind of rule that the authors must either show a great and complex sense of humor, in which they continually indicate to the readers that somebody is putting them on, or have no sense of humor whatsoever. If I ever write a conspiracy theory novel, it will contain a scene in which the conspiracy of the authors who write conspiracy theories sit in their underground cave deep below Roswell and lay down the ground rules: "Now, you get to write about the lost continent of Lemuria, and you get to write about Timothy Leary... oh, you need Timothy Leary to make the whole thing hang together? All right then, the other guy gets William S. Burroughs..."

Why do I read these things, when I am the sort of person who honestly believes that Elvis is dead and that John F. Kennedy was probably not killed by the CIA? Because I love seeing what kind of structure, what fantastical interconnections, the human mind can produce out of any bit of trivia it can seize on, especially when it's historical trivia and history is so full of interesting odds and ends. With sufficient ingenuity, people can tie anything into a possible chain of cause and effect, but history is particularly easy, since small quantities of reseach will dig up interesting things the usual reader doesn't know about. (Sadly, each author usually finds the same set of interesting things, like the bit about the Knights Templar. Beginning of Digression: The Knights Templar were an order of warrior monks founded in the Christian kingdoms of Jerusalem post-crusade and sworn to defend the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They were the first organization to offer traveler's checks, as someone going from Israel to France or the other way round could deposit money with the Templar chapterhouse near their home, take a letter of credit from the Templars, and pick up the cash at the other end, so that fortunes would not be lost to robbery on the long journey. The Templars took fifteen percent and became staggeringly wealthy and powerful over several generations; eventually, Bernard of Clairvaux, who would probably not have been thrilled to know that somebody named a breed of dog after him, quashed the order with charges of heresy, witchcraft, unnatural practices and fraternizing with Muslims, so that his own order of Bernardines could take power in France. The Templar leader, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake. The thing that causes conspiracy theorists to pick up on the Templars is that, at the guillotining of King Louis during the early phases of the French Revolution, an unidentified elderly gentleman somewhere near the front of the crowd shouted "Jacques de Molay, you are avenged!" as the blade came down. This causes a certain type of writer to assume that the Templars merely went into hiding, caused the French Revolution, and are presently running the world, despite the fact that Molay is a place name, that the habit of naming people after their place of origins existed for centuries in France, and that Jacques is an insanely common French name. For all we know, the old man could have been talking about an unjustly jailed next-door neighbor. End of Digression.)

Still, the sheer balancing act that some of these novels try to achieve by stacking fact on fact on assumption on unproven rant is a very impressive thing that I watch with amusement and incredulity. Some of them even work reasonably well, notably Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, and John Crowley's Aegypt trilogy, all written by authors who have a sense of humor about the whole thing. I am also looking forward greatly to Ada's.

And spending waaaaaay too much time laughing at books by confirmed lunatics.

Man, fiction these days is odd.

Not that I mind.

Angst-O-Meter: giraffes.