[January 11th, Weird Wednesday] "Foreweird" by Michael Moorcock and "Introduction" by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

I would like to start the first analysis [or something close to an analysis] of “The Weird” with a side note. Today I've spotted that Through A Forest of Ideas received traffic from Tor.com. After some googling kung fu, I discovered that Tor.com have linked “Weird Wednesday” under their Of Interest section on the site. Needless to say, I'm ecstatic about the development for numerous reasons. It's all rather personal, but mainly, I'm happy to have come up with an idea that is met with interest. Thank you Tor.com. 

Now, with this out of the way, I'll proceed with my thoughts on “Foreweird” by Michael Moorcock and the “Introduction” by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer. For the purposes of the analysis, I have switched the texts as the VanderMeers deliver a clearer and conciser definition of the weird tale without an actual textbook definition of the genre being presented. That is where the weird tale's charm lies. No man, no reader or scholar can name something that has no name to begin with. 

After I completed both introductory texts, I felt rather than understood that the 'weird' is much like a literary version of the primordial goo of life. It's full of potency. No measurement can weigh, count or calculate the dimensions of the weird. It constantly evolves. It searches for new ways to adapt to its cultural habitat, which in itself is a complex, growing system. The weird is more than the sum of its parts though it's not as simple as to be compared to ordinary synergy. Sometimes it can be best understood as the tropes it's not as the VanderMeers explain before assuming roles of evolutionists and tracking its historical roots in stories from beyond generations. 

I'm still fascinated after having reread the historical breakdown of the development and countless 'weird sightings' in world literature over the decades. Here is where I reach the conclusion that you can't understand the weird as you might [think you] understand a scientific phenomenon. The best you can do is observe it in the context of a specific era and the literary traditions that dominate it. It is here where “Foreweird” by Michael Moorcock makes much more sense to me. Moorcock adopts a different approach to the presentation of the weird to the readers. 

His writing flows from paragraph to paragraph, acquires the quality of a river's delta. Every sentence swerves and takes you into a new direction. Moorcock switches from his understanding of the weird tale to cardinal misconceptions, the stigmata behind the lack of rationalism, the weird tale's multifaceted nature and how shapeless it can be. 

The weird tale's main 'fault', according to Moorcock, is its inability to fit in a package, stay still and allow itself to be marketed to the masses. And yes, I have not heard about the 'weird' before, because it hasn't popped on the mainstream's radar. Thinking about both texts, I think that the answer as to why the 'weird' can't be defined [though I'm of the opinion that connoisseurs of the weird tale do not see it as an outstanding issue] is because the weird leaves more questions asked than answered. Moorcock states such is 'a superior kind of fiction' and I agree with him, because presenting readers with all the answers acts as a prerequisite for lazy reading. Now, engaging the reader to solve mysteries in an environment, where the rational is excluded from the equation, begets creativity; encourages to take the dark, unexplored route; keep the primordial goo healthy and expanding; allow for later works and writers to take charge and evolve as well. 

Here I'd like to detour and share my experience with the 'absence of rationalism' in animation, both in the West and in the East. The examples are children's TV shows, which I think are inherent carriers of the idea that you don't need rationalization. I think the weird tale has found a host that succeeded in entering the mainstream as children are much more adept at accepting the weird, the strange and the fantastic without prejudice and demands for explanations, at least as far as my experience and memory of being a child are concerned. Ample examples are “Totally Spice”, a French cartoon series, and “Sailor Moon”, a Japanese anime and the most famous representative of the magic girl genre. 

“Sailor Moon” featured a trio of the Sailor Starlights [bear with me on this one], who perplexed me. If you're aware of magic girls, then you know that from a normal, human state, a female character undergoes a magical transformation, which is signified by a change of outfit. The Sailor Starlights, in their depowered states were male pop stars before transforming into powerful female warriors. The curious thing about this magical gender switch is that it's not explained. 

There's no evidence to support any theory as to whether the character truly change their gender or are just dressing as male. I'm mentioning “Totally Spice” because the premise is about a teen version of Charlie's Angels look-alikes with outrageous James Bond gadgets and a penchant for fighting super villains. I am also referring to this series, because of the sudden body transmogrifications. 

One episode paid a strange homage to Franz Kafka's “The Metamorphosis”, while another sees humans mutate into human-vegetable hybrids [perhaps a subconscious tribute to “The Vegetable Man”]. There is no science to explain why these mutations have occurred other than the drop of the words 'chemicals' and 'machine'. What do I intend with all of this? Nothing in particular, other than to illustrate that the 'weird' is alive and well in different mediums, perhaps even connected to its literary sibling. 

Anyway, let's conclude. Although a grand statement, I do believe the 'weird' [based on the historical background provided by the VanderMeers and Moorcock] to be one of the strongest forces to keep the wheel in speculative fiction turning.

[December 11th] From Reactive to Proactive Reading or How I changed My Reading Patterns

I'm sexy and I'm reading

In my preparation for the Weird Wednesday feature, whose launch date remains as January 4^th 2012, I have encountered something about my reading I have not paid much attention to and I assume is private due to the nature of my language situation. I know enough English to write, read and express myself on an above average level among my peers, who have had the same educational profile and have not studied English at university level. Reading books has never been challenging, apart from those written in an intentionally modified English [“The Color Purple”] or older books [“The Vampyre”]. Being a native benefits the reading experience in such cases, but otherwise I’m doing fine with literature.

Or so I would think. Until recently, I’ve been ignoring a trend in my reading, exemplifying an interest in quantity of reading rather than quality. Back in my school years, when I studied in a private group every weekend on top of my school studies, my teacher used to make us read everything and anything. Newspaper articles, magazine articles, book passage, passages from a more scientific text, from and outside our textbooks. Eventually we moved to books and we had to read a book over the summer, mark down all the new words and add those to our own vocabulary, so that when the time came to talk about the books, a barrier has been lifted and I understood more about the book. This continued during high school, where I studied typical US/UK classics such as The Picture of Dorian Grey, The Scarlet Letter, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Ayre. While I enjoyed all these books, I can’t say the same about the reading, notes with new words, bringing out the dictionary, spending afternoons writing the new words and pronouncing them and then returning to the text. This killed the joy in reading and at the time I had grown to be an avid, if a bit slow a reader.

You have to understand that for a teenager, studying causes an allergic reaction, which brings out chronic postponing of any kind of academic activities. At the time, I felt like studying will never end for me and I tried to avoid anything to do with studying. So when I graduated and took up reviewing, I took to reading for pleasure, which is to say that I only read. Never tried to engage with the text in another way. If there was something that I didn’t understand then I would use the context and go on with the story. Sometimes this helped me get through some books easier with minor communication breakdowns between me and the text. Other times I had lucked out and did need a dictionary to help me along the way. “A Book of Tongues” is a perfect example of how the prose acted against me, no matter how much I loved reading this twisted tale. This time around I did try to get out some of the words, translate, then assemble all the fragments of understanding and confusion into a coherent narrative, but seeing as how I fell behind on my schedule and diminished chances of reading more books, writing more of the self-serving reviews I did back then, fighting to come ahead the bloggers who read more and faster, I rushed the process and never returned to it.

It’s complicated to explain what I mean by ‘passive’ or ‘reactive’ reading, but it deals with a preoccupancy with number of books read, the act of having read something, stating that you have completed a novel everyone else has, modeling choices of books based on trends in the blogging circles [where the ‘new shiny’ rules, not that I have anything against it]. It’s easier to blame external forces for this behavior, but that’s not quite true, because I made all decisions when it came to my own reviews and blogging. Subsequently, I took stories with dragons and magic to be simple stories about magic and dragons without thinking further. A friend of mine once told me that SFF literature is the most potent of all kinds of genres, because it has layers upon layers to utilize and comment upon our own reality, better than other genres have. I’m quite proud to say that the man is a psychologist, erudite and has serious, always active views on everything.

Yesterday, as I started to read The Weird edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer I faced a rather winding and ornate foreword by Michael Moorcock. I had difficulties catching on to some of his thoughts and felt lost in the general purpose of the text. The language barrier rose high as it had back during my school years and I had a choice. Read it once and try to decipher it on my own in the privacy of the back of my mind or surrender, grab the dictionary and return to where I began all those years before in reading in English.

I grabbed the dictionary. Read the “Foreweird” by Michael Moorcock and the introduction by the VanderMeers, sat down with a journal for my thoughts, a notebook for the words that I did not know and Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English and studied. Contrary to what I expected, studying this time around brought immense pleasure. For obvious reasons, doing anything because you so choose is pleasing in itself as opposed to forced practice from any educational institution. But there is more than that. The fact that I chose to return to this text and re-read with the new words in my mind stimulated my thought process, pushed me to add something from myself into my opening post for the Weird Wednesday feature based on the words of Moorcock and the VanderMeers rather than summarize as I usually happen to do. I think that this is what pro-active reading is all about, opening to the text and working on how the words can influence me. Needless to say, this process for me has to be more conscious and I can’t say for certain if anyone can relate to me. Language is not a tough barrier to remove. You think you know it, but then it surprises you.  

In short, I’m leveling up, which is quite due, seeing as I’m in my twenties already and time is not waiting for anyone.

I think I went overboard with this post and I doubt anyone has hung long enough to make any comments, but I’d like to hear from you about your adventures in reading. How has your act of reading changed given any given circumstances?