/lit/ - Literature

>>7168764
What’s really making a difference is history. History, as a discipline, makes it impossible for anything else to be perceived as a legitimate telling of the past of a community, at least in a non-subjective way. Sure, you could write the most perfect picture of your own zeitgeist in a novel, but it would never go into the history books. But here’s an interesting thing: it would still (most likely) be written in past tense. Curious, right? It’s almost paradoxical that something everyone involved knows is not the Truth, has in EVERY VERB, a conjugation that tells us that this was indeed something that happened, even when what we’re hearing is something that could take place in a made up world, in the future or the present. And this is EXACTLY the reason why fantasy is so divisive! Because it, especially Tolkienian fantasy, is a simile of history and mythology, and often it’s the detail of the “imagined” history/mythology that it is judged by; it’s the most believable fantasy that can be criticized the least. But in the end it’s not talking about “us”, and it’s not something “they” said, so why should we take this seriously at all, is what the detractors think.

And indeed, most people don’t take it seriously. And therefore we end up with shitty fantasy books being so prolific. Because people don’t take it seriously. It’s the same detraction from fantasy as an illegitimate myth or history that paves the way to it being used wantonly; because it’s “just a story” and therefore it isn’t serious and whatever can happen in it… Again, short-sightedness. Not only is not just a story, given it has its specific context that it could not develop without, nor is it something where anything can happen. Not everything is acceptable in fantasy, not everything steams from the author; in fact, quite the contrary, there are tons of assumptions in most fantasy works, and all come from its cultural context. There are tons of things that are often criticized about a fantasy, and it isn’t a formal criticism I’m talking about. So this parameter by which fantasy is disregarded as illegitimate is also wrong.

(2/5)

recommend me a book in which traditionalist fascists get blown the fuck out by Marxists, ideologically or militaristically.