Rabkin, The fantastic in literature

Rabkin, Eric. The Fantastic in Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1976
Chapter 1
"Talking plants--and (Komodo) dragons for that matter-- are not inherently fantastic; they become so when seen from a certain perspective. The fantastic does more than extend experience; the fantastic contradicts perspectives" (4)

Star Trek time travel episodes to the 20th C does the opposite--the fantasy there is that we ever thought in such primitive ways as we now do. For a member of the Enterprise to enjoy 20th C scifi, then, they must "suspend their disbelief" in order to "be rewarded by a delightful fantasy. Those who aren't willing to follow the signs in the text will throw down the book in distaste. Unless one participates sympathetically in the ground rules of the narrative world, no occurrence in that world can make sense--or even non-sense." (4)

Rabkin distinguishes three non-normal occurrences in literature: The Un-expected, the dis-expected and the anti-expected. (8-10). The Unexpected is literally not expected, but is not in breaking with the rules of the novel or the reader's own world. The dis-expected are "those elements which the text had diverted one from thinking about but which, it later turns out, are in perfect keeping with the ground rules of the narrative. Jokes depend on the dis-expected" (9). And the anti-expected is most closely aligned with fantasy, and are the 180 degree reversal of the ground rules (i.e. in Gulliver's Travels, we are given a scientific, adventurer's opening monologue--enmeshing us in the Enlightenment world view--but then there are tiny little people!) But "because so many of our perspectives enter a narrative with us...fiction often conflates the anti-expected and the dis-expected" (12).

"We have then three classes of signal for the fantastic: signals of the characters....signals of the narrator...and signals of the implied author (such as the narrative structures of Borges and Moorcock" (24).

For Rabkin, Fantasy is a genre, but "the fantastic" is a literary function of the reversal of the ground rules for a given diegesis. Can I do the same with "Dystopian fiction" and the dystopian impulse Booker describes? If so, what is that function? It's a rhetorical function, not aesthetic or plot-dependent, that's for sure.
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What is fantastic about dystopian fiction? The fantastic happens when the hero/ine has that moment of recognition, of "enlightenment" (apt word, amylea!), and becomes able to see that his/her own world is *wrong*--and begins to desire to change what seems to be a utopia. Dystopian fiction depends no shifting perspectives, past and future, cause and effect--a recognition of the present as evil, of--to quote myself--the bait *as* bait, and not a yummy and convenient worm.

Chapter 2

The Fantastic and Escape

[Burke speaks of "escapist" literature in P&C--but he wants to note how we label literature, what motives that reveals, what interpretations are embedded in that naming]

Rabkin reminds us that "escapist" literature usually refers to lit that society perceives as having little value, as aiding the reader in a "general evasion of responsibilities" (43). What is interesting about this naming, for me at least, is that it marks genre not as a matter of form, but of effect.

Rabkin, of course, believes this label has two misconceptions: "First, that 'seriousness' is better than 'escape'; second, that escape is an indiscriminate rejection of order" (44). I would add that "order" is necessarily the goal--for many dystopian fictions wish to avoid order at all costs (especially those of the totalitarian persuasion). In that case, escape and the evasion of responsibility (but not response-ability) that goes with it are the intended effect upon the reader--a symbolic act of evading order (by reading to escape) that hopefully bleeds over into similar disruptive acts (what Badiou calls an intervention?) in Real Life.

"Escape in literature is a fantastic reversal, and therefore not a surrender to chaos" (45). The "escape" is an escape from the schemas of our mind, our "ground rules" of the universe. Further, "in the literature of the fantastic, escape is the mans of exploration of an unknown land, a land which is the underside of the mind of man" (45). Therefore, even the worst case scenario can have order--it's simply our world in negatives. More importantly, as Rabkin implies, is that the reader can recognize these aspects, can become educated, can be comforted by knowing that his own world is equally structured (or rather, inversely structured)--a sense of Justice emerges.

Rabkin then traipses off into structuralist land by reviewing Propp's thesis that all fairy tales have the same deep structure--this I do not disagree with, although as a Burkeian I'd point out that they seem to have the same structure because of how we name the similarities, and I'm more interested in why we wish to be able to name these disparate examples as "the same." And why "the same" is a good thing, a comfort. Still, I can't help but see a similar structure in both "fairy tales" and "dystopian fiction" (both of which Rabkin would categorize under "the fantastic in literature"); in both, there is a moment of recognition that leads the hero to a journey, traveling across an unfamiliar landscape where some all knowing villain is waiting and watching. But unlike in fairy tales, the dystopian protagonist is not rescued, does not learn his/her lesson. It is as though Hansel and Gretel get eaten after all, as though no prince awakens Sleeping Beauty and she is suspended in the void of sleep forever.

Fairy tales represent "a controlled world" (56), and this world is "an escape from our own, but, as with Poe, an escape through a diametric, fantastic reversal, so that the narrative world actually explores the underside of our conscious world. This world of escape is a controlled world, controlled not by the archfiend within us, but by the conventions of the fantastic genre itself" (57). Here I'd pull out the Lex Rhet from Burke--the form itself is a fulfillment of desire, the form itself acts as a response to the chaos represented within that form. As such, the genre works best when we are familiar with it, when we know what to expect, what to desire, how to respond fittingly.

The rigid form of fairy tales works not because of some cosmic alignment (the golden ratio) but because it is easily recognizable. It's very existence is proof of order, and thus a comfort. As Rabkin writes, "By making a fantastic reversal of the rules of our world and offering an ordered world, fears of maturation can be met and symbolically tamed" (59). Likewise, by making a fantastic reversal of social order, ecologic order, technologic order, we should expect a symbolic taming of fears of The End. This, indeed is what Utopian fiction does. But dystopian fiction does not tame the fears, does not symbolically temper the chaos, but encourages it.

Dystopian fiction does not end happily ever after because a return to the present order is not the goal. Escape is not the goal, but a heightened presence, an awareness of the here and now and of responsibility. The moral of the story is not borne of the mores of a community (as with fairytales) but emerges from fears of those very hierarchies and assumptions. Dystopian fiction doesn't reverse the ground rules, it amplifies them so that we can see them more clearly. It make the fish aware of water, it makes the trout differentiate bait from food.

"In some fashion, escape literature always presents the reader with a world secretly yearned for. If that world is merely the too-good-to-be-hoped-for accumulation of the dis-expected, as in pornography, it may reveal much about the writer and/or reader, but will not serve to give either a new perspective on the mental constraints from which they seek escape. However, if the escape world is based on a fantastic reversal, then, as with the fairy tale, that escape need not be a descent into triviality but a message of psychological consolation" (73).

But I'm not sure triviality is the correct word here. For much "work" is accomplished in slash and fanfic in general, which one can read as "too good to be hoped for accumulation of the dis-expected" (in that the scenarios of fic are within the realm of reality, but highly unlikely and sometimes against the ground rules set up--"canon")--work for both the author and the reader. But perhaps Rabkin is correct that this work is not quite enough--could that be the driving desire behind fandom? That no amount of writing, reading, picture rendering, discussing, role playing, can ease the desire to make the dis-expected the norm? That we cannot overthrow the ground rules of our society by simply playing with a text, now matter how many pages or hours we spend? Rabkin wants fantasy texts to be "psychologically useful" (73)--but useful for what? In what context? For whom? What "order" must this reinforce? Slash is the reversal, the "queering" of order anyway--so I doubt it'd be psychologically useful in the way Rabkin imagines.