The essays I'm reading on science and myth all seem to have one thing in common: They go from molecules to politics without stopping off at the level of two people sitting and talking, each regarding the other. I wonder if it's because literary fiction -- which is at the level of two people sitting and talking -- largely ignores the molecules, but politics does not.
It's a funny gap, anyway, and I'll have to look around to see what else lives on that level. Philosophy, maybe. Maybe religion. I'd say psychology, but what I've seen of the transactional variety is so model-bound as to be stupid about how people live and behave.
Anyway, if you've got reading suggestions, send 'em along.
8 comments:
Have you read Intuition? I thought it was quite good. I'm reading Andrea Barrett's Servants of the Map, and her story "Theories of Rain" was outstanding, if you haven't read it. It goes from molecules to politics, but has people sitting and talking, too. Quite literally breathtaking: the people at the next table in the cafe yesterday probably thought I was reading Dan Brown, I gasped so often. :)
No, I haven't -- who's the author? And who's Andrea Barrett?
Intuition is by Allegra Goodman. Andrea Barrett is the author of Ship Fever (NBA in '96) and The Voyage of the Narwhal. Servants of the Map was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. She has a biology degree, and it shows. :)
Ha, I'd just started thinking of Intuition as "the Allegra Goodman science book". Thanks for the Barrett link.
You really need to read Barrett's essay 'The Sea of Information'. I remembered it tonight when I was posting women scientists on LabLit. She addresses some of the fundamental issues your blog is premised on (e.g., differences in the ways scientists and novelists think and write). It's in the Summer 2004 Kenyon Review, and reprinted in the 2005 Best American Science Writing anthology. If you don't have access to those, contact me and I'll email you a copy.
Thank you, John. Gives me an excuse to go back to Prairie Lights (Iowa City bookstore); I'll read it there. I've been avoiding it because people get all posey and writerish there, and I get too irritated to work. But it's a good bookstore on a street I like.
I like the interview you linked to above. In many ways it's reassuring. Incidentally, we just had the Mavis Gallant v. Alice Munro argument at bitchphd.blogspot.com . Actually no it was the Atwood v. Munro argument, which is much easier (Munro in one set). I think I'd still probably go for Munro, but only because of the unexpected frigidity I read in Gallant. Which, now that I write it, I don't entirely trust. I'll have to try her again.
Someday I'd like to go to Prairie Lights, preferably not during tornado season. :) I've been listening to the Live From Prairie Lights webcasts for years -- an endless parade of amazing writers, coupled with an endless number of inane writing student questions ('do you work from an outline?' 'are your characters based on real people?' -- how will knowing this actually improve your own writing??)
Well, as my daughter said, the tornado went away to scare other people, so it's safe now. Missed Praire Lights by about two blocks. We got a "we're open" postcard this morning from a store nearby, said, "we have no roof and the city doesn't like that, so...."
I seldom go to the readings anymore, usually end up having it on the radio as background unless it's poets reading like Captain Kirk on a nebulizer. That always has to go. Those questions seem to come mostly from community members, though occasionally a writer will turn on the questioner, and it really isn't nice. I still remember Will Self savaging some nice wellmeaning Midwestern woman who'd tried to compliment him on what a fine school he'd gone to.
One of my classmates, Emily Barton, is reading soon, I think. Has a new book out, had a very friendly review from Acocella in NYer a few weeks ago.
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