John C. Wright's Blog, page 63
June 28, 2014
Humor
Or prophecy. You decide.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Christian Meets World: Interview with John C Wright
Yet another interview from your tireless author! This time on a Christian program about my conversion.
http://christianmeetsworld.com/how-john-c-wright-came-to-christ-cmw219/
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
June 26, 2014
A Comment on Political Activism in Fairy Stories
A reader with the rural yet ovine name of Pastor asks:
‘
Cannot politics and religion and philosophy be elements of a story without that story being reduced to propaganda?
My comment:
I can speak for no other writer. In my stories political matters can crop up as elements of the plot or character development or mood or theme or background without there being an ulterior desire on my part to persuade my readers to join my political party.
I believe that in THE HERMETIC MILLENNIA your humble author describes quite a number of political and social arrangements quite unlike the free-market federalist Constitutional democratic-republicanism I personally favor, but with no purpose on my part to urge the reader to become a federalist rather than a warrior-aristocrat of the Emergency Eugenic Command, witch, iatrocrat, Simplifier, or drugged subject of the Conscript Mothers of the Natural Order of Man. I dismiss any critic who believes I portrayed these polities unsympathetically. Each was clearly shown to have advantages and drawbacks.
But I am a Christian, hence I regard God as the ultimate floor of reality, the one necessary being from which all contingent beings flow. If I am a faithful Christian, this one ultimate reality influences all lesser realities, and there is no neutral ground. Even something as lighthearted as a fight scene, I must decide if the characters act like pagan warriors or chivalrous knights, that is, with the romance of Christendom. Even a love scene must show love to be romantic, as a Christian sees love, or as situation of shameful weakness, erotic madness, or mutual exploitation, as various pagan and secular worldviews see love.
The Leftist for whom politics is the ultimate floor of being is an idolater, and makes power arrangements his personal little crappy god. It influences everything in his thought and life, and if left unchecked will eventually ruin his writing.
The Leftist who is a faithful Leftist only on their sabbath days, and otherwise ignores the business (and that would be the majority of Leftists) can write a perfectly passable story about space pirates kidnapping space princesses without any hint of politics, to the satisfaction of all involved. He will write his love scenes with romance and his fight scenes with chivalry without noticing or caring about the origin of these Christian cultural artifacts. He will not think of them as particularly Christian, merely as part of the moral atmosphere and cultural background of his society. He will not notice the incongruity between his art and his philosophy.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
The Evil Queen and Catholic Communion
I have been wondering about this topic myself a great deal recently. I am more than delighted to hear this anecdote:
Over at Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter Nation (http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/24/gary-oldman-likes-the-double-standard-word-police-about-as-much-as-i-do/#comment-68911) a commenter named KHorn writes:
True story: my daughter was in school with Pelosi’s grandson from K-8th grade at a Catholic school. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving was grandparents’ day and when my daughter was in 3rd grade Pelosi was in for that day. Because of the increased attendance at the mass, they brought in Father Charlie who was retired and only slightly younger than Methuselah (he was always there for the Christmas Eve vigil as well). When it came time for communion she was in the line where Father Charlie was providing the host. When she came up, he refused to give it to her because of her stand on abortion and told her she was not within the teachings of the Church. One of the younger priests ultimately provided her communion, but I still cherish the look on her face as Father Charlie admonished her.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
A Comment on Political Activism in Fairy Stories
A reader with the rural yet ovine name of Pastor asks:
‘
Cannot politics and religion and philosophy be elements of a story without that story being reduced to propaganda?
My comment:
I can speak for no other writer. In my stories political matters can crop up as elements of the plot or character development or mood or theme or background without there being an ulterior desire on my part to persuade my readers to join my political party.
I believe that in THE HERMETIC MILLENNIA your humble authors describes quite a number of political and social arrangements quite unlike the free-market federalist Constitutional democratic-republicanism I personally favor, but with no purpose on my part to urge the reader to become a federalist rather than a warrior-aristocrat of the Emergency Eugenic Command, witch, iatrocrat, Simplifier, or drugged subject of the Conscript Mothers of the Natural Order of Man. I dismiss any critic who believes I portrayed these polities unsympathetically. Each was clearly shown to have advantages and drawbacks.
But I am a Christian, hence I regard God as the ultimate floor of reality, the one necessary being from which all contingent beings flow. If I am a faithful Christian, this one ultimate reality influences all lesser realities, and there is no neutral ground. Even something as lighthearted as a fight scene, I must decide if the characters act like pagan warriors or chivalrous knights, that is, with the romance of Christendom. Even a love scene must show love to be romantic, as a Christian sees love, or as situation of shameful weakness, erotic madness, or mutual exploitation, as various pagan and secular worldviews see love.
The Leftist for whom politics is the ultimate floor of being is an idolater, and makes power arrangements his personal little crappy god. It influences everything in his thought and life, and if left unchecked will eventually ruin his writing.
The Leftist who is a faithful Leftist only on their sabbath days, and otherwise ignores the business (and that would be the majority of Leftists) can write a perfectly passable story about space pirates kidnapping space princesses without any hint of politics, to the satisfaction of all involved. He will write his love scenes with romance and his fight scenes with chivalry without noticing or caring about the origin of these Christian cultural artifacts. He will not think of them as particularly Christian, merely as part of the moral atmosphere and cultural background of his society. He will not notice the incongruity between his art and his philosophy.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
The Wright Perspective: On Virtue
My latest is up at EveryJoe’s. Because I complained, there are now fewer ads for porn stars on my page there.
http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/06/25/politics/lefts-twisted-perspective-virtue/
In two senses of the word it is absurd for Leftists to spread the idea, or Conservatives to entertain the idea, that the Left somehow occupy the moral high ground rather than, say, a moral sewage sump. It is absurd in the sense of being logically incoherent; and absurd in the sense of being sufficiently risible to provoke the grim mouth of Hell itself to laughter.
Because of their rejection of the idea of truth, even Leftists who might otherwise admire virtue must oppose it and promote vice. Allow me to explain.
A conservative will assume men are imperfect, or, to use the correct term, Fallen. He says that the guilt we feel when we sin is because we fall short of the standard virtue sets, and therefore we must try ever harder, with the help of good laws and good customs, to achieve virtue. Some conservatives say this is the point of civilization.
A progressive will assume men are always growing more perfect. He says the guilt we feel is a hindrance to happiness, if not a psychological disease. Therefore we must try ever harder to abolish taboos and guilt complexes and hang up, that is, to eliminate modesty, decency, shame, and lower the standards of virtue. The progressive dismisses traditional standards of virtues as being meaningless (hence the word “taboo”) or unhealthy (“guilt complexes”) or irrational (“hang up”). The elimination of virtue is to be done with the help of social engineering by ever more intrusive experts granted ever more intrusive powers over our lives, eliminating law and custom and replacing it with experts armed with arbitrary powers. Some progressives say this is the point of progress.
In sum, the conservative think we should avoid guilt by adhering to a standard of acting virtuously; the progressive thinks we should eliminate the guilt by eliminating the standards, and then acting in any way we damned well please, and the consequences are someone else’s worry.
Now, I have made an outrageous assertion: not that Leftists are indifferent to virtue, but are openly hostile to virtue.
Outrageous, perhaps, but there is no difficulty in proving the point…
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
June 25, 2014
Political Activism in Fairy Stories
A reprint of an article from 2007. I post it again because while the specifics of the discussion between Mr VanderMeer and Mr Baker may or may not be any longer of interest, the general point eternally recurs:
* * *
The well-regarded Jeff VanderMeer writes, with honest insight, that his youthful theory about writing, namely, that it should be free from reference to current events, free from political activism, was not bourn out in his growth as a writer.
http://www.emcit.com/emcit125.php#Politics
He says that on a subconscious level, his fiction did not become vivid unless he wrote about the effects of dictatorship, war, colonialism, the erosion of personal liberty; all topics touching on politics. To eliminate politics entirely from his stories would have the effect of making them too stylized, mannered and artificial.
He concludes that politics has a place in fiction, including fantasy, but he stops short of saying a relevance to current politics is necessary for fiction. Art can still be done for art’s sake.
… I haven’t yet answered the question I posed before: Is it important for fantasy, or fiction generally, to be relevant in this way? The answer is a resounding, No, it isn’t. The instinctual idea I had as a teen and young adult about Art for Art’s sake, the idea that character and situation are paramount, that some truths transcend politics — that’s all valid.
R. Scott Bakker writes a rebuttal of this last sentence of Mr. VanderMeer, and says that an absence of politics shows a lack of curiosity, or perhaps a lack of insight.
http://www.emcit.com/emcit127.php#Politics
I say perhaps because I cannot interpret him with certainty.
His means of expressing himself are droll, and so I here quote him at length. Make of this what you will:
… If every aspect of our lives is political in some way, and “truths” are one of those aspects, doesn’t that mean, contrary to VanderMeer’s resounding assertion, that no truths transcend politics? Isn’t VanderMeer trying to eat his cake and have it too?</p>
Sure he is. The important question to ask is why.</p>
When you teach something like Popular Culture, as I did not so very long ago, the first thing you need to overcome is the common intuition that most commercial cultural products are examples of a magical thing called “Entertainment Pure and Simple” — what is essentially the mass market version of “Art for Art’s Sake.” For instance, how could Professional Wrestling or Andromeda or Hockey or American Idol 5 possess a complicated political subtext? Surely these harmless pastimes are “simple,” unblemished by the political mire we see on the nightly News.</p>
Well, if you think anything is simple, you’re the victim of an out and out illusion… Everything is more complicated than it seems, trust me. The only thing that makes anything seem “simple” is the limitations of our particular perspective…That’s why we once thought the Earth was the motionless centre of the universe.
He goes on in like vein for a while, ending with
So why did VanderMeer pull his horse up short so close to the finish line? Why does a part of him remain stuck in his teenage perspective believing that some truths do transcend politics, that something, anything, can be for its own sake?
He ran out of questions.
The esteemed Mr. VanderMeer, showing more courtesy and craft than I possess, met this criticism by penning an amusing bit of dialog with an Evil Monkey, who makes sufficient ridicule of the dumb pomposity of “He ran out of questions” that it would be painting the rose for me to add anything further.
http://vanderworld.blogspot.com/2006/03/truth-politics-sword-fights-and-bakker.html
But I cannot resist pointing out the logic: Mr. Bakker’s position contradicts itself in two ways.</p>
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Progress Report
Over at Vox Day’s website, a reader named Brad Andrews posted a question for me:
“It would be nice to have some indication of the status of future efforts in your series, especially the Count to a Trillion one. I could not find anything specific when I looked around earlier.”
As of the time of this writing, the first three books are in print: COUNT TO A TRILLION, THE HERMETIC MILLENNIA, JUDGE OF AGES.
The next volume, ARCHITECT OF AEONS, is sitting on the editor’s desk, awaiting his corrections, revisions, advice. He will send it back to me after the copy editor redpencils it. Months will pass. The publisher will send me galley proofs. Months will pass. I am not sure when the schedule for publication is.
The next volume THE VINDICATION OF MAN, currently is on my desk, and has been stalled at chapter four for roughly seven months while I worked on other projects or stared idly at drifting clouds, or skipped nude on tiptoe through floral meadows, flabby belly bobbing energetically albeit uncouthly, plucking the scented blooms, chasing the errant butterfly, and singing arias, to spend the evening in the drunk tank at the local constabulary.
The final volume COUNT TO INFINITY exist only as an outline and a phantom bubble of daydreams, images, hints and notes.
The publisher, despite all entreaties, obdurately refuses to print the words TO BE CONTINUED at the end of each volume, leading the unwary bookbuyer to believe the apparent sudden death of my unkillable hero in the midst of his misery is, in fact, the postmodern ending of the story. Imagine what the readers of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING would have thought if the orc attack that scatters the fellowship were presented as the end of the story, or, better, the attack by the giant spider, apparent death, and capture by the enemy of Frodo at the end of THE TWO TOWERS.
“Though see if you can keep them from raising the price of the next book even more. Each book in that series is about $4 more than the one before. I guess they figure they will hook you….”
As a Christian I am forbidden to indulge in the dark and dread arts by which one might summon up Moloch or great Dragon from the infernal night older than all worlds. Lacking such impressive yet unlawful necromantic powers, I have no influence whatsoever on the publisher’s pricing decisions.
You should not be asking me, but the reverse. Prices are set by the buying decisions of the public: I should be asking you to lower my asking price by buying more of my wares.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
June 24, 2014
Now at Number 2 in Hard SF
This is pretty good for the first day of publication, eh?
AAAAND, I was mentioned in Instapundit! http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/190645/
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Now at Number 2 in Hard SF
This is pretty good for the first day of publication, eh?
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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