Probably the sense that the novel is in thrall to a stifling realism is a
personal hangup of mine (and may also be related to the fact that I don't
know many people who like the kind of novels I do). Until the net came along
and made it easier to search for interesting books, I just had to hope I
bumped into one every now and then. Yes, cyberpunk is certainly one of the
most exciting contemporary genres for me. _Neuromancer_ is one of the great
SF novels, but I haven't liked Gibson's other books quite so much - they all
started to seem the same after a while. I recently read Jeff Noon's _Vurt_,
which, despite some irritating stylistic traits, is an imaginative tour de
force. Planning to read some Neal Stephenson soon - he sounds very
interesting. On an entirely different tack, I can't wait to read Ben
Marcus's _The Age of Wire and String_ (published in paperback over here in
August), which sounds irresistibly weird. (Have we discussed it on the list
before? I often have to hear a book mentioned several times before it sinks
in that it might be something I'd want to read.)
Best wishes
Matthew
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 27 July 2001 12:22
Subject: Re: Interview with Matthew Francis (Featured Poet #2, new series)
>Candice
>
>Many thanks for taking the time to do this interview and posting Matthew's
>poems. I was particularly taken by the interest in gothic. Matthew seems to
>be suggesting a gothic which is the gothic of the real. A gothic stripped
of
>supernatural, while being also in defiance of the so-called strictures of
>what can be said to be realistic. A sort of gothic materialism, perhaps? I
am
>a fan of gothic fiction and cyberpunk which I thought had gothic themes as
>does the British philosopher, Mark Fisher, I am currently reading.
>_Neuromancer_ by Gibson is more gothic then sci-fi to me. Matthew also
>indicates that prescriptive realism (to steal a term from Margaret Anne
Doody
>_The true story of the novel_) still has a strong hold on the novel and how
>novels can be written. I was hoping to escape this hold by saying a novel
is
>like poetry and can be a type of poetry, if you follow my attempts here to
>escape realist narrative forms. Perhaps this can also explain homophobia is
>homoeroticism. Anne Rice's Lesat can suck my bood any day.
>
>best
>
>Chris Jones.
>
>
>On Friday 27 July 2001 16:01, you wrote:
>
>> The power of poetry, and the reason I return to it again and again
>> when I'm also very drawn to fiction and would like to write another
novel,
>> is that it's so much less tied to realism than the novel, which has to
>> evoke the detailed everyday texture even of its fantasy worlds. You can
get
>> away with so much more in a poem.
>
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