GENERIC TALES _______________ A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts _______________ By Andrew Dimond May, 2014 Table of Contents Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1 YA: The Reject ................................................................................................................ 13 Smut: Shagged ................................................................................................................. 22 Bildungs: Munchausen in Airwalks............................................................................... 43 War: Hermit Kingdoms .................................................................................................. 54 Sci-Fi: Algorithm Sutra .................................................................................................. 82 Metafiction: Precocious ................................................................................................. 103 iii For Danielle iv Introduction The collection presented here bears the title Generic Tales as a sort of self- deprecating pun. The chosen structural conceit binding together these un-linked stories is that each is put forward as an example of a popular genre, as indicated in the Table of Contents. It seems to be a matter of some dispute whether ‘generic’ is the appropriate adjective form for the noun ‘genre,’ but there is no better alternative, and I’m amused by the connotation. Were it possible for graphic design to enter into this (though a thesis, unlike a proper book, is never judged by its cover), I’d like to imagine it with a stark Pop Art cover, just red or blue on white, looking like a store-brand detergent or box of crackers, perhaps with an asterisked disclaimer or a banner reading “Now With 20% More Story!” During my undergraduate career (2001-2005) as well as in courses at the UH Creative Writing Program, I was exposed to the controversy around genre fiction and its defense against perceived highbrow prejudices, a debate instigated most forcefully by Michael Chabon. While I do not necessarily wish to identify myself with this critique (to the extent that it rests on counter-prejudices regarding ‘literary’ fiction), I nevertheless remain broadly sympathetic to the defense of our less ‘classy’ cultural forms. Yet simultaneously I am a confirmed snob, who despairs of philistinism on a daily basis. My take on art in general is characterized by this paradoxical blend of typically American democratic egalitarianism and the reactionary cultural conservatism (in the secular, apolitical sense) of stalwart canon defenders such as Harold Bloom. Though, 1 again, he’s a clear and convenient exemplar rather than a specific influence. The barbarians are all around, to be sure, and given half a chance they’ll burn down the citadel, but I can’t pretend I don’t sympathize with their unstudied responses, or that much of what we now enshrine didn’t bubble up from the bottom. Culturally I was born into a received lineage, whose recognition matters…but the marble busts in that hall would include those of Mark Twain, Mickey Mouse, and Marvin Gaye. The intermingling of highbrow and lowbrow was more or less an accomplished fact by the time I was conscious enough to enter the cultural arena as a spectator, let alone a creative professional. So although I read and write plenty of ‘literary’ work, I am delighted to present the products of those endeavors as genre specimens, not without irony but without squeamishness. Nevertheless, I recognize the limitations of this taxonomized or institutionalized approach to imaginative realms. Staleness is inevitable in the rush to recapture what everybody liked about that last thing. The flipside, originality for its own sake, is also something I believe in, and was also characteristic of the 20th century that was the background I inherited. The modernist drive to push frontiers, to make one’s mark, to drive things forward, to tell the unvarnished but irreproducible truth, to be a serious sui generis genius with a unique and unmistakable angle on the eternal verities: I get that too. There’s probably no way of deliberately setting about to do so, but sometimes I think that maybe the most staggering honor a writer can attain is to create a new cliché, to be someone like Poe or Conan Doyle (those are two of the prime examples on a mass- market level, but one could probably name literary writers who have inspired the same 2 kind of compulsive imitation). Where these formulae come from—why they catch on, and then retain such a tenacious grip in the marketplace and in our dreams—will always prove difficult to assess. I suppose one could say they’re plucked from some kind of Jungian collective unconscious, but that’s more metaphor than explanation. The most vital rationale for compiling such disparate excursions into one volume under a rubric like this is that while pursuing my MFA, I felt a driving need to experiment with a wide variety of voices, characters, subjects, themes, settings, and yes, genres. If this collection can be said to lack unity, well, I don’t consider that a weakness. Future psychoanalytic biographers may wish to note that I also got married during graduate school, so perhaps this literary fear of commitment represents some kind of displaced or sublimated promiscuity. Yet now, having put all these stories under the same roof, it’s astonishing to me to see how many themes they do in fact share. Most of them are concerned in some way with a nexus of related concepts: birth, rebirth, innocence, sex, regression, a tunneling into childhood…not only its bliss, but its terrors and pains, and the connections between both of those sides. Perhaps this collection might just as well have been called by an alternate title I was considering at one point for “Precocious”: Juvenilia. I think it fits that term in multiple senses of the word. While I’m not ashamed of this work—even at its most bizarre, clumsy, or distasteful—I must honestly say I can only see it as a clearing-out of early obsessions, rather than what one might call an attainment of artistic maturity. The ‘genre’ conceit seemed like a sturdy framework for corralling these unruly calves and foals. The familiar strictures of genres themselves offer a comfortingly regressive ‘escapism,’ or so we often hear. 3 It must be admitted that when pigeonholing these stories, some of the designations I came up with were arbitrary to various degrees. “Hermit Kingdoms” and particularly “A Conditioned Reflex” might have been dubbed historical fiction. “The Reject” could easily have been called fantasy, or a very ‘soft’ sort of science fiction. For that matter, both it and “Munchausen in Airwalks” are told by ‘young adult’ narrative voices, even if those belong to two extremely different characters. The latter story is primarily a comedy, though all of the stories have an element of humor, I hope. I have a romance story and a horror story in the works (and yes, they are two separate pieces). In the future, I could see myself adding a western story and a mystery and so on, to make it a full book-length sampler of my own peculiar takes on most of the popular genres. However, I don’t think I risk any demerits by saying that it’s doubtful whether I’ll ever pursue publishing this. More likely, I’ll take what I’ve learned and apply it to a new project. On that note, let’s move on to the ‘reflective’ aspect of this introduction specified by the guidelines for the MFA thesis. Although I’m (provisionally) quite proud of myself for coming forth and exposing enough of this work to complete the MFA, as a writer I know I’m still far from where I would like to be. I’m already refreshed by the idea of turning the page on this body of work, even while preparing to send it off for approval. Individual stories in this collection may well be suitable for publication; if so, suggestions of what, where, and how are eagerly solicited…and if not, that’s welcome news in its own way too. The question becomes, what next? How do I recapture a relationship with my writing where the passion outweighs the weariness and terror? 4 This forum for an exit interview or debriefing is itself a useful step. To say that graduate school did not go as well as I had envisioned would be an understatement, at least from the vantage point of Spring 2014, though from there it already looks better than it did from 2013’s or 2012’s. With the sweet grace of time (be it enlightening, analgesic, or adaptively distorting), I trust that it will become clear how this experience fit into the overall arc of my creative path and career. At the present time, it’s still fuzzy and fraught, though I’m gaining perspective and confidence with each moment. A sort of convalescence is called for, and already in progress. When I entered the program in August 2009, I was an utterly different person. I was ambitious and cocky and happy and self-possessed. My family was intact and my social life (I lived here in Houston already) was rich and varied. During the three years in which I expected to finish my MFA, I instead endured an unprecedented series of developmental and emotional cataclysms: marked the deaths of my two oldest, closest friends in town (one from complications of cancer and one from a drug overdose); helped rescue my sister from an abusive Moroccan man who was keeping her under virtual house arrest in Japan; endured my parents’ second (and thank God final) divorce; and myself undertook marriage, a joyous but undoubtedly life-altering adaptation, which could only be held together by supreme effort in the face of the rest of the above. I was able to do well enough in workshops and academic classes (or teaching classes of my own), but when my final semester rolled around I did not feel what I had produced as a writer was sufficient.