‘You Couldn’t Put This in a Book’
In newsrooms, the weirder the news gets, the more frequently you hear reporters muttering, “You could not put this in a book, nobody would believe it.” And you don’t have to be a reporter to find yourself saying that this year.
Two weeks ago I got my first haircut in three months. Double-masked and so was the barber. Gloved, both of us. I even wore long trousers as well as long sleeves to be sure I touched no surfaces with bare skin. And for you good northern readers, that’s a signal of severity: Nobody moves to South Florida to wear long pants. Nobody.
If the public health emergency isn’t yet queasily intrusive in your sense of equilibrium, maybe the political outrages of the day are (we won’t go there), or the Twilight Zone of an economy in an induced coma, or today’s news that Europe may ban travelers from the United States. It just gets better, doesn’t it?
But when I had a chance to interview Simon Stålenhag, the author and artist behind Tales from the Loop, I realized that our current state of sometimes surreal challenges may be changing the standard for what you could put into a book. Or a film. Or a television series. Or your manuscript.
In the chicken or egg question, the art came first. Stålenhag’s images reimagined his boyhood in Sweden as a place and time full of casual suburban teenage hanging out – against a snowy landscape studded with the carcasses of big, abandoned techno-relics. “The Loop” is a CERN-like particle accelerator underground (and under-snow) in Mälarö. And what makes Stålenhag’s visual work so arresting is that residents seem at ease, at home with the otherworldly pieces of machinery that surround them, all somehow connected to the unseen high-tech explorations below ground, a source of jobs for the townspeople, of course.
Stålenhag discovered that fans of his art were online making up stories about what his enigmatic imagery meant. Initially, they didn’t have even as much information as I’ve told you so far. They were getting it wrong. So his first (of three) books, Tales from the Loop (Fria Ligan, 2014), was how he basically took control of his artwork, writing – fortunately, he’s good at it – a memoir of his youth that illuminated his visions of a population both empowered by and subjected to the uncanny impulses of subterranean energies.
Five years ago, filmmaker Nathaniel Halpern met with Stålenhag, told him that he could make a television series that would be faithful to the imagery and its intent, and would also build on Stålenhag’s text to develop what might best be called New Tales from the Loop. New, because the series – the eighth and final episode is directed by Jodie Foster – deepens and amplifies Stålenhag’s tales into ethereal, essential fables of human relationship in time.
I commend Halpern’s production to you, with Paul Leonard-Morgan’s music collaboration with Philip Glass – at 83 making his cinematic television debut. Jonathan Pryce and Jane Alexander headline the show. The series, which moves the work to Mercer, Ohio, is a meeting of two creative minds and hearts, Stålenhag’s and Halpern’s, in that it spins out the original ‘Tales’ in a new centrifuge of unsettling, lonely longing watched over by cowering, abandoned apparatus: social structures gone mute. Icons ignored.
And I commend this moment to you.
Because it’s all so enjoyable.
No, seriously, because I think there’s potential in these upheavals that have exposed so much evil and beauty. In us.
The Passion of Aunt Jemima
My provocation for you today has something to do with seas of young adults in streets and with Stålenhag’s third book (optioned, itself, for a film by AGBO). The Electric State is a road trip through an America ravaged by culture wars, a journey to a West Coast that’s become a junkyard of looming happy memes.
Is it possible that 70 years after the last genuinely successful civil rights action in the United States, these millions of peaceful protestors and countless yanked-down monuments to racism and oppression could change us?
As cameras roll and tear gas billows, we see so many white protesters leading the way – wisely dressed like Floridians, in shorts.
“We are gentle, angry people,” says the resistance anthem too old for many of them to know it.
“And we are singing, singing for our lives.”
Do 121,225 coronavirus deaths at this writing in the States give you a pause? How about the fabulous vote-fixated nonchalance of our politicians, the stark-staring warnings of public health officials, the white knees on black necks, Robert E. Lee face-down on concrete, and your fading memory of what a flight ticket looks like? Do these things mean that you can dare to bust open that chapter you always wanted to? – without, I mean, smartass critics like me saying, “You can’t put that into a book, nobody will believe it.”
Try us.
Even Uncle Ben is being recalled. And the CDC chief Robert Redfield said Tuesday in testimony on Capitol Hill that COVID-19 “has brought this nation to its knees.” If you don’t know what he’s saying yet, you will. By the power not vested in me, I order you to wear a mask in all public settings. Because I like you better alive than dead. And I’d like to know if you’re ready, you gentle, angry person, to write something nobody will believe.
Update: I’ve jumped back in to add “Singing For Our Lives,” in case you don’t know it. (Spcial thanks to Ms. Walsh for technical assistance.) Holly Near wrote this after the assassination of Harvey Milk. If you’d like to know more, here’s the PBS American Masters piece. And here’s the song.
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About Porter Anderson
@Porter_Anderson is a recipient of London Book Fair's International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair New York. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and indie authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller's The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations' WFP in Rome. PorterAndersonMedia.com
Because I an author of historical fiction and am devoted to research, putting something no one would believe into one of my books is probably not in my future. I do agree, however, that we are living a dystopian novel at present. I look to history to see what may lie on the other side of this mess and I find hope. 100 years ago, the world went through a very similar situation with the Spanish Flu pandemic and what followed was the Roaring Twenties. Terrible economic mistakes were made during that period that led to the Great Depression, but it does show us that recovery and rebirth are possible. During times of turmoil and crisis, having hope and a determination to bring about a better future is the only sane strategy. Anything else leads only to despair and defeat. Have courage, my friends!
Well said, Linda,
Hope on “the other side of this mess,” indeed is the goal.
And in historical work, your writings become all the more important for bringing periods like this forward with us. (It’s been especially disturbing to learn how little is taught in schools about the Tulsa massacre of African-Americans during those Roaring Twenties, hasn’t it?)
I think what I’m expecting here is that your history will become more fantastical than ever going forward. :) Get it all in there.
And thanks again, very much appreciate your reading me and commenting.
Stay safe,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I agree that it is disturbing that history curricula gloss over evils in our past. The Tulsa Massacre is not the only one during that period. Our own home state of Florida had one that wiped out an entire community, yet the Rosewood Massacre is rarely, if ever, mentioned in secondary Florida history classes. As a retired educator, I would like to see our high school study of US history taught fully, warts and all. It is when young people must discover the warts on their own that they lose faith. They feel they have been duped. If we teach the evils of the past along with the good, perhaps we will avoid what historians have warned against. “Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it.” George Santyana
You’re totally right on this. And the appalling thing is that this is precisely a technique of totalitarian states, whitewashing educational curricula so that the sins of the past are hidden. In so many ways, what we’re watching now is perilously close to past pathways to authoritarianism. And I’m afraid that one reason it’s not better recognized as such is that our educational system has been sanitized.
Thanks again!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I am gentle most of the time but feeling fierce these days, and also not surprised by any of it. The Kennedys, King, Ohio State. Aids. This is ‘Something is Rotten in America, Redux’, only bigger, because now there’s some deep-level consciousness-raising going on and the young people have phones. So, yes, I’m ready. I’ve been ready for some time now. Chomping at the bit to write the things that nobody will believe. Until politicians and power-mongers andthe petty tyrants that lick their hems are revealed as the shape-shifting lizards that they really are. I stand provoked, Porter. Thank you, and stay safe.
Thank you so much for this, Susan.
I love your ferocity, don’t give up a bit of it.
It is time, you’re right, and it’s a much needed outcome of what we’ve been going through, too. But what you say about consciousness-raising is right. It may have taken such deep levels of evil to get a lot of people there, but so much of today’s news is showing us just how spectacular the awakening can be.
Stay provoked, we aren’t there yet and we can take nothing for granted. I’ll leave you with this, as I didn’t have it embedded yet when you read the post: Holly Near’s “Singing For Our Lives,” which I mentioned in the column.
Err on the side of anger right now, I give you permission. :) We’ve been gentle a long time.
https://music.peacefuluprising.org/track/singing-for-our-lives
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Love the song and the sentiment. TY, P!
My pleasure, Susan!
Porter, in my observation what readers willingly accept are the most unlikely story elements, not the least.
All fiction is speculative. No fiction is documentary. Story creates a feeling of verisimilitude, yet inherently shapes reality to make a point. This is most evident in SFF. I mean, a magic ring and telepathic dragons? But all kinds of fiction distort reality, if only to tidy it up, historical fiction included. (Apologies, Linda.)
What readers object to are not big plot stretches but small, human behaviors that do not match their experience of how people think, speak and act. “No one would ever do that!” “I can’t believe he said that!”
Willing suspension of disbelief will give you Panem, but not that Katniss does not choose Gale. Thus, to your provocation, I say pile on the crazy ideas, just be sure that no one stirs vinegar into their tea.
Right, Don, good to hear from you, and I agree completely.
In my experience of this “You couldn’t put it into a book” line, it’s said not by readers but by writers.
Just as you’re suggesting, the readers (and in this case viewers of the Halpern/Stålenhag “Tales”) are ready to go right along.
They’re trusting that way, our readers.
Reminds me of that masterful line from A Christmas Carol when the Ghost of Christmas Past says to Scrooge, “Bear but a touch of my hand there” (the spirit puts his hand on Scrooge’s heart) “and you shall be upheld in more than this.” Of course, I’ve never forgiven Dickens for adding an exclamation point to such a gorgeous line, lol.
So I’m with you and thanks for the input. As any telepathic dragon will tell you, the fault lies in ourselves on this. :)
Stay safe. #MaskUp
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I’ve always been in awe of (and enjoyed reading/watching) Science Fiction, as it has always led the way for both writing what no one would believe (but potentially could be), and also delving into the human psyche and society’s many issues. Some of the most heart-rending stories I’ve read have been science fiction because, done well, they do show us the best and the worst of ourselves.
I think I’ve always tended to write what no one will believe, sticking wildly fantastical in with the mundane. It’s probably why I went for urban/alternate world fantasy for my first two novels, but then wrote with themes in mind that are more women’s lit oriented. Feedback I’d get from editors and agents, however, was “you can write, but what would we do with this?” So, I self-published and that ship has sailed. :)
But! I am hoping that this time of innovation may allow for more fluidity between genres in the future. I’m at it again, this time crossing cozy mystery with some darker, social justice-type themes and including bits from my own life as a social worker that nobody would believe actually did happen. I guess I just don’t learn. Maybe it’ll be okay…
Good Luck on your cross-genre story.
I’d add that SciFi is based in literary criticism. In the 2nd century, Lucian of Samosata wrote ‘A True Story’. It included aliens, outer space travel, and interplanetary warfare. This countered the tales by Herodotus, Homer, and others. Lucian firmly stated that his tale was nothing but lies, and that fact made it the only truthful mythological story.
Writing stories that can’t be true help to expose untruths in our world. In my opinion, that is crucial in the world we live in today.
Hey, James,
Here’s to exposing untruths, couldn’t agree more!
Thanks,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hey, Lara!
Great to hear from you and sorry for the late reply here (every week seems to be three months long during this whole thing, lol.).
You’re right about sci-fi. I think of it as a kind of gateway genre to all the others. By using it as a backdrop as Stålenhag does (as opposed to foregrounding it, as some others do), it lets you play out whatever else you might want to pursue, freed of the gravitational pull of reality. (In Stålenhag’s series’ first episode, there’s actually a floating object, which illustrates this rather well — it’s not the point at all, but it releases some other things that would have been harder to get to, story-wise, without it.)
Whenever you’re doing the wildly fantastical in a mundane setting, just wear sunglasses and tell them it’s magical realism and they’ll put you up for a Pulitzer, lol.
I do think there’s more crossover available now. But I confess, I know one writer whose more idiosyncratic elements have, in fact, been hampering, in that “we love it but don’t know what to do with it” way. There’s a kind of Green Zone, if you know Cyprus, in which your intelligibility to industry people and readers will depend on how close you are to one side or the other. In my friend’s case, this has been quite difficult. What’s interestingly quirky to one person can be just plain weird and off-putting to another. I think it takes a lot of contextual intelligence on a good writer’s part to know just where that line is. And the idea isn’t to not cross it but to be able to then bring so much commitment to it that getting across that line — and into what might have just seemed weird to others — withoiut losing them is the real key.
It’s like those military floating bridge builders — they know how to build a stretch of bridge on the water, then stand on it to build the next stretch. Getting outside of what might be a reader’s comfort zone or familiaity zone may just depend on how well you can build that next step for them with enough stability that they won’t jump ship on you.
Tricky stuff, but keep going Innovation is its own education, and you don’t know if you don’t give it a shot. :)
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
In an interview I heard the other day with Salman Rushdie, when asked if this is the end of the world, he replied “It’s the end of A world.” (emphasis on the “A”)What we make of the world that’s coming will be up to all of us. And writers have a role to play. We need to rise to that challenge.
Thanks for sharing that, Maggie. Activism takes place not only in the streets. Tearing down statues may make for impressive optics, but writing something that inspires lasting, positive change is at least as powerful.
Hi, Maggie,
Apologies for not being back to you earlier. Work got the best of me after this last column before I could answer everyone.
I like your Rushdie line and the point you make with it. What’s interesting here is that which woirld is ending may be more under the control of each of us than we think. The role writers have to play — you’re right — is something we each can define.
So here’s to deciding what’s ending, what’s starting, and that we’re the “deciders,” to use an old Bush term. Creative responsibility is the best kind.
Enjoy your writing,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Ah, Porter, there are no surprises anymore–as we have read for centuries about power and evil, have lived through wars that touched us and were so far off we simply folded the newspaper and got another cup of coffee–but now we have been touched in the tenderest of places, our own fragile lives. Wear a mask! You should see my hair. We have sold our home and are moving during a pandemic. Good planning right? If anything, I won’t fear writing about fear, creating a world that people might at first not believe, because we are living in crazy town right now. There is no hanging back–but in the end, may gentleness and understanding have a resurgence. And be well.
Hey, Beth,
By now I’ll bet you’ve made your move to and I hope it went well. Enjoyed reading your column here, too!
What I liked here was your talk of a resurgence of gentleness and understanding. With so many things “surging” and “resurging” in statistics, viral and otherwise, it’s nice to remember that dynamic can intensify good as well as less good things and effects.
Settle in well — your column reminded me of a photographic artwork I bought from a friend years ago titled “You Will Be Found in the Place You Were Born.”
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson