Ambiguity: The Boundary Between Psychosis and Reality in Science Fiction

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Philip K. Dick.
by Pete Welsch 
CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Television culture means that we often lack the depth to deal with ambiguity. The complexity of novels eludes our attention; we often prefer the truncated and clear narratives of sitcoms, where a plot line is fully resolved in forty-three minutes. The beauty of ambiguity, and of the blurred line between reality and divergent reality, is underrated.

Consider alternative mental states, including states of mental illness, which can often feel like occupying another universe. Functional people glide by on their electric Segways outside the space pod of your apartment. Meanwhile, you exist in another space: the world of couch and ennui, late-night TV, and mustering the courage to get out of bed. Your mind constructs this other space, which intersects with reality only at tangents. This construction mimics the world created in science fiction: an alternate universe only in your own mind.

Within one’s own mind—and within a character’s mind—only a psychologist or a reader (read: impartial third party) can determine where the boundary between reality and fiction “really lies”. But the true location of the boundary between mental illness and reality in science fiction is an unknown quantity, an ambiguity. What is real and what is, in fact, imagined?

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Roundup: Now That You’ve Graduated…

In our Roundups segment, we’re looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. We explore posts from our archives as well as other top literary magazines and websites, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. This week we bring you posts about what to do now that you’ve graduated.

3075710214_e521eb2d4bFrom Ploughshares:

From Around the Web:

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For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #6: Stop, Look, and Listen

For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part! 

Screen shot 2013-05-19 at 7.54.56 PMIf you’ve been following along with this series from the start, you might have noticed a bit of a theme emerging—each of the posts has, in its own way, encouraged us all to take some dedicated minutes away from the distractions of daily life. Focusing on a single task—hello, writing!—is a skill, and one that can be increasingly difficult to master in these heady, tech-y times when a million things seem to be vying for our attention at once.

But establishing new habits can be a slippery process; I know that when I inadvertently stray from a path paved with the best intentions, I can get easily frustrated (then grumpy, then dejected, then then then…), all the while convincing myself I’m not up for the challenge. So! That’s why we’re approaching all these gentle tasks in small doses and manageable chunks. And? No judgement here. If one doesn’t work out quite right, no matter—try the next. Or try something completely different. But keep trying.

Last session’s exercise is a good one to return to when the mental waters get murky; completely shutting out the hustle and bustle for a well-deserved respite. This week? Well, we’re taking the exact opposite approach. It’s time to welcome in a tidal rush of sensory overload.

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The World’s Strongest Librarian

9781592407873HThe World’s Strongest Librarian
Josh Hanagarne
Gotham Books, May 2013
304 pages
$26.00

Josh Hanagarne’s first book, The World’s Strongest Librarian, has so many different hooks it’s enough to make a publisher weep with joy. A 6’7”, weightlifting librarian? Sold. A librarian who suffers from Tourette’s? Sold. A part-Navajo, all-Mormon, Stephen-King-fanboy librarian, who lifts weights and suffers from Tourette’s? They might as well be printing money.

What’s nice about The World’s Strongest Librarian, though, is that it’s not all hook and no substance. If anything, it verges on too much substance, guiding us through just about everything that’s ever happened to Hanagarne: his childhood, his marriage, his Tourette’s, his faith, his job at the Salt Lake City Public Library, his weightlifting, and a few more odds and ends besides. There’s so much crammed in here that it makes the Dewey-inspired chapter headings seem very appropriate—because reading them sometimes feels like wandering, lost, through the stacks.

Like wandering through the stacks, though, you also occasionally happen on a real gem, and here those gems are mainly Hangarne’s assorted vignettes about growing up and living in the Mormon Church. Compared to the more visible, well-publicized representatives of his faith—Mitt Romney, say, or those chatty young fellows with the name badges—Hanagarne’s account, of both the church’s strictures and his own experience navigating them, is equal parts wry, tender, and illuminating. (It’s cheaper than Book of Mormon tickets, too.)

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Cookbooks, Compost Heaps, and Poetry Booby Traps: A Conversation with Poet and Pie-maker Kate Lebo

kate-lebo

(photo credit: steven miller)

The first poetry anthology I owned was How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young Readers. The title still gives me the giggles, though my amusement is perhaps more nuanced—as a kid, I delighted in the simple silliness of the concept; now, the idea of “eating” a poem seems to me a potent subversion of the establishment, a reminder that the experience of reading poetry can be at once tangible and abstract, silly and serious, nourishing of both body and mind.

For a similarly potent, subversive, and delightful reminder of the inherent deliciousness of verse, look no further than Kate Lebo, a Seattle-based poet and proprietress (or rather, proPIEtress) of Pie School, which teaches pastry-phobics the art of the perfect pie. Other manifestations of her awesomeness include A Commonplace Book of Pie; a “semi-regular semi-secret social” called Pie Stand; an in-progress “lyric grocery” of Wikipedia erasures about fruit; and these kick-ass poems in AGNI, River and Sound Review, and Best New Poets.

After the break, Lebo and I talk pies, poems, poems about pies and much, much more.

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The Myth of the Literary Cowboy, Part 5: Cowboy Poetry

Courtesy of Cowboypoetry.com

“Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

I’ve heard this phrase uttered by a number of people—students, coworkers, friends, academics, random drunk party guests—anytime I mention one of the following: wearing comfortable stilettos, being a vegan Texan, or enjoying cowboy poetry. The juxtaposition of those pairings proves too much for people to process, but cowboy poetry is especially baffling.

Perhaps it is because they see each individual element of the phrase “cowboy poetry” in its most clichéd light: the tortured poet, rumple-haired and sad-eyed, like some disheveled Precious Moments figure; and the Stetson-topped cowboy, squinting in the sun, bow-legged and oblivious to the rules of grammar and hygiene. In comparison, comfy heels and rejecting meat in the land of steak seem downright logical. Continue reading

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Episodia 1.6: The Five Pillars of Place

As a writer, reader, and a creative writing teacher, I am—for now and forever—a staunch proponent of the place-based narrative. When we think of stories, we tend to focus on those bound to particular characters or events. And yet, some of the most compelling plot lines found in literature are borne from complications with place. Often when I suggest the importance of setting to my memoir and fiction students, they resist. “This is a universal story,” they say. “Setting is irrelevant.” And then I urge them to reconsider. Small towns and cities have narrative arcs, too.

There’s a difference, I tell my students, between thoughtfully omitting “place” for the sake of the story line and simply ignoring it. Do you know how many television shows are filmed without any kind of setting? Zero. Yes, literature is a separate medium from television. No, we can’t include everything that a television set designer might. But we also can’t deny the power an evocative setting possesses to swiftly transport a reader into an imagined or remembered world.

So where do we start? Character templates are common, but how about one for setting? With the help of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” and its expertly crafted small town of Pawnee, Indiana, I’ve compiled five “pillars” of place that can help transform a competent novel or memoir into an unforgettable one.

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Writers and Their Pets: Sherrie Flick

The ‘Writers and Their Pets’ series began with my own desire to celebrate my dog Sally, and over the coming months I will also invite other writers to share with the rest of us the details of their lives with beloved pets. —Ladette Randolph, Editor-in-Chief

SherrieBubsXmasEve2011Blu was born on July 3, 2006, and he is a good boy.

It just so happens that my birthday is also July 3rd, but we are bonded over much more than that. Blu is a Yorkshire Terrier and he is my first dog. Before he came into my life I was a confirmed cat person but all that changed.

I had never wanted a dog, and I didn’t want this one. When he arrived at our house, Blu was no bigger than a guinea pig and I wondered how he would ever be able to go up and down the stairs. The first walk we took him on, he couldn’t make it up onto the curb by himself.

The rule was that I was not responsible for this puppy. The other rules were: No sweaters. No toys. Well, just a couple toys. But no sweaters!

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Fantasy Blog Draft – Round 5 – Poets

Fantasy Blog Header - resizedWe enter the final genre round of the Ploughshares Fantasy Blog Draft with the oldest of the genres, the most inscrutable, the one with the most wild things and the tallest hats. The genre where the sidewalk ends with water water everywhere but not a drop to drink.

One nugget of interest entering this penultimate round is that Emily Dickinson, the winner of Powell’s Poetry Madness bracket, which wrapped up last month, has already been selected! Manager Benjamin Samuel may have made a prescient pick by adding the poet to his roster as a wildcard Events Coverage blogger. He has, in effect, stolen top talent from this round. Let’s see if that affected any of the bloggers.

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New Ploughshares Solo: A Warm Breath by Scott Nadelson

a warm breath coverWe’re excited to announce the publication of a new Ploughshares Solo: “A Warm Breath” by Scott Nadelson.  The Ploughshares Solos series allows us to publish long essays and stories in a digital format. Recent Ploughshares Solos include “Pleased to Be Otherwise” by Gina Ochsner and “The Elegant Solution” by Jim Tilley. Visit our website to see all the Ploughshares Solos.

In this darkly humorous essay, Nadelson describes his grief after the premature death of a close friend. Every moment of wonder he experiences—from caring for his infant daughter to taking in a neighborhood stray cat—starts to feel like a betrayal. Nadelson looks over his life, thinking about his run-in with a Soho cab driver, a college Halloween party spent with his dead friend, and his favorite Chekhov story, “Grief.” Over the course of the essay, Nadelson tries to reconcile his conflicting emotions, to understand why he is falling apart and what he can do to bring himself back.

Available on Kindle for $0.99.

An excerpt from the essay:

And how enraged he was that I refused to pay the surcharge, which bumped what should have been a ten-dollar fare closer to fifteen. Part of my refusal had to do with how little cash I had for the evening and how many Belgian beers I wanted to sample, though there was also the principle of the matter, the fact that no one in his right mind would have called my overnight bag luggage; if I hadn’t been so excited when I got out of the train I would have just kept the bag on the seat beside me and not let the driver bother popping the trunk. Continue reading

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