Deconstruction Is The Problem

Deconstruction Is The Problem
https://delarroz.com/2020/08/18/deconstruction-is-the-problem/

If every opinion is valid, then no opinions are valid.

Post-modernism and deconstruction are the acid baths in which our current crop of idiotelligentsia are soaking the Western tradition.

As a novelist, I completely agree with this person.

This blogger doesn’t want you to read his words because he blocks them with something opaque that comes across the screen and makes it so you can’t see the words. I know, really stupid, right?

So I’m pasting them right here. You’re welcome!

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It was illuminating reading how science fiction author John Scalzi talks about the classics with zero reverence this morning. It shows how the current crop at traditional publishing doesn’t love the genre and therefore could never do the genre well.

They always are attempting to “deconstruct” the stories, characters, art, in an attempt to show something ugly, vile, worthless and hold it up with a smirk as if those stories somehow hold the same value as great classics which upheld beauty, truth, heroism.

We face the same thing in comics. Reading an essay by Steve Ditko this morning, he brought up a quote from Joe Quesada, one of the higher ups at Marvel Comics, in his disdain for the heroic, beautiful and true, which rang very similar to Mr. Scalzi’s comments this morning.

He called the classics “toys that are meant to be broken”, much like Mr. Scalzi, denigrating the classics by calling them toys in the first place, which sets them at a point where they’re just something silly and not worthwhile even before the attempts to break them. But going further into this analogy, the current crop of Marvel writers are but toddlers throwing a fit and smashing the toys across the room.

This is the problem with any sort of mainstream entertainment. It doesn’t serve the reader when what they love is smashed. If someone orders a vase to hold flowers, and they get delivered a bunch of shards of broken glass and told it’s “basically the same thing”, they’re going to be rightfully upset, because it’s not the same thing by any means. One has form and function. One does not.

Of course, on the independent side, we are trying to bring back form, function, beauty, truth, heroism and show a way forward to where we won’t lose our culture to these self-appointed gatekeepers. There’s a long way to go, but their own words on their chosen industries and genres are very telling as to why they can’t tell a good story to save their lives.

they can’t tell a good story to save their lives.
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Been reading science fiction since I was able to use my father’s library card at age 11.

I now only read the Indies.

Been writing all my life. Right now, I am blocked because every dystopian trope is just mundane at the moment. I find myself plotting stories about aliens because so many humans are no longer displaying the traits that create great characters. They are cardboard cutouts proclaiming from a proscenium. There is no reason to care about them, much less tell their stories.

Progs destroy everything they touch.

I want to see them deconstructed. They are already unreadable. And their publishers are all cowards.

Agreed

I used to read anthologies of sci-fi short stories. I noticed that the stories said more about the time in which they were written than the future.

There was a lot of whinging about the environment in the 70's for example.

It's no wonder that dystopia and zombies seem to be the order of the day as both are about the complete destruction of meaning which is the definition of post-modernism.

I write poetry, but not so much now partly because of the emaciating effects of post-modernism. The poetry that gets selected and published has to be void of meaning or else it is considered sentimental and worthless.

...the poetry that gets selected and published has to be void of meaning
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In the early 60s, the rage was Ad Reinhardt’s Black painting. I took the train from Champaign to Chicago to see it. My heart sank. I left the Art Museum in a state of cognitive dissonance.

I had been progressing in my ability to see in a traditional (still) College of Art program that still required a portfolio and had rigorous crit. And here was a large rectangle (IIRC; could have been square) of black. Disregard the critiques that say there were 3 shades of black you could see if you stared at it long enough. It was black. Cutting edge. Fawned over in the art and popular press, back when we still believed there were objective reviews and criticism and reporting.

Nihilism has crept, then leaped, then galloped through world culture. And yet: students today pay to attend private ateliers where figurative realism is taught by the old methods. People read genre fiction because it is relatable, real, and has truths within it disguised as entertainment.

In traditional fiction publishing today, we have, with a few notable exceptions, ‘sensitivity editors’. WORD has a sensitivity editor included that is so far, voluntary.

I read indies and I am not seeing a lot of SJW crit in the reviews....yet. There was a spate of it about a year ago, but they went on to more productive pastures. I also read classics, like Simak and others from the 50s/60s.

I am taking a break and teaching myself, thru tutorials, a realistic form of dry felting sculpture. It is engaging and challenging and I am retired and no longer care about *making it* after a long career of limited hand production of an item I invented and sold to distributors for 35 years.

The stories are there. They propagate within my mind and I will write some down again, sometime. I cannot, however, relate to the nihilists, so I may not be able to speak to the younger readers. I suppose my characters will seem quaint to them, even alien. And that is why I have found myself thinking in terms of alien cultures and societies and how their environments and biology would perhaps shape their thoughts/actions/cultures.

Not to continue rambling, but we all must find the will to continue creating in whatever media or the very act of doing so will become forgotten, subsumed into this borg they are fashioning.

Write your poetry. We all need to return to creating for ourselves and perhaps a small coterie of friends and colleagues. We must think of our own work as resistance.

Besides, artists art. It’s what we do. I am convinced an audience exists. The longer cancel culture jams us, the more that audience will search out the meaning they crave.

You might appreciate a recent interview with the author of Hazardous Imaginings: The Mondo Book of Politically Incorrect Science Fiction.

An Interview with Author Andrew Fox
https://libertyislandmag.com/2020/11/07/an-interview-with-author-andrew-fox/

Been writing all my life. Right now, I am blocked because every dystopian trope is just mundane at the moment. I find myself plotting stories about aliens because so many humans are no longer displaying the traits that create great characters. They are cardboard cutouts proclaiming from a proscenium. There is no reason to care about them, much less tell their stories.

I've felt that way since 9/11 - and Obama's subsequent election completely buried my desire to write about humanity. Chimpanzees would behave with more respect for their own band than collectivists.

Andrew Fox is a writing machine!

There is hope for the future of fiction and our coming fictional future.