The Raring Twenties

[randy_byers]

At the pubmeet last Sunday, jackwilliambell at one point exclaimed, "What is it with you and 1920? You only read science fiction from the Twenties, and you only watch movies from the Twenties!"

I didn't have an answer for him at the time, but thanks to the spirit of the escalator I have one now: Because the past is another country, and I'm interested in foreign cultures.

This is for sure why I have given up on new SF and only read old stuff. The new stuff started to seem too familiar, too ordinary, too tired, as though I'd seen it all before. (I have the same feeling about modern rock music.) Going back to pre-Amazing SF took me back far enough that it seems strange, alien, unexpected, even when I can see the roots of the modern stuff in it (another source of the fascination, for sure). The concepts are different, the language is different, the perspective is different. Thus it seems fresh and unencumbered with stale debates. It challenged my preconceptions in ways that modern SF had stopped doing.

Likewise with silent film: I can see how it's connected to what came after, but the language and visual grammar of silent film is significantly different than that of sound film. This is why so many people bounce off of silent film -- the acting styles seem unnatural, the frame rate is unnatural, the way scenes are staged is static, the camera angles and set-ups don't change in the manner we expect. You have to learn how to understand the films on their own terms. It's like being in a foreign culture where the few words and gestures you understand only get you so far.

Mind you, it's an exaggeration to say I only watch old movies. I'm much more interested in modern film than I am in modern science fiction these days. It's also true that another reason I gave up on modern science fiction is that I was reading fewer and fewer novels of any genre, and it feels as though you have to read a lot to keep up with what's happening in the SF field. I just wasn't keeping up. With film I don't care as much about whether I'm keeping up or not, because I don't expect to be knowledgeable about film and don't really hang out with other people who are knowledgeable. (My few attempts to participate in online film discussions generally run aground on my lack of knowledge and the fact that I've seen few films relative to other film fanatics.)

It's not that I think that the science fiction and films of an earlier era are better than what is produced today -- far from it. But they are different, and I find the differences fascinating. At least I haven't given science fiction up for mysteries and crime novels!

Comments

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

Well, saying you 'only' do anything is a form of hyperbole meant to put emphasis on the thing in question. I knew you don't 'only' watch silent films, for example.

Still, I appreciate this explanation of your interest in these things. However, I have to wonder if your interest in 1920's SF and film extends to the history and other popular culture of the time? If not, then it could be that you are missing a lot of references and quoting in the media you watch and read; which would be immediately clear to people of the time.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure I miss a lot, but then that's true of modern stuff too. Recently saw a discussion of District 9 that indicated that the last name of the protagonist is both a common last name in South Africa and slang for "village idiot". Going in the other direction, I now know that the British beef "tea", Bovril, is named after vril, the magical superscientific force in Bulwer Lytton's The Coming Race.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Your self-analysis certainly sounds reasonable. Although.... you've made me feel Guilty about having read (in the past few years) considerably more (mostly historical or ethnic) crime novels than science-fiction. (More precisely, you're implying that I _ought_ to feel Guilty about it. I actually don't.) My feelings about modern/contemporary SF are mixed, but (mostly) are negative, like yours. The level of _competent_ writing in this genre is quite high, but I find it easy to understand someone not finding this adequate.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to make you feel guilty -- only chagrined. It does seem to me that it's quite common for science fiction readers to abandon SF in favor of crime novels. I assume it's because both genres often revolve around puzzles, problems, and solutions.

[wrdnrd]

This makes a lot of sense to me -- i think once or twice i've even used the phrase "foreign country" to explain my relationship to the past.

One of the reasons i don't read much fiction these days (aside from not having a lot of free time to devote to reading period) is that with contemporary fiction there's just so much to keep up with, whereas with older fiction the vagaries of time have done a certain amount of sorting for me. There's simply less to read from, say, the Regency than there is from early-millennium English-language fiction.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent point about the sorting process. I've said before too that the problem with new books is that you have to read a lot of drek to find the good ones. The past has at least the illusion of being sorted already.

On the other hand, there are people who collect old pulp magazines to read the stories that were never reprinted. As my friend Craig Smith has said, "Maybe there's a reason they were never reprinted." But undoubtedly there are some lost gems too.

On the other other hand, it has to be said that some of the old SF I'm reading is also drek. I haven't made up my mind if I'm going to finish the Darkness and Dawn trilogy by George Allan England. I got partway through the second book before I switched to Bulwer Lytton.

(BTW, I thought "The past is a foreign country" was from F. Scott Fitzgerald, but it turns out it's from a British writer named L.P. Hartley. The opening sentence of his novel The Go-Between (1953) is "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.")

[wrdnrd]

Ah! So i've been unwittingly quoting someone. That makes sense -- i'm not that witty on my own. ;)

I do entirely agree that history's sorting process is ... faulty at best. I mean, just speaking as someone with a vested interest in seeing more writing by women, for example. What the past decides is important enough to keep to send forward for the rest of us isn't necessarily what the rest of us want to read from or know about the past.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure who wins the booby prize: you for thinking you were quoting yourself, or me for thinking I was quoting Fitzgerald! I guess we both win.

One of the pulp writers I want to get around to is Francis Stevens (pen name of Gertrude Bennett). She seems to be one of the women who is being pulled out of the shadows of the past. I've got a copy of her 1918 novella, "The Labyrinth," on my To Be Read pile.