QUOTE UNQUOTE:
From page 48 of Amitav Ghosh's brilliant new essay on the literary, political and historical ramifications of climate change, in a book just released in English from the University of Chicago Press, edited by Alan Thomas there, titled THE GREAT DERANGEMENT: Climate Change and the UNthinkable," Dr Ghosh gives a brief shout out to the cli-fi community worldwide when he writes:
"Is it the case that science fiction is better equipped to address climate change than mainstream literary fiction? This might appear obvious to many. After all, there is now a new subgenre of science fiction called ‘climate fiction’ or cli-fi."
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AMAZON REVIEW:
It's sad that Dr Ghosh wants to be ''proscriptive'' about what kinds of fiction should be deployed for talking about this subject. Sure, he gives a brief shout-out to cli-fi in the literary section, but while the sections on climate change geopolitics and history are brilliant analyses,Ghosh's idea for fostering the conditions for novelists to tackle global warming impact issues only in ''serious mainstream literary circles'' is too proscriptive and silly. Has he never heard of genre novelists? So this otherwise brilliant book is a near-total fail in the section about climate novels written by ''genre'' writers. The author did not do his homework on this and his prejudice toward genre novelists does not serve him well. There have been sci-fi and speculative fiction and eco-fiction and cli-fi novels about climate change issues from the early 1960s to today, and Amitavji, always smiling in his photographs, does not seem to grasp this point. In India, not one literary critic challenged him on this. But literary critics and reporters in North America and the UK will be sure to challenge him on this. His view of what constitutes "literature" is antiquated and prejudiced. Hopefully, after living in Brooklyn for over 25 years he knows that genre novelists from Ballard to Turner to Atwood to Robinson to Vandeermeer have been writing about climate change for over 50 years, and yet he pretends in this book that only ''literary fiction'' by so-called serious VIP novelists can tackle global warming issues. So I give 2/3 of the book five stars for its brilliance and 1/3 of the book one star for its dismal failure to see contemporary genre literature for what is: a happening form of human communication for both writers and readers. Which is why I found it curious that Ghosh more than once brings up the matter of 'serious fiction' and its upturned nose.To bring up climate change in a novel, Ghosh writes, 'is in fact to court eviction from the mansion in which serious fiction has long been in residence; it is to risk banishment to the humbler [low-class] [genre] dwellings that surround the manor house.'But why take serious fiction so seriously? After all, its conventions don't have a monopoly on human imagination. The lines between categories of fiction are blurry at best, and if something called science fiction or climate fiction can better accommodate what is urgent, then maybe we should let it. At the same time, to give the essays their proper due, the book in the end is hugely impressive. Dr Ghosh's arguments about realism and the exceptional are especially interesting! He even writes: "Is it the case that science fiction is better equipped to address climate change than mainstream literary fiction? This might appear obvious to many. After all, there is now a new subgenre of science fiction called ‘climate fiction’ or cli-fi."
=====================
AMAZON REVIEW:
It's sad that Dr Ghosh wants to be ''proscriptive'' about what kinds of fiction should be deployed for talking about this subject. Sure, he gives a brief shout-out to cli-fi in the literary section, but while the sections on climate change geopolitics and history are brilliant analyses,Ghosh's idea for fostering the conditions for novelists to tackle global warming impact issues only in ''serious mainstream literary circles'' is too proscriptive and silly. Has he never heard of genre novelists? So this otherwise brilliant book is a near-total fail in the section about climate novels written by ''genre'' writers. The author did not do his homework on this and his prejudice toward genre novelists does not serve him well. There have been sci-fi and speculative fiction and eco-fiction and cli-fi novels about climate change issues from the early 1960s to today, and Amitavji, always smiling in his photographs, does not seem to grasp this point. In India, not one literary critic challenged him on this. But literary critics and reporters in North America and the UK will be sure to challenge him on this. His view of what constitutes "literature" is antiquated and prejudiced. Hopefully, after living in Brooklyn for over 25 years he knows that genre novelists from Ballard to Turner to Atwood to Robinson to Vandeermeer have been writing about climate change for over 50 years, and yet he pretends in this book that only ''literary fiction'' by so-called serious VIP novelists can tackle global warming issues. So I give 2/3 of the book five stars for its brilliance and 1/3 of the book one star for its dismal failure to see contemporary genre literature for what is: a happening form of human communication for both writers and readers. Which is why I found it curious that Ghosh more than once brings up the matter of 'serious fiction' and its upturned nose.To bring up climate change in a novel, Ghosh writes, 'is in fact to court eviction from the mansion in which serious fiction has long been in residence; it is to risk banishment to the humbler [low-class] [genre] dwellings that surround the manor house.'But why take serious fiction so seriously? After all, its conventions don't have a monopoly on human imagination. The lines between categories of fiction are blurry at best, and if something called science fiction or climate fiction can better accommodate what is urgent, then maybe we should let it. At the same time, to give the essays their proper due, the book in the end is hugely impressive. Dr Ghosh's arguments about realism and the exceptional are especially interesting! He even writes: "Is it the case that science fiction is better equipped to address climate change than mainstream literary fiction? This might appear obvious to many. After all, there is now a new subgenre of science fiction called ‘climate fiction’ or cli-fi."
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