Imp Speaks!

You already know what we like: books that straddle literary- and genre-fiction and focus on lives and events that unfold in this, Our City.

Now, the city-bit is somewhat self-explanatory but, when it comes to genre, people often (yes, still!) think that Literary fiction (“Tolstoy!” “Joyce!” “Morrison!”) and genre fiction (“Hammett!” “Rice!” “Oda!”) are opposed. Or that, when they do share the same pages, exist in a rather awkward and tense relationship, akin to oil and vinegar, J. K. Rowling and reality, or you and your best frenemy.

One, after all, tends to follow proscribed rules (genre fiction) and the other seeks to invent new ways of saying things (Literature).

A person smarter than us, however, once said a smart thing in a smart way about how genre and Literature work and we tend to agree with it:

“The fact that a work ‘disobeys’ its genre does not make the latter nonexistent; it is tempting to say that quite contrary is true. And for a twofold reason. First, because transgression, in order to exist as such, requires a law that will, of course, be transgressed. One could go further: the norm becomes visible — lives — only by its transgression. … But there is more. Not only does the work, for all its being an exception, necessarily presuppose a rule; but this work also, as soon as it is recognized in its exceptional status, becomes in turn, thanks to the successful sales and critical attention, a rule” (from Tzvetan Todorov’s “The Origins of Genre,” available here).

Genre fiction and literary fiction have always fed into one another. After all, Ulysses is a kind of textual buddy film, not unlike Who Framed Roger Rabbit. And Beloved is a ghost story. And Interview with the Vampire is a towering gothic narrative; The Maltese Falcon is a fine example of modernist fiction; and Alan Moore’s From Hell is an exemplary work of postmodernist metaphysical detective story.

These are all also, importantly, good stories: well-conceived and well-executed. And we like that.

Now, a word on (the good kind of) execution:

What the story is about is inextricably bound with how the story is told. In that sense, a good story rests on how its narrative form reverberates (in the musical sense) with its content. This does not mean that form is a kind of a container of content: a box into which you stuff the story, or a cookie-cutter you use to give it shape.

Instead, the two always stimulate and spur each other and can exist in a number of different relationships (many more than I can outline here). So, to give you three examples:

As in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, a novel can use different styles, genres, and points of view (form) to communicate the breadth of history and experience it draws upon to tell a story of interconnected (or reincarnated) lives that repeat-with-differences across time and space (content). The form here echoes (sometimes to the point of overwhelming the ear and confusing the mind) the complexity of links between various characters and time-periods while drawing our attention to the way time and place we live in shape us.

As in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, a novel can use a limited, first-person point of view and short, unadorned, ‘muscular’ sentences (form) to tell a story of a new kind of detective (content). This detective, unlike Sherlock Holmes, does not have a firm grasp of the truth and must stumble and fight (most often) his way through the world; a world that is unstable and uncertain and where truth hides in the shadows even when the detective works his hardest to throw light upon it. The form here harmonizes with the story.

As in Dostoevsky’s The Double, a novel can use what seems like objective, third person narrative while, in the telling, sticking closely to the experiences of its protagonist (form). In doing so, The Double tells a story of a man either slowly going mad or being set upon by otherworldly forces (content). The seeming objectivity of the narration conflicts with the subjective/unverifiable experiences of the protagonist, creating a disharmony that is disorienting for the reader.

We want you to pay attention to these things.

And in doing so, we want you to become (a bit of) a snob. We want you to read slowly. To chew words the way you would a fine piece of jerky. To focus on organizing principles of a story as much as on the unfolding events.

Now, snobbery, as you know, has a bit of a bad reputation — and for good reason. But snobbery is, today, when deployed carefully and selectively, an important way of guarding against all kinds of slop.

We don’t like slop. Particularly LLM or ‘AI’ slop.

We like rough edges. Imperfection. But not the kind of imperfection that hallucinates data and adds arms and fingers to photos of your dead grandma. We like the human kind of imperfection. Linguistic hiccups. Textual warts. Musical farts. That kind of thing.

Putting aside the environmental consequences of LLM, the ethical issues surrounding its theft of intellectual property, and the apparent techno-fascism of many of its most prominent proponents — putting aside all those things, we are mostly, already, simply bored with it. Who gives a shit if a robot can outrun a long-distance runner? I wanna see the runner sweat and then be humble in their victory. Or lord it obnoxiously over the other runners. Or both.

David Simon put it well in an interview on NPR’s Consider This:

SHAPIRO: OK, so you’ve spent your career creating television without AI, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems, or saying…

SIMON: You mentioned that.

SHAPIRO: …Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.

SIMON: I don’t think AI can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.

SHAPIRO: But if you’re trying to transition from Scene 5 to Scene 6 and you’re stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an AI and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition.

SIMON: I’d rather put a gun in my mouth.

In deploying and focusing on the good kind of imperfection, stories in general, we believe, and our stories in particular, we hope, (will) both reveal and create. They (will) help us recover and maintain our pasts, but they (will) also construct and invent different — dare we hope, better? — ways of living with each other.

After all, reading is a fundamentally social act. In reading, I open myself to the voices and the experiences of others. Sometimes those voices simply help me pass time. Sometimes, they comfort me, make me understand that I am not alone, that I am part of a community. Sometimes, they annoy and provoke me. Sometimes they chide me. Sometimes they challenge me. But always, they are rooted in an embodied, fleshy experience.

And so we eat, sleep, move about, make love and share our lives, go potty; and so we read; and so we write.