Novels: Elisabeth Barnes

I found pages 444 and 445 of Barnes’ article most interesting. Although we’ve talked quite a bit about seduction being a key element in the early American novels, I’m not sure how much we’ve actually discussed the novels as seducers themselves. Barnes asserts, “To see the early novel as itself a kind of seducer is to recognize its attempts to encode all readers, not just women, as sensitive, sympathetic, and seducible” (445). Perhaps this is why novel-reading has become seen as more of a “feminine” thing to do in society. Of course there are exceptions, especially with genres like comic books and science fiction, but overall, I think that if I told most women I’m attracted to a guy because he reads fiction, it might make their heads tilt to the side a little bit.

Them: Huh? He reads? Like, Sports books?

Me: No, like Toni Morrison.

Them: Ugh, I don’t even know who that is. OR Oh, Oprah loves her.

How’s that for being sexist against my own sex? Whoops.

Anyhow…

I think what is most seductive about novels is a point we haven’t discussed much that Barnes points to is the idea that individuals had to ability in the Enlightenment to “invent new social worlds” (444). Isn’t that invention what we love so much about literature? About film? About Art in general? I think about the stories that I am most attached tos; people didn’t read Harry Potter because it was eloquently written, they kept reading because they wanted to enter into a world full of magic. If you’ve ever tried to read any of thousands of the Star Wars novels, they all have the same plot and similar actions, but it’s the world that the fans crave. Universe-building has become an obsession in science fiction and fantasy. Experiencing a world that sometimes reminds us of our own, but that overall seems more exciting and new than our own often keeps me turning the pages. Some people are so excited about these worlds that they participate in Cosplay, attend conferences where they can be Jack Sparrow for the weekend, or visit themeparks that offer them a chance to encounter the fictional worlds they so love, like the Harry Potter section of Islands of Adventure or the upcoming Avatar experience at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The invention of new worlds continues to extend with our dependence on technology: video games, on-line games, on-line dating, social networking, interactive reading guides, blogs, the list goes on--all create new social worlds and are new mediums for communication. One in which we can (re)create ourselves or perhaps be a sexless Orc or a male adventurer when we’re actually a female. I remember a couple that I went to college with that played the Sims. They had all of their friends as Sims characters and had basically re-created their life on-line. But they would seriously fight (in real life) about the fact that one of them got in the hot tub with someone they knew. In another world. A world in which they had no authority or autonomy, a world that programmed their characters to wink at other people.  (Chuck Klosterman has a great chapter about this called “Billy Sim” in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs). As a culture, we are obsessed with creating and participating in narratives, whether we enter them as a reader, a gamer, a creator, or an avatar. I think most of us would rather be deep in the Hundred Acre Woods than in Fort Worth. But, maybe that’s just me.