WEBVTT

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All right, so as
writers of course,

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we can decide to
fill in the blanks.

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We can write genre
fiction, write stories

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for children that
include all the answers,

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or we can withhold
a great deal more.

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But I'm going to skip
over my example of that,

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and instead, show you for
just a minute some fractals.

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Everybody here know fractals?

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Mathematicians in the audience?

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Some people, yeah.

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Just in case you don't
know, say for instance,

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we were starting with a line
segment up at the very top.

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And say we decided
to replace every line

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segment in our drawing with the
thing labeled first iteration.

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And so that's the example
of the first iteration.

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The second iteration, you
take every line segment

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in that drawing, and you
replace it with that same thing.

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Then, the third time, you're
still doing the same thing.

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You just see it
gets more intricate.

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And that would be the
fourth, and you could go

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on and on and on and on and on.

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And some of you by now--

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I mean, probably
all of us somewhere

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have seen fractal art.

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We might not have been
aware of what it was

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and how it was working.

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What's interesting
about that work

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and about fractals is that it
can start-- in fractal math

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can start to replicate
shapes in nature

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even though it starts
off as it seems

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a purely mathematical and
maybe even arbitrary construct.

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If you think about this shape
right here, for instance,

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as the image of a shoreline,
of a lake, of a pond,

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of a glass of water--

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it wouldn't be a
shoreline, but the line

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around a glass of
water-- and you

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kept doing the same thing, kept
looking more and more closely,

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you realize that in some way,
that circumference is infinite.

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You can keep looking
more and more closely.

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You can keep finding
more and more detail.

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And so, among other
things, that's

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my argument for why
realism is inexhaustible.

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You can keep looking.

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You can keep finding more.

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But a fractal landscape, which
can look like a kind of map,

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is made by similar replacements.

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Here's a rectangle
divided into four.

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You can apply to
it a formula which

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would tilt the four
parts of the rectangle.

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And you can keep doing it.

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And so eventually,
you get to what

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looks like a topographical map.

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And it starts to look like an
arbitrary form, although it's

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created by certain repetitions.

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You can also use fractals to
imitate forms found in nature.

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So there's a fractal fern.

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That fractal is not
a fern, obviously,

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and it's not identical
to any particular fern.

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But by being patient
with the math,

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you can imitate a
different kind of fern,

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or you can even try to
imitate some particular fern.

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While Euclidean geometry
describes man-made objects,

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fractals are more
useful for describing

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shapes found in nature.

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The lesson for
writers of realism

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is that the representation
of natural shapes

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is achieved not by abandoning
geometry necessarily,

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but sometimes, by embracing
a more rigorous geometry.

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So back to Chuck Jones.

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I can't believe that
thing disappeared.

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I wonder what happened.

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But anyway, you're
still imagining a river.

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Chuck Jones was a fan of the
work done by the Disney studio

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when he was young.

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And say, Sleeping
Beauty, imagine

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Sleeping Beauty, or
Beauty and the Beast,

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the dance scene in Beauty and
the Beast, which you've got

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actually, two actors dancing.

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And then you move
back, and you generate

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by computer in
Beauty and the Beast

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the cartoon image of
the characters dancing.

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Well, Chuck Jones was a fan
of that early Disney work,

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but he grew to believe--

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and this is a crucial
point for a fiction writer,

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I think-- that believability
was more important than realism.

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Inspired by that landscape
of Arches National Monument--

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some of you have
probably been there,

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and that's why the backgrounds
of Roadrunner cartoons

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often looks like the arches
in Arches National Monument.

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He pushed further and further
into a stylized American

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Southwest until it
became otherworldly.

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His trains and trucks
had no human drivers.

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His coyote looked like a hobo.

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His Roadrunner was
impossibly clever.

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Yet Wile E. Coyote retained some
of the physical characteristics

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and apparent desperation
of actual coyotes.

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And Roadrunner is based
on an actual running bird.

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The challenge in
the cartoons was

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to strike a balance
between the two worlds.

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Hugh Kenner says, "Jones works
close to the mysterious zone,

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where we viewers connect
pen and ink artifice

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with the world we inhabit."

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In some way or another, all
writing connects ink artifice

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with the world we inhabit.

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When we read that Barth story,
Lost in the Funhouse or Lolita,

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if we aren't persuaded to
think of the characters

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in those narratives as
people, if we aren't

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repulsed by Humbert Humbert
and occasionally amused by him,

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the fiction fails.

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But if we're only
impatient in Barth's story

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because it seems we'll
never get to the beach,

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or we feel exasperated
in the Kundera novel

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because the narrator keeps
interrupting the story--

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if we only feel, we're
missing the opportunity

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provided by fiction
that means to engage

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our mind in other ways.

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Some of the work
referred to as postmodern

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is difficult to access
even for dedicated readers.

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Some of it reads like calculus.

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Such work is probably
more a tangent

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than the next
prevailing tradition.

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Nevertheless, a visit
with the old poets

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and other post-realists
is likely to be

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provocative and
inspiring even to writers

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who have no
intention of creating

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new methods of text generation.

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John Barth used the
phrase of Borges

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to describe Borges' own stories.

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He said, "they combine
the algebra and the fire."

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Right, the math and the emotion,
the analytical and the felt.

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Borges himself said, "I think
cleverness is a hindrance.

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I don't think a writer
should be clever,

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or clever in a mechanical way."

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And even though Nabokov called
his characters galley slaves

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of the locations [? for ?]
[? scene ?] sets he

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constructed, he said, "for me
a work of fiction exists only

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insofar as it affords me what
I so bluntly call aesthetic

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bliss, a sense of being somehow,
somewhere connected with other

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states of being where
art is the norm."

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I think Nabokov's
definition of art

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would surprise those who find
him overtly intellectual.

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Elsewhere, he said famously,
"you read an artist's book

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not with your heart.

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The heart is a stupid reader.

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And not with your brain,
but with your brain

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and your spine."

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Ladies and gentlemen,
the tingle in your spine

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tells you what the author
felt and wished you to feel.

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And again and again, the
most famous post-realists

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say something similar.

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Kundera says that, "Cervantes
and other early novelists

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were not looking to
simulate reality.

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They were looking to amaze,
astonish, and enchant.

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They were playful.

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The great European novel
started out as entertainment.

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And all real novelists
are nostalgic for it."

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If you hang out in a fiction
workshop for very long,

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you'll meet at least two
or three fiction writers

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who really want to
write mysteries,

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or who want to write a book
with the appeal of a detective

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novel but a literary novel.

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We want the fun of those
novels married to the ideas

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or the emotions of
literary fiction, or.

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What we tend to call
literary fiction.

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John Barth said, "if I
believed my writing was

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no more than formal
fun and games,

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I'd take up some
other line of work."

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The subject of literature
according to Aristotle

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was human life, its
happiness and its misery.

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I agree with Aristotle.

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What we want is
passionate virtuosity.

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If these pieces
aren't also moving,

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the experiment is unsuccessful.

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Calvino's own fiction
demonstrates his interest

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in the devices and
experiments of the Oulipo.

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But his work, I'll
argue, is also

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full of wit and compassion,
a fundamental interest

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in human emotion and desire,
including, but not limited to,

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the desire for new ideas.

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His work demonstrates the
victory of mental order

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over the chaos of the world.

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And that's a humane victory.

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It's a celebration, rather
than a denial of humanity.

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In his essay on Galileo, Calvino
wrote that for the Renaissance

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astronomer, "the geometric
or mathematical alphabet

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of the Book of Nature
will be the weapon

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which, because of its
capacity to be broken down

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into minimal elements and
represent all forms of movement

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and change, will
abolish the opposition

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between the unchanging heavens
and the elements of the Earth."

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And I think somewhere in here
is one Galileo's drawings,

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his diagram of the moon.

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Half a century before,
Gerardus Mercator,

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who published the
first book called

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Atlas, invoked Atlas
the myth for his book,

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thinking not of the
character doomed to bear

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the weight of the world--

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the guy struggling
under the globe--

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but of the one in other
versions of the myth,

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a mortal elevated by
the gods for deriving

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the science of astrology,
and so discovering

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the arrangement of the stars.

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In that version of
the story, Atlas

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is less the literal holder
of the world on his shoulders

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than the beholder of it.

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He alone among mortals,
can contemplate the divine

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and take measure of
the cosmos because

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of what he's understood.

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Mercator, a religious
man, believed

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that careful observation
coupled with divine mathematics

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would allow us something
approaching the immortals'

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view of the universe.

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In a similar way,
fiction's geometry

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is what allows us
to build ladders

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from the world we live in
to the worlds we imagine.

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I have one last
thing to look at.

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It's a drawing by [? the ?]
[? name ?] Charles Ritchie.

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It's Pegasus, the
constellation above our house,

00:08:31.870 --> 00:08:34.860 align:middle line:90%
with its myriad of geometries.

00:08:34.860 --> 00:08:36.610 align:middle line:84%
Anyway, there are a
bunch of strange ideas

00:08:36.610 --> 00:08:42.640 align:middle line:84%
about fiction, realism,
the other stuff, cartoons,

00:08:42.640 --> 00:08:44.960 align:middle line:90%
things like that.

00:08:44.960 --> 00:08:48.430 align:middle line:84%
If anybody has arguments,
ideas, questions, maybe,

00:08:48.430 --> 00:08:50.300 align:middle line:90%
I'd be happy to field them.

00:08:50.300 --> 00:08:50.800 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

00:08:50.800 --> 00:08:54.450 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:08:54.450 --> 00:08:56.000 align:middle line:90%