Podcast: Talking About Canon-Building With Critical Friends

After staking out such a strong position in favor of negative reviews on my last appearance on their podcast, it’s perhaps a little surprising that Dan Hartland and Aishwarya Subramanian, hosts of the Strange Horizons reviews department podcast Critical Friends, invited me back. This time, our topic was a bit more on the positive side. We talked about my recent experiences at Worldcon in Glasgow (see also this report on my blog), the launch of my book Track Changes: Selected Reviews, the role of the critic in the fannish ecosphere, and the process of canon-building. On that last point, we were inspired by the New York Times‘s recent project to compile a list of the best books published in the 21st century.

Dan Hartland: I think we’re back to the lack of influence that critics seem to have. Where there are critics in every age saying this is rubbish and yet somehow the text is still canonized. Which is a fascinating story in and of itself, actually. How the canon is formed, we could have an entirely separate podcast on because the idea is that it’s formed by, some sort of intellectual elites in university departments.

But these are often the critics who think it’s, it’s terrible. So there is a sort of material element of canon production, which I think is understudied. It strikes me while we’re talking, though, that there’s a question and you, I think you’ve glanced at it a few times, Abigail this question of what it, what are we canonizing?

Or what are we, what is it about a book that we are seeking to admire? Is it best? Is it great? Is it most popular? And the New York Times recently did their hundred best books of the twenty-first century so far, which was a really fascinating example of this in action. I don’t whether either of you listened to the New York Times books podcast, but they discussed the list on that.

And they noted themselves that they were quite surprised by some of the ballots that came back. So they asked a bunch of different writers and even all the literary writers came back and obviously listed literary novels, but so did the genre writers. With honourable exceptions, they make mention of Rebecca Roanhorse’s ballot, which was, full genre.

A lot of the genre writers come back and at least, they might offer a couple of genre books, but they also offer all of the literary works that you might expect, because there is this sense of greatness is something separate to most popular or best. So for example the book that many people have noted, isn’t on the list is and we can debate its virtues or lack thereof, and I think Abigail you may have reviewed it is Gone Girl, which was a huge publishing sensation but does not make the list and the question is why. I’m really interested by Track Changes including both Nova Swing and the Becky Chambers book because you are deliberately covering the bases there, right?

Abigail Nussbaum: No, I don’t know if I would describe it as deliberate. Because again, like you said the focus was a lot less on the specific works and more about what I was saying in my reviews of them. And Nova Swing, I think is a great work of science fiction. The Becky Chambers, in my mind, is not. But I was interacting with both of them in a way that reflected on that specific topic of books about space, of how our genre processes this whole concept of space exploration.

So I did, you’re right, you’re absolutely right. Those are two books that most people would not put on the same shelf, even though they both belong to the same genre, but to me the reviews felt much more in conversation than maybe the books themselves. And while you were talking, I was thinking about this whole issue of popular and prestigious.

And, that’s something that science fiction readers and fans have bifurcated attitudes towards. Because, on the one hand, there is this profound anxiety about hostility from outside the genre. Those people who look down on science fiction. Someone will always trot out Margaret Atwood, which is pretty tired if you ask me.

And on the other hand, there is, even within the genre, this sense that, the important works are the popular ones: The Expanse or Game of Thrones. Maybe that really is the reason that critics are not setting the tone, because we’re the worst of both worlds, aren’t we? We’re both the outside intelligentsia who are saying, Hey, maybe literary fiction isn’t that bad. And even within the genre we’re saying. We don’t like The Expanse so much. Why don’t you read M. John Harrison? So really, who can stand us? I think that if you’re talking about canon forming, there is this impulse to say what’s popular is what’s important. And I think within science fiction, that impulse is quite powerful.

But I’m not sure that over time it, it holds sway. I’m not sure that it has the last word. If you look at the older lists, if you look at the books that have endured over time, they are, maybe they’re not literary, but they’re substantial. At the very least.

Critical Friends is available on all podcast platforms and on the Strange Horizons website, where you will also find a transcript of the episode. Track Changes can be purchased at the Briardene Books shop and at Amazon (US, UK).