Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 19:16:51 -0500
From: mark <whitroth@5-cent.us>
To: WSFA Official List <wsfa-forum@yahoogroups.com>,
 WSFA members <WSFAlist@keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Jeff VanderMeer: The Weird Thoreau
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist@KeithLynch.net>

Excerpt:
The three weirdest books I read last year were all by the same writer. His
name is Jeff VanderMeer, he\342\200\231s from Tallahassee, Florida, and he\342\200\231s the King
of Weird Fiction. He writes in the genre\342\200\224his 2009 novel \342\200\234Finch\342\200\235 is a
detective story, reminiscent of \342\200\234Blade Runner,\342\200\235 set in a city divided
between normal people and mushroom people\342\200\224and he champions it: with his
wife, the influential sci-fi and fantasy editor Ann VanderMeer, he\342\200\231s
edited the anthologies \342\200\234The Weird\342\200\235 and \342\200\234The New Weird.\342\200\235 It\342\200\231s
self-defeating, of course, to try and define weirdness (although
VanderMeer has offered definitions). A lot of fiction, moreover, merely
pretends to it, invoking its atmosphere without being, in fact, all that
weird.

Still, when you\342\200\231re in the presence of the genuine, uncanny article, you
know. Stephen King is tremendously imaginative, but H. P. Lovecraft is
weird; Kafka is probably the ultimate weird writer. In VanderMeer\342\200\231s
\342\200\234Finch,\342\200\235 the mushroom people (\342\200\234gray caps\342\200\235) are people-shaped, and they can
seem like character in an ordinary detective novel. (\342\200\234You stupid fucking
mushroom\342\200\235 a cop says while interrogating one of them. \342\200\234Answer the
question.\342\200\235) But, standing next to one, you feel its \342\200\234humid weight.\342\200\235 You
can torture a mushroom person by pouring water on its head, but if you cut
it into pieces it stays cold and dry. Gray-cap mold is everywhere; their
fungal constructions grow to the size of buildings, blocking streets,
billowing in the wind, and luminescing at night. VanderMeer, in short, is
a genuinely weird writer.

All that said, last year, he transcended \342\200\234weird.\342\200\235 He wrote three books\342\200\224the
Southern Reach trilogy\342\200\224so arresting, unsettling, and unforgettable that
even non-weird readers read and loved them. Broadly speaking, the novels,
\342\200\234Annihilation,\342\200\235 \342\200\234Authority,\342\200\235 and \342\200\234Acceptance,\342\200\235 are eco-sci-fi: they\342\200\231re
about researchers exploring a mysterious, deadly, and unaccountable
wilderness called Area X. But they\342\200\231re also experiments in psychedelic
nature writing, in the tradition of Thoreau, and meditations on the theme
of epistemic pessimism, in the tradition of Kafka. Often, speculative
fiction betrays itself, becoming predictable just at the moment when it\342\200\231s
supposed to be \342\200\234out there.\342\200\235 But the Southern Reach books make it all the
way out. They imagine nature, both human and wild, in a new way. And they
take a surprising approach to language: in addition to being confounding
science-fiction novels, they are fractured, lyrical love letters to
Florida\342\200\231s mossy northern coast.
--- end excerpt ---

<http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/weird-thoreau-jeff-vandermeer-southern-reach>

        mark