I should have been spending most of the day on a subtitling job, but I’ve found myself distracted by a few things, such as a couple of posts on a Swedish blog about Science Fiction and Fantasy. One is a longer essay about the two Swedish translations of Tolkien, which raised some very interesting points about how non-native speakers may perceive a language and about the role of the translator, and another is a shorter commentary about fantasy in general.
I commented on the first on the site itself (though I may write up my comment in English ... just not sure how well it works to discuss a Swedish translation of an English book in English), but the second one just made me grumpy and I didn’t feel like leaving a grumpy comment there since it was mainly one phrase that irked me. The post is a partial rebuttal to someone else’s claim that its false to say that fantasy can deal with any and all themes and that this is just said by people who want to raise the status of their favourite books.
Now, I tend to be of the opinion myself that fantasy can deal with anything that’s worth dealing with, so I am all for a rebuttal of that claim. However, as I said, it was only a partial rebuttal. The post’s author then went on to say that, paraphrased, so what if fantasy can’t deal with all themes? It doesn’t matter, because “no sensible person who is interested in literature reads only fantasy”.
And that’s what made me grumpy. ;P
I tend to think that I am at least somewhat sensible, and I would also call myself interested in literature, and when it comes to fiction that I have a choice in (that is, I am not counting books read in the course of my studies), I read almost exclusively fantasy and have done so since I was ... 12 or so. The exceptions include close relatives such as fairy tales and mythology as well as a small selection of historical fiction.
I suppose the post’s author could argue that this in fact precludes me from being sensible and/or interested in literature, but then he has a bit of a circular argument on his hands. ;) My point is that I don’t think you need mimetic literature. I am sure someone else would argue that you don’t need fantasy, but that just shows how it is all about perspectives, doesn’t it? However, if you take away mimetic fiction, reality is still here. If you take away fantasy, then there is no more magic.