In preparation for this class (about a genre I have no experience in), I read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Categorized as “young adult fiction,” my reasoning behind this read was “Oh hey, this’ll be science-fiction-lite!” Little did I know that The Man with Red Eyes and The Black Thing is terrifying and provocative stuff. If I was 10 years younger (the last time I remember having vivid dreams), I’d fear nightmares in my sleep.
Anyway.
There’s talk in L’Engle’s book about “whistling in the dark” or “laughing in the dark.” What to do in the face of disaster? “The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly,” says Mrs. Which. I’m interested to see how our Disaster Fiction novels treat this balance. So far, I’ve only observed how poetry and music approach dark subjects with a light hand. Something to do with the pleasure of sound and rhythym? Taken out of context, Sontag’s phrase “the aesthetic enjoyment of suffering” comes to mind.
At the risk of sounding like a name-dropping hipster (hah!) and revealing how little I’ve read of Lucifer’s Hammer, I offer the following two lyrical texts as commentary on the thoughts above (their refrains of particular interest…)—
Andrew Bird’s “Fiery Crash”
Refrain: “To save all our lives/you’ve got to envision/The fiery crash”
YouTube: Andrew Bird\’s \”Fiery Crash\”
&
Yeasayer’s “2080”
Refrain: “In 2080/I’ll surely be dead/So don’t look ahead, ever look ahead”