Audio for those who’d rather listen
I think most people can agree that there is a usually a dividing line between fiction and non-fiction, and that this line is mostly to do with the perspective of the writer. Does the writer believe what they are writing is real in a tangible and epistemological sense? Yes: non-fiction. No: fiction. I have come to think, however, that there’s a fascinating borderland of writing, where it is not entirely clear what the author’s intentions were. Sometimes this is intentional, sometimes it is a product (perhaps) of a loose psychological relationship with reality, or perhaps a mind that is very good at compartmentalising and accepting contradictions, if you will.
I suppose that I like to start my micro-essays with some explanation about where they originated. I recently stumbled on the videos of Erwin Saunders. I’ll add a link to the first video I watched, so you know what I’m talking about.
I found this to be a strange, beautiful and charming little set of videos. It is much as if a modern day English hobbit were out on an afternoon jaunt, looking for fairies. Now, I should be clear that I am in no doubt that these are cleverly concocted performances. The bumbling British naturalist vibe is just too tone perfect. The outdoor sound mic work is far too clear and audible. The music too skilful. The illustrations are just too purchasable. And for goodness sake, he literally films a dragon at one point. These are clearly fictions. But they are fictions pretending not to be. It is a beautiful, wonderful performance, but it is a performance. However, it put me in mind of works of writing focusing on fairies where the intent of the author is perhaps more murky.
Often these works have risen to fame on the back of claims about their authenticity. Descriptions of encounters with fairies penned by psychics or mediums of the 19th and early 20th centuries are good examples. The descriptions are often dripping with imagination. The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk is a good example. His descriptions of the courts of the fairies, their habits and opaline appearances has relatively little to do with folklore. This teeming fairy world appears to have been invented out of whole cloth in most places. So, did Kirk knowingly invent a fairy country, supposedly invisible beyond the wooded lanes and tranquil ponds? Or was this some product of a mind that embraced a complex, yet harmless delusion? Is this fiction or non-fiction? In the mind of the author, was it fact or fantasy?
The Victorian era gives us other examples of blurred lines. I’ll come back to Arthur Conan Doyle’s own writing, but his engagement with the Cottingley fairies provides a nice example of this borderland of murkiness. Frances and Elsie would have known that they were photographing cut-outs and illustrations, though in their imaginations, perhaps they did think they were merely providing evidence of what they could not catch on camera. Arthur Conan Doyle on the other hand wholly embraced the fiction as fact. We have a fantasy that is presented as fact, and taken to be such. Doyle himself wrote about supernatural things, but, more to the point of this essay, some of his supernatural short stories are (I think) uncertain in the author’s viewpoint. The story that jumps most readily to mind is Playing with Fire, in which the characters accidentally summon a unicorn during a seance. It is entirely unclear to me if Arthur Conan Doyle was writing something that was wholly fictional, or was it meant to be a serious warning: Don’t try this at home. J Sheridan Le Fanu’s fera and the risks of drinking too much green tea strike me as similar: to what degree did Le Fanu perhaps really think that green tea might push the mind into the realm of preternatural perceptions? I’m not sure.
The borderland is not restricted to writing, and might in fact find its most arresting executions in the world of visual art. This is a realm where outright delusion, self-trickery on the one hand, and plain open-mindedness to the possibility of the supernatural on the other, can mix and make for bedfellows; strange, or otherwise.
Certainly, delusion can play a role in the construction of vibrant wonders that the non-delusional can appreciate. Consider, The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke. Richard Dadd was a competent, if fairly ordinary, painter before he lost his mind, killed his father and tried to escape England by train (well before the Channel Tunnel existed). He was committed to a (rather pleasant for the time) asylum, where he was allowed to keep painting. He gave up his old landscape style and took to painting with minute brushes, sometimes using a single hair to apply paint. Over years he created The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke. At its midst is a terrified, haunted-looking gnome, who one suspects is Dadd himself. Everywhere around him are layers upon layers of wondrous and terrifying fairy visions. It’s the sort of painting where you see a new thing every time you look at it. And if you are ever in London, go visit the Tate and take a look in person. It is even more astounding up close: the entire painting is barely larger than a standard cutting board. There is so much paint layered onto it, that it is almost sculptural. In any instance, this is certainly an example of severe psychological distress and a disordered mind leading to a terrifyingly vibrant imagined world. Some ‘borderland’ writing probably derives from a related mental place, if perhaps a place that is less desperately traumatic. If fantasy is supposedly escapist, then this painting is the antitheses of that: it is the fantastical as a prison; it is fantasy that encompasses a mind so utterly that the dreamland does not permit release.
The blurring of imagination and truth probably reaches it most logical zenith in folktales. Folklorists often have to deal with this liminal third ground of not-quite-fiction when collecting stories. People like to tell stories, and they very much like to make stories better. As such, folklorists must do their best to disentangle genuinely old folk tales from recent embellishments, inventions or outright fictions invented by sources. There is an inherent murkiness in this pursuit. After all, at one point all folk stories were made up by someone. So who is to say that an embellishment is less ‘valid’ than the grandmother’s version of the story, or the great grandmother’s version? Who knows? Maybe great grandmother embellished it too? And grandma. And Mama too. Theories trying to explain the ur-origin of stories–positing that ancient people were unable to distinguish dreams from waking life, or that all myths, legends and fables derive from psychedelic experiences–have never sat well with me. People like to make up stories too much. You don’t need a more complicated explanation than that for the origin of any traditional tale, legend or mythos. An ancient storyteller might not have even thought it was deceptive to invent a story on the fly, and then squarely tell an audience it was truth. Certainly, the ancient Greeks believed that imagination was divinely inspired: that is, the plays of Aristophanes–for instance–were taken to be metaphysically true in a sense that isn’t easily grasped by the modern mind. This is despite the fact that everyone knew Aristophanes had made them up. The plays were still true. The plays were the work of Aristophanes. And they were true.
I can name a few other fairyish examples of books where either parts of the work, or the whole work, remain in that vague murky land of uncertainty. The Middle Kingdom by Dermot Mac Manus, or Tales from the Taylor by Aindrias Ó Muimhneacháin, these both have that air about them. Is the author relating interesting folklore, or are they relating true stories. It’s not quite clear. A Field Guide to the Little People by Arrowsmith and Moorse presents descriptions of fairies interspersed with traditional fairy tales. However, at least to the casual reader, it remains unclear if the intent of the authors is to present an actual field guide to fairies, or to present a somewhat cutesy and urbane joke.
Older examples of the embellishment of stories exist: rendering them part-tradition and part-fiction. It’s not entirely clear to what degree Snorri Sturluson may have added to his eddas, though we’re fairly sure he invented some parts, here and there. Anglo-Saxon writers accused the Historia Brittonum of having knowingly and unnecessarily elevated Arthur from military leader to King. This was supposedly an intentional falsehood, creating fantasy out of still remembered history. There is some evidence to support this. In Brittany, Arthur was traditionally known as Arthur the Soldier, and was not a king until later stories came over from England.
I do think there are some current working creatives who fall within this sphere of uncertainty too. Brian Froud comes clearest to mind. I’m not completely convinced that Froud doesn’t believe himself to be visited by fairies. Certainly, if he doesn’t believe in fairies, he knows that his audience does: so he goes to some length to make it at least ambiguous in his works whether or not some of the drawings might have come from life. And incidentally, as an aside, if you like Froud, consider looking up John Bauer. He’s a clear inspiration to Froud, and probably as important an illustrator of the fantastical as Rackham, but perhaps not as well known.
For writers alive at the time of writing this, I suspect that Alan Garner has a similarly mystical relationship with his work, in particular some of the later works such as Thursbitch. In his book of essays, The Voice that Thunders, he certainly gives an impression of embracing the magicalness of landscape. I have my suspicions about Terry Windling too, though I could be wrong.
And, to meander farther, there are some interesting journalistic examples of this grey borderland. Myths over Miami, with its angels nibbling on neon lights is audaciously inventive, and completely unclear in its factuality. Is it the honest reportage of urban legends among homeless children in Miami, or the invention of a quite creative journalist, or a bit of both? It exists in that grey borderland. The fantastical factual. The factual fantastical.
I’m not sure that this little essay has much of a real point to drive at. I suppose I wanted to write about this just and only because I think that this borderland of creation tends to be rather overlooked. Readers often seem to prefer their stories to be clearly one thing or another. Perhaps it’s a bit discomforting to be uncertain if an author–no matter how many years dead–may actually be having a laugh at your expense. And if you are on good terms with a scientific and hypothetico-deductive worldview, then some of the more grey writing can seem, well, a bit too enthused about the supernatural.
I don’t think I’m conveying quite exactly what I mean. Not very well at least. And perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. The topic is one of slipperiness and uncertainty. I suppose that I want to conclude by pointing out that some of our most seminal works of fantasy have absolutely embraced the raising of uncertainty over provenance. Tolkien was after all simply translating The Red Book of Westmarch, wasn’t he? And didn’t Goldman have to cut large parts of Morgenstern’s original work to make it worth reading? I have meet readers who were tricked by Goldman. And there are certainly people who believe that Tolkien was a seer and his Legendarium is a literal relation of a different moment in reality.
That seems a good place to end things. In murkiness. In a place of not quite being sure if a story is ‘real’ (whatever that even means).
tldnr: I think there’s a whole overlooked ‘genre’ of works where it is unclear (intentionally or unintentionally) whether the story is intended to be factual or fictional. I don’t really have much more of a point, except to draw some attention to it. I’m sure other people can name their own examples. It just interests me that there’s a place where fact and fantasy intersect so murkily.
As with all my thoughts, I reserve the right to be completely wrong.