by Ted Gioia
Readers of fiction are familiar with modern works classified as
magical realism. But what about miraculous realism? Does it
exist as a separate literary genre? Is it part of the magical
realism movement that emerged as an influential force in fiction
during the second half of the twentieth century? Or does it follow
different rules of its own, drawing on metaphysical and existential
currents that more playful tales of magic and fantasy do not share?
I'm thinking of works such as Robertson Davies's Fifth Business,
Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus, José Donoso's The Obscene Bird
of Night, Philip K. Dick's VALIS and Graham Greene's The End
of the Affair. Here the 'magic' exists alongside skepticism
and doubt. In each of these novels,
uncanny events occur that could be
mere coincidences, but of such a
marked, unlikely degree that they
demand scrutiny, contemplation,
perhaps even some sort of response.
If the potency of magic is measured
by its life-changing force, these works
of miraculous realism suggest powers
as meaningful as those contained in a
witch's spell or an eleven-inch holly
wand with a phoenix feather core.
Both magical realism and miraculous
realism are throwbacks, reminding us
of the earliest origins of storytelling, the
epics and folktales where both the
magical and miraculous elements mixed
effortlessly with the practical, realistic
details. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that, after the grim
period of history marked by the two world wars, when so much
evil was dispensed with sober, almost bureaucratic efficiency,
that the literary world would crave a return of both the fanciful
qualities of the magical, and the redemptive promises of the
miraculous. Yes, I believe these two currents go hand in hand,
indeed have always done so.
Graham Greene may often be cited as a Catholic writer, even as
the preeminent Catholic novelist of 20th century literature, but The
End of the Affair is his only novel in which miraculous events
intrude into the plot. His other popular metaphysical novels,
The Power and the Glory, Brighton Rock and The Heart of the
Matter, deal with issues of redemption, but without any deviations
from straightforward naturalistic realism. Greene may believe
that the "soul" is his battlefront in these works, but materialist
readers are free to assign causality to firing neurons or Freudian
schemas or various other forces as they see fit. The End of the
Affair is a different kind of story entirely. The main characters (and,
by implication, the readers) are each required to deal with the
uncanny, and although denial is an option—albeit an increasingly
problematic one, as the novel progresses—it comes with its own
share of anxieties and complications. The more Greene's
characters seek comforting explanations, the less they are
comforted, the less are matters explained.
Greene starts off his novel with misdirection. It’s worth recalling
that Greene classified his works into two categories, literary
fiction and 'entertainments'—the latter emphasizing elements of
mystery and suspense. At the time of The End of the Affair, he
had just come off a huge success with the book and film of The
Third Man, a spy story set in postwar Vienna. Greene understood
his audience’s growing interest in plots of espionage and intrigue,
fueled by the Cold War tensions, and the movie of The Third Man
was the biggest British box office success of 1949. (Although The
Daily Worker, Britain’s communist newspaper, griped that "no
effort is spared to make the Soviet authorities as sinister and
unsympathetic as possible"). Three years later Ian Fleming would
publish his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, and over the
ensuing decade John le Carré, Len Deighton and a host of other
British writers would borrow Graham’s blueprint and turn it into a
hugely popular niche of the entertainment industry, one that is still
ringing the cash register to the tune of billions of dollars in the
present day. Graham’s readers were hungry for more of this kind
of escapist fiction. Now with The End of the Affair, Greene
tantalized them with bits of suspense and intrigue, but incorporated
into a very different type of story. In one of the most daring literary
moves of the era, he planned to surprise his growing crossover
audience with a daunting, occasionally theologically-charged
novel—but one that was disguised as a classic thriller.
All the ingredients of the 'suspense' novel are present in the
opening pages. The narrator Maurice Bendrix, like Greene an
author who has both commercial and literary aspirations, hires
a private investigator to track the movements of a woman. He
fears that Sarah has taken a lover, but in a strange twist (one of
many in this book), Sarah is not his wife, although he had an
affair with her that had ended during the war years for reasons
he still cannot understand. In addition, Greene gives us a jealous
husband, the civil servant Henry Miles, Bendrix's former rival and
increasingly his collaborator as they try to uncover the 'truth'
about Sarah.
This is, of course, the famous love triangle, but Greene takes it in
unexpected directions. The husband is unwilling to investigate his
spouse's suspicious behavior, and after he tells of his worries to
Bendrix, the former lover steps in to solve the mystery. He con-
cludes that Sarah must be seeing another man when she
disappears on various 'errands'—unexplained absences that
seem to be subterfuges and excuses. Bendrix is determined to
learn the new rival's identity—and potentially turn the love triangle
into a love rectangle. He visits a detective agency, and soon the
bumbling and endearing investigator Parkis is on the trail of Mrs.
Miles.
This is a set-up—not just for Sarah, but for the readers too. When
a private eye shows up in a novel, we expect crimes and sordid
details to come, but the crisis facing Sarah is an existential one,
and the guilt will increasingly fall on the shoulders of man who
launched the investigation. The awkwardness of the detective
should be our first clue. Parkis is as innocent and easily fooled
as a child, and to make sure we understand the incongruity,
Greene assigns him an actual youngster as a companion
—Parkis's son, a twelve-year-old he is "training in the business."
Clearly this is not Casino Royale, and our investigator is no
James Bond, not even an Austin Powers—although these two
characters, Parkis and his son, end up providing comic relief in
a novel that is in search of bigger game than a cheating lover
caught in the act.
The private investigator, for all his lack of wiles, comes up with a
big catch—namely, Sarah's diary. This forms the second major
section of the novel, with the narrative voice moving from the
jealous former lover to the women whose mystery he is trying to
unlock. But, as it turns out, Sarah is in pursuit of her own mystery,
and her diary is an anguished account of faith and doubt, and
eventually conversion and reconciliation. All of the events we
followed in the early pages of the novel—from her breakup with
Bendrix to her suspicious errands—now are given a different
meaning. Yes, Bendrix has a rival, but not one of this world.
Or perhaps I should say, not solely of this world. For in the
closing pages of The End of the Affair, divine and human affairs
seem to converge and overlap. Here, Graham Greene, the same
realist who could dish up spy stories and crime tales, now recounts
incidents that could be taken straight from hagiography. But this
author rarely does anything in a direct way, and almost every
ingredient in The End of the Affair can be interpreted in multiple
ways. How fitting, then, that Sarah has been seeing at least two
men—one a rationalist atheist and the other a priest. When
Bendrix confronts the man he assumes has been sleeping with
her, he instead gets a dose of materialist skepticism—another
comic turnabout in a story where almost every tragic angle comes
coated with dark humor.
At this point, as at several other junctions of The End of the Affair,
readers may believe that they have found the 'solution' to the
story. And if this were a conventional mystery, there would be
little to do at this point except to tidy up a few details, punish the
wicked and send the 'good guys' on their way. But almost every
aspect of the conventional suspense story is now turned upside
down by Greene. The ‘good guys” do the suffering in Greene's
theology, and the mysteries remain mysterious at the tale's close.
Even that ultimate source of what Frank Kermode calls the "sense
of an ending"—namely a character's death—fails to provide a
moment of closure in the context of this novel. And I find it fitting
that Greene again and again addresses Kermode's critique of
the consciously false ideology of time at the heart of fiction.
Greene needs his story to have at least one foot outside of time,
and is willing to tackle philosophical as well as literary constraints
to force the issue. (At the close of the book, a character even cites
Augustine's dictum that time "came out of the future which didn't
exist yet, into the present that had no duration, and went into the
past which had ceased to exist.") These are ambitious goals for
a short novel of little more than 50,000 words.
The upshot is a book that provokes strong reactions. Critic
Michael Gorra has noted that many readers, coming to the end
of this novel, "have looked for a wall to throw the book at." At the
other extreme, authors as different in temperament as John
Updike and Evelyn Waugh lavishly praised Greene's achievement.
Two different movie versions have been made of the book—in
1955 and 1999—and in 2004 Jake Heggie launched his opera
of The End of the Affair. Perhaps we live in skeptical, materialist
times, but Greene's 'miraculous realism' apparently hasn't lost its
appeal.
And why? Certainly the themes of redemption and existential
meaning are timeless ones. But in the final analysis, the intensity
of this book must also stem from its alignment with the novelist's
own life, and his personal struggles with adultery, faith, the
responsibilities of the author, and the manner in which belief and
practical day-to-day concerns intersect. The more we learn about
Graham Greene the man, the more we must view this short novel
as of central importance in defining his vocation and worldview.
In other words, the same book that dares to encompass the
miraculous, resonates so powerfully because it also confronts
the pragmatic and everyday. Readers can decided for
themselves whether that’s a contradiction or a convergence.
Published: November 19, 2012
Ted Gioia writes on music, literature, and popular culture.
His newest book is The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire.
| THE YEAR OF MAGICAL READING The End of the Affair by Graham Greene |
Click on image to purchase
| The Year of Magical Reading (click here) |
| conceptual fiction Exploring the Non-Realist Tradition in Fiction |
Welcome to my year of magical
reading. Each week during the
course of 2012, I will explore an
important work of fiction that
incorporates elements of magic,
fantasy or the surreal. My choices
will cross conventional boundary
lines of genre, style and historical
period—indeed, one of my intentions
in this project is to show how the
conventional labels applied to these
works have become constraining,
deadening and misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling almost
always partook of the magical. Only
in recent years have we segregated
works arising from this venerable
tradition into publishing industry
categories such as "magical realism"
or "paranormal" or "fantasy" or some
other 'genre' pigeonhole. These
labels are not without their value, but
too often they have blinded us to the
rich and multidimensional heritage
beyond category that these works
share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in
our individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative
fiction through stories of myth and
magic, the fanciful and
phantasmagorical; but only a very
few retain into adulthood this sense
of the kind of enchantment possible
only through storytelling. As such,
revisiting this stream of fiction from a
mature, literate perspective both
broadens our horizons and allows us
to recapture some of that magic in
our imaginative lives.
The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by
Salman Rushdie
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick
by John Updike
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by
Kelly Link
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
Week 6: The Golden Ass by
Apuleius
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa
Obreht
Week 8: One Hundred Years of
Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Week 9: The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Week 10: Gargantua and Pantagruel
by François Rabelais
Week 11: The Famished Road by
Ben Okri
Week 12: Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Week 13: Winter's Tale by Mark
Helprin
Week 14: Dhalgren by Samuel R.
Delany
Week 15: Johnathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Week 16: The Master and
Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Week 17: Dangerous Laughter by
Steven Millhauser
Week 18: Conjure Wife by Fritz
Leiber
Week 19: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Week 20: The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien
Week 21: Aura by Carlos Fuentes
Week 22: Dr. Faustus by Thomas
Mann
Week 23: Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Week 24: Little, Big by John Crowley
Week 25: The White Hotel by D.M.
Thomas
Week 26: Neverwhere by Neil
Gaiman
Week 27: Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Week 28: Fifth Business by
Robertson Davies
Week 29: The Kingdom of This
World by Alejo Carpentier
Week 30: The Bear Comes Home
by Rafi Zabor
Week 31: The Color of Magic by
Terry Pratchett
Week 32: Ficciones by Jorge Luis
Borges
Week 33: Beloved by Toni Morrison
Week 34: Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands by Jorge Amado
Week 35: Hard-Boiled Wonderland
and the End of the World by Haruki
Murakami
Week 36: What Dreams May Come
by Richard Matheson
Week 37: Practical Magic by Alice
Hoffman
Week 38: Blindess by José
Saramago
Week 39: The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
Week 40: The Magicians by Lev
Grossman
Week 41: Suddenly, A Knock at the
Door by Etgar Keret
Week 42: Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Week 43: The Obscene Bird of
NIght by José Donoso
Week 44: The Fifty Year Sword by
Mark Z. Danielewski
Week 45: Gulliver's Travels by
Jonathan Swift
Week 46: Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Week 47: The End of the Affair by
Graham Greene
Week 48: The Chronicles of Narnia
by C.S. Lewis
Week 49: Hieroglyphic Tales by
Horace Walpole
Week 50: The View from the
Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier
Week 51: Gods Without Men by
Hari Kunzru
Week 52: At Swim-Two-Birds by
Flann O'Brien
reading. Each week during the
course of 2012, I will explore an
important work of fiction that
incorporates elements of magic,
fantasy or the surreal. My choices
will cross conventional boundary
lines of genre, style and historical
period—indeed, one of my intentions
in this project is to show how the
conventional labels applied to these
works have become constraining,
deadening and misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling almost
always partook of the magical. Only
in recent years have we segregated
works arising from this venerable
tradition into publishing industry
categories such as "magical realism"
or "paranormal" or "fantasy" or some
other 'genre' pigeonhole. These
labels are not without their value, but
too often they have blinded us to the
rich and multidimensional heritage
beyond category that these works
share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in
our individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative
fiction through stories of myth and
magic, the fanciful and
phantasmagorical; but only a very
few retain into adulthood this sense
of the kind of enchantment possible
only through storytelling. As such,
revisiting this stream of fiction from a
mature, literate perspective both
broadens our horizons and allows us
to recapture some of that magic in
our imaginative lives.
The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by
Salman Rushdie
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick
by John Updike
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by
Kelly Link
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
Week 6: The Golden Ass by
Apuleius
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa
Obreht
Week 8: One Hundred Years of
Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Week 9: The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Week 10: Gargantua and Pantagruel
by François Rabelais
Week 11: The Famished Road by
Ben Okri
Week 12: Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Week 13: Winter's Tale by Mark
Helprin
Week 14: Dhalgren by Samuel R.
Delany
Week 15: Johnathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Week 16: The Master and
Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Week 17: Dangerous Laughter by
Steven Millhauser
Week 18: Conjure Wife by Fritz
Leiber
Week 19: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Week 20: The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien
Week 21: Aura by Carlos Fuentes
Week 22: Dr. Faustus by Thomas
Mann
Week 23: Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Week 24: Little, Big by John Crowley
Week 25: The White Hotel by D.M.
Thomas
Week 26: Neverwhere by Neil
Gaiman
Week 27: Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Week 28: Fifth Business by
Robertson Davies
Week 29: The Kingdom of This
World by Alejo Carpentier
Week 30: The Bear Comes Home
by Rafi Zabor
Week 31: The Color of Magic by
Terry Pratchett
Week 32: Ficciones by Jorge Luis
Borges
Week 33: Beloved by Toni Morrison
Week 34: Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands by Jorge Amado
Week 35: Hard-Boiled Wonderland
and the End of the World by Haruki
Murakami
Week 36: What Dreams May Come
by Richard Matheson
Week 37: Practical Magic by Alice
Hoffman
Week 38: Blindess by José
Saramago
Week 39: The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
Week 40: The Magicians by Lev
Grossman
Week 41: Suddenly, A Knock at the
Door by Etgar Keret
Week 42: Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Week 43: The Obscene Bird of
NIght by José Donoso
Week 44: The Fifty Year Sword by
Mark Z. Danielewski
Week 45: Gulliver's Travels by
Jonathan Swift
Week 46: Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Week 47: The End of the Affair by
Graham Greene
Week 48: The Chronicles of Narnia
by C.S. Lewis
Week 49: Hieroglyphic Tales by
Horace Walpole
Week 50: The View from the
Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier
Week 51: Gods Without Men by
Hari Kunzru
Week 52: At Swim-Two-Birds by
Flann O'Brien
Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to essays on each work)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aldiss, Brian
Barefoot in the Head
Aldiss, Brian
Hothouse
Aldiss, Brian
Report on Probability A
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G.
The Drowned World
Barth, John
Giles Goat-Boy
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Blish, James
A Case of Conscience
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Bunch, David R.
Moderan
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Delany, Samuel R.
Nova
Dick, Philip K.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas M.
Camp Concentration
Disch, Thomas M.
The Genocides
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan (editor)
Dangerous Visions
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Farmer, Philip José
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
The Centauri Device
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Hoffman, Alice
Practical Magic
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Kunzru, Hari
Gods Without Men
Lafferty, R.A.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Dispossessed
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Malzberg, Barry N.
Herovit's World
Mann, Thomas
Doctor Faustus
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
Markson, David
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Matheson, Richard
Hell House
Matheson, Richard
What Dreams May Come
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Moorcock, Michael
Behold the Man
Moorcock, Michael
The Final Programme
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Murakami, Haruki
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the
End of the World
Nabokov, Vladimir
Ada, or Ardor
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
O'Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Percy, Walker
Love in the Ruins
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pratchett, Terry
The Color of Magic
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Russ, Joanna
The Female Man
Saramago, José
Blindness
Sheckley, Robert
Dimension of Miracles
Sheckley, Robert
Mindswap
Sheckley, Robert
Store of the Worlds
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Silverberg, Robert
The World Inside
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Spinrad, Norman
Bug Jack Barron
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
Thomas, D.M.
The White Hotel
Tiptree, Jr., James
Warm Worlds and Otherwise
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Vance, Jack
Emphyrio
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Walpole, Horace
Hieroglyphic Tales
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Wilson, Robert Anton & Robert Shea
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Winton, Tim
Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando
Zabor, Rafi
The Bear Comes Home
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Zelazny, Roger
This Immortal
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
When Science Fiction Grew Up
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
A Tribute to Richard Matheson
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
The Puzzling Case of Robert Sheckley
The Avant-Garde Sci-Fi of Brian Aldiss
Science Fiction 1958-1975: A Reading List
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Millions
Big Dumb Object
SF Novelists
More Words, Deeper Hole
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Tor blog
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction
and its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials from
publishers, authors, publicists or other
parties.
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to essays on each work)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aldiss, Brian
Barefoot in the Head
Aldiss, Brian
Hothouse
Aldiss, Brian
Report on Probability A
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
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The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G.
The Drowned World
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Giles Goat-Boy
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The Demolished Man
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A Case of Conscience
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Dandelion Wine
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Fahrenheit 451
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The Illustrated Man
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Something Wicked This Way Comes
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The View from the Seventh Layer
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The Master and Margarita
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Moderan
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A Clockwork Orange
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Ender's Game
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The Kingdom of This World
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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The Yiddish Policemen's Union
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Stories of Your Life and Others
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Childhood's End
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A Fall of Moondust
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2001: A Space Odyssey
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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
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Little, Big
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The Fifty Year Sword
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House of Leaves
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Fifth Business
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Babel-17
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Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
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Nova
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
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Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
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The Man in the High Castle
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Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas M.
Camp Concentration
Disch, Thomas M.
The Genocides
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
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Dangerous Visions
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
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To Your Scattered Bodies Go
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Aura
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American Gods
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Neverwhere
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Burning Chrome
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Neuromancer
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The Tin Drum
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The End of the Affair
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The Magicians
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The Forever War
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The Raw Shark Texts
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The Centauri Device
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
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Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
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Winter's Tale
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Dune
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Practical Magic
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Brave New World
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
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Flowers for Algernon
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The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
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Gods Without Men
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Nine Hundred Grandmothers
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The Dispossessed
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The Lathe of Heaven
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The Left Hand of Darkness
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The Big Time
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Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
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The Wanderer
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His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
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The Fortress of Solitude
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The Chronicles of Narnia
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Magic for Beginners
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Herovit's World
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Wittgenstein's Mistress
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Hell House
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What Dreams May Come
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A Canticle for Leibowitz
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Dangerous Laughter
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Cloud Atlas
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Behold the Man
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The Final Programme
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Beloved
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1Q84
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Ada, or Ardor
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The Time Traveler's Wife
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Vurt
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At Swim-Two-Birds
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The Famished Road
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Love in the Ruins
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Gateway
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The Color of Magic
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The Female Man
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Blindness
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Dimension of Miracles
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Mindswap
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Store of the Worlds
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Frankenstein
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Dying Inside
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City
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Norstrilia
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Snow Crash
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More Than Human
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Some of Your Blood
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Cat's Cradle
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Orlando
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The Bear Comes Home
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Lord of Light
Zelazny, Roger
This Immortal
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