By Ted Gioia
Woody Allen has been both praised and criticized for
creating a fantasy version of New York in his movies
—depicting a city that is no longer "a grimy urban
jungle," in the words of film critic William Rothman,
but "the most photogenic city on earth, boasting
buildings and trees that even
Paris would die for." Rothman
concludes: "As if we needed
more proof that cameras can lie!"
Novels can also purify and
redeem cities, even one as
resistant to redemption as New
York. And among authors,
none has attempted a more
ambitious or thorough literary
regeneration of Manhattan than
Mark Helprin. In his 1983 novel
Winter's Tale, Helprin aims for nothing less than an
apotheosis of the city, a sanctification by fire that, at
times, crosses beyond the familiar terrain of the novel
and enters into the realm of myth or dogma.
Peter Lake, the main character in Helprin's epic work,
undergoes a personal redemption as well. A one-time
burglar, previously known as Grand Central Pete (a
name borrowed from a real life NY con man of the
nineteenth century), Lake reinvents himself, first as
consort of a Manhattan heiress, and later as a catalyst
in the millennial transfiguration of New York itself.
The messianic overtones of Helprin's story gradually
become more obvious as the novel progresses—Lake
learns to travel through time, later develops psycho-
kinetic powers, and eventually plays a key role in
raising a girl from the dead. But even at the start of
the novel, Lake’s origins as a sea-faring orphan raised
by the mysterious Baymen of Bayonne Marsh in New
Jersey recall the story of the infant Moses amid the
bulrushes.
Lake possesses a dim comprehension of the destiny
awaiting him—sensing that he may play a key part in
dawn of a new age. This anticipation of a coming
splendor is shared by many other characters in
Helprin's novel. Lake's lover Beverly Penn, slowly
dying from consumption, is mesmerized by
transcendent images—discovering "grace, or madness,
in her visions of the starlight" where she sees "a sky full
of animals whose pelts were made of an infinite
number of stars. They moved slowly and smoothly,
for, really, they were motionless." Readers expecting
these koan riddles to be explained will be disappointed,
and much of this novel needs to be read with the kind
of forbearance one brings to a sacred text, where
mystery is cultivated rather than solved.
Lake also encounters an even more visionary
individual: the bridge builder Jackson Mead, who
dreams of a grander span than those made of steel and
stone—something more akin to the Tower of Babel
than to any terrestrial structure. Lake also meets up
with Hardesty Marratta, who gives up the family
fortune to a ne'er do well brother, and travels to New
York, as part of a vision quest to find a perfectly just
city. Other dreamers who populate this book include
newspaper owner Harry Penn, brother of Beverly, and
his editor-turned-mayor Praegar de Pinto; while even
the villains Pearly Soames and Craig Binky have their
heads in the clouds. But Lake’s most unusual
companion is the white horse Athansor, who has more
in common with C.S. Lewis's Aslan than Seabiscuit or
Secretariat. In short, Helprin's New York is anything
but a hard-headed, practical city—instead spawning
cadres of prophets, sages and dreamers.
If you don’t recognize typical stereotypes of New
Yorkers in this list of characters, you will be even
more shocked by the description of the landscape.
And there is plenty of it: by my estimate, at least 300
pages of this 750-page novel is comprised by
descriptions of locales. Countryside, cityscape,
shoreline, skyline: Helprin piles sentence on sentence,
paragraph on paragraph, page on page, and by the
time you have read the 100th poetical evocation of
water, cloud and skyscraper, you will fall back in both
admiration and weariness. Few writers can set a scene
with more sheer gusto than this novelist, but should
scenery really take center stage in any drama?.
Helprin is especially inspired by winter settings, and
his ingenuity in describing white on white reminds
one of those proverbial Eskimos with their hundred
terms for snow. By the same token, a hundred or so
pages of this frosty, breathless prose could have been
excised from Winter's Tale, and would hardly have been
missed.
Despite all his adjectives and subordinate clauses, a
relentless ambiguity permeates Helprin's New York.
This too is part of literary style of Winter's Tale. Take,
for example, the following passage:
"There he was bobbing and floating on rafts of color
high above the streets: silvered canyons and warm red
brick, the lisp of a huge broken clock, trees like bells
shuddering sound in green, silent streets as dark and
elegant as mirrors in dim light, a thousand paintings
left and right—islands in the stream cascading from
above, the heat of pale stone, merchants forever frozen
who never ceased to move, cooing purple pigeons
shaped like shells, an arsenal of roses in the park,
streets that crossed in forks and chimes, leopard
shadows, dappled lines."
And you may ask, how can a merchant be frozen and
yet move? What is meant by an 'arsenal of roses'?
How can a street get crossed 'in chimes'? When are
pigeons 'shaped like shells'? What is the 'shuddering
sound' of trees that are like bells?
I have no answers to these questions. Yet such
passages are typical of Helprin's mystical tone. Where
other authors deliver precision in a few sentences, he
provides vagueness in many paragraphs—intentionally,
no doubt, and with the plan of hinting at grand things
"through a glass darkly," but in a manner that will
leave some readers just as frustrated as others are
exhilarated with his intimations of a more majestic
city behind the visible one. Truly, Helprin outdoes
Woody Allen in this depiction of a Platonic ideal of
New York.
For this same reason, Helprin is drawn to the fuzzy
side of nature, and devotes endless passages to fog,
mists, clouds, snow. He is champion of anything that
obscures our view, anything that replaces clarity with
vagueness. Few writers would take on the mission of
describing that which cannot be described, but this, it
seems, is Mr. Helprin's most cherished ambition.
All this comes out most clearly in the final pages of
Winter's Tale. Here Helprin (in a book, remember,
published in 1983) presents the final days of 1999 and
the dawn of the year 2000. No Y2K doomsayer or
fearmonger quite envisioned the kind of cataclysmic
changes that Helprin lays out in his concluding
chapters. But even here our author is coy, and holds
back from explaining the transformations afoot.
The result is a sprawling, poetic and unconventional
novel. I was enchanted and dismayed by turns in
reading it. Even as I grumbled about the author's
oblique prose and roundabout method of storytelling,
I marveled at the sheer abundance of his descriptions
and the daring of the narrative. True, there are plenty
of other New York novels, and many are more
accurate than this alternate history, or more sharply
plotted, or richer in character and dialogue. But
Helprin actually reinvented New York, turning it into
a kind of New Jerusalem. He made Manhattan
magical. And even in a novel, that is no small matter.
Yet, in the final analysis, Winter's Tale remains a failed
masterpiece. I admire our author’s ambition, but what
he is aiming for here is like the alchemist's trans-
mutation of lead into gold; at some basic level of
atomic structure, the change cannot be realized, no
matter how deft the author's sleight-of-hand or how
boldly he plunges into the magical and marvelous.
And the obstacle here is not New York—I accept that
it can be redeemed or glorified or whatever you want
to call it—but the essence of fiction itself. By
abandoning the constraints of storytelling, and seeking
instead to infuse his narrative with the reverberations
of scripture, Helprin reaches for effects that perhaps
no novel can achieve.
Woody Allen has been both praised and criticized for
creating a fantasy version of New York in his movies
—depicting a city that is no longer "a grimy urban
jungle," in the words of film critic William Rothman,
but "the most photogenic city on earth, boasting
buildings and trees that even
Paris would die for." Rothman
concludes: "As if we needed
more proof that cameras can lie!"
Novels can also purify and
redeem cities, even one as
resistant to redemption as New
York. And among authors,
none has attempted a more
ambitious or thorough literary
regeneration of Manhattan than
Mark Helprin. In his 1983 novel
Winter's Tale, Helprin aims for nothing less than an
apotheosis of the city, a sanctification by fire that, at
times, crosses beyond the familiar terrain of the novel
and enters into the realm of myth or dogma.
Peter Lake, the main character in Helprin's epic work,
undergoes a personal redemption as well. A one-time
burglar, previously known as Grand Central Pete (a
name borrowed from a real life NY con man of the
nineteenth century), Lake reinvents himself, first as
consort of a Manhattan heiress, and later as a catalyst
in the millennial transfiguration of New York itself.
The messianic overtones of Helprin's story gradually
become more obvious as the novel progresses—Lake
learns to travel through time, later develops psycho-
kinetic powers, and eventually plays a key role in
raising a girl from the dead. But even at the start of
the novel, Lake’s origins as a sea-faring orphan raised
by the mysterious Baymen of Bayonne Marsh in New
Jersey recall the story of the infant Moses amid the
bulrushes.
Lake possesses a dim comprehension of the destiny
awaiting him—sensing that he may play a key part in
dawn of a new age. This anticipation of a coming
splendor is shared by many other characters in
Helprin's novel. Lake's lover Beverly Penn, slowly
dying from consumption, is mesmerized by
transcendent images—discovering "grace, or madness,
in her visions of the starlight" where she sees "a sky full
of animals whose pelts were made of an infinite
number of stars. They moved slowly and smoothly,
for, really, they were motionless." Readers expecting
these koan riddles to be explained will be disappointed,
and much of this novel needs to be read with the kind
of forbearance one brings to a sacred text, where
mystery is cultivated rather than solved.
Lake also encounters an even more visionary
individual: the bridge builder Jackson Mead, who
dreams of a grander span than those made of steel and
stone—something more akin to the Tower of Babel
than to any terrestrial structure. Lake also meets up
with Hardesty Marratta, who gives up the family
fortune to a ne'er do well brother, and travels to New
York, as part of a vision quest to find a perfectly just
city. Other dreamers who populate this book include
newspaper owner Harry Penn, brother of Beverly, and
his editor-turned-mayor Praegar de Pinto; while even
the villains Pearly Soames and Craig Binky have their
heads in the clouds. But Lake’s most unusual
companion is the white horse Athansor, who has more
in common with C.S. Lewis's Aslan than Seabiscuit or
Secretariat. In short, Helprin's New York is anything
but a hard-headed, practical city—instead spawning
cadres of prophets, sages and dreamers.
If you don’t recognize typical stereotypes of New
Yorkers in this list of characters, you will be even
more shocked by the description of the landscape.
And there is plenty of it: by my estimate, at least 300
pages of this 750-page novel is comprised by
descriptions of locales. Countryside, cityscape,
shoreline, skyline: Helprin piles sentence on sentence,
paragraph on paragraph, page on page, and by the
time you have read the 100th poetical evocation of
water, cloud and skyscraper, you will fall back in both
admiration and weariness. Few writers can set a scene
with more sheer gusto than this novelist, but should
scenery really take center stage in any drama?.
Helprin is especially inspired by winter settings, and
his ingenuity in describing white on white reminds
one of those proverbial Eskimos with their hundred
terms for snow. By the same token, a hundred or so
pages of this frosty, breathless prose could have been
excised from Winter's Tale, and would hardly have been
missed.
Despite all his adjectives and subordinate clauses, a
relentless ambiguity permeates Helprin's New York.
This too is part of literary style of Winter's Tale. Take,
for example, the following passage:
"There he was bobbing and floating on rafts of color
high above the streets: silvered canyons and warm red
brick, the lisp of a huge broken clock, trees like bells
shuddering sound in green, silent streets as dark and
elegant as mirrors in dim light, a thousand paintings
left and right—islands in the stream cascading from
above, the heat of pale stone, merchants forever frozen
who never ceased to move, cooing purple pigeons
shaped like shells, an arsenal of roses in the park,
streets that crossed in forks and chimes, leopard
shadows, dappled lines."
And you may ask, how can a merchant be frozen and
yet move? What is meant by an 'arsenal of roses'?
How can a street get crossed 'in chimes'? When are
pigeons 'shaped like shells'? What is the 'shuddering
sound' of trees that are like bells?
I have no answers to these questions. Yet such
passages are typical of Helprin's mystical tone. Where
other authors deliver precision in a few sentences, he
provides vagueness in many paragraphs—intentionally,
no doubt, and with the plan of hinting at grand things
"through a glass darkly," but in a manner that will
leave some readers just as frustrated as others are
exhilarated with his intimations of a more majestic
city behind the visible one. Truly, Helprin outdoes
Woody Allen in this depiction of a Platonic ideal of
New York.
For this same reason, Helprin is drawn to the fuzzy
side of nature, and devotes endless passages to fog,
mists, clouds, snow. He is champion of anything that
obscures our view, anything that replaces clarity with
vagueness. Few writers would take on the mission of
describing that which cannot be described, but this, it
seems, is Mr. Helprin's most cherished ambition.
All this comes out most clearly in the final pages of
Winter's Tale. Here Helprin (in a book, remember,
published in 1983) presents the final days of 1999 and
the dawn of the year 2000. No Y2K doomsayer or
fearmonger quite envisioned the kind of cataclysmic
changes that Helprin lays out in his concluding
chapters. But even here our author is coy, and holds
back from explaining the transformations afoot.
The result is a sprawling, poetic and unconventional
novel. I was enchanted and dismayed by turns in
reading it. Even as I grumbled about the author's
oblique prose and roundabout method of storytelling,
I marveled at the sheer abundance of his descriptions
and the daring of the narrative. True, there are plenty
of other New York novels, and many are more
accurate than this alternate history, or more sharply
plotted, or richer in character and dialogue. But
Helprin actually reinvented New York, turning it into
a kind of New Jerusalem. He made Manhattan
magical. And even in a novel, that is no small matter.
Yet, in the final analysis, Winter's Tale remains a failed
masterpiece. I admire our author’s ambition, but what
he is aiming for here is like the alchemist's trans-
mutation of lead into gold; at some basic level of
atomic structure, the change cannot be realized, no
matter how deft the author's sleight-of-hand or how
boldly he plunges into the magical and marvelous.
And the obstacle here is not New York—I accept that
it can be redeemed or glorified or whatever you want
to call it—but the essence of fiction itself. By
abandoning the constraints of storytelling, and seeking
instead to infuse his narrative with the reverberations
of scripture, Helprin reaches for effects that perhaps
no novel can achieve.
| THE YEAR OF MAGICAL READING Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin |
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
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.