"It was launched by Craig Raine’s poem 'A Martian Sends a Postcard Home' (1979). The poem systematically deploys the technique of estrangement or defamiliarization—what the Russian formalist critics called ostranenie—as our bemused Martian wrestles into his comprehension a series of puzzling human habits and gadgets: 'Model T is a room with the lock inside— / a key is turned to free the world / for movement.' Or, later in the poem: 'In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps, / that snores when you pick it up.' For a few years, alongside the usual helpings of Hughes, Heaney, and Larkin, British schoolchildren learned to launder these witty counterfeits: 'Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings / And some are treasured for their markings— / they cause the eyes to melt / or the body to shriek without pain. / I have never seen one fly, but / Sometimes they perch on the hand.' Teachers liked Raine’s poem, and perhaps the whole Berlitz-like apparatus of Martianism, because it made estrangement as straightforward as translation. What is the haunted apparatus? A telephone, miss. Well done. What are Caxtons? Books, sir. Splendid."
From "Kazuo Ishiguro Uses Artificial Intelligence to Reveal the Limits of Our Own/In his latest novel, the gaze of an inhuman narrator gives us a new perspective on human life, a vision that is at once deeply ordinary and profoundly strange" by James Wood (in The New Yorker).
Here's the full text of "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home."
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38 comments:
"alongside the usual helpings of Hughes, Heaney, and Larkin"
I want recitations, or it didn't happen.
Do American schoolchildren get exposed to any good, non-woke poetry at all?
I know I feel pretty estranged in America in 2021. Things seem to be so far afield from what I always assumed to be normal. There are many evidently popular viewpoints that are alien to me. And what's really odd is that it seems to have happened in a very short period of time.
In the early nineteen-eighties... a brief craze called Martian poetry hit our literary planet.
Didn't Hanna-Barbera try that in the mid-1960s with the Great Gazoo?
Because Gazoo is introduced into the show midway through the final season and is considered by some to be an absurd character who alters the premise and dynamic of the show, he is often cited by fans and critics of the show as being an example of the show's having "jumped the shark". In all, Gazoo appeared in 11 episodes.
Interesting factoid...
The Great Gazoo was voiced by actor Harvey Korman.
What a great poem! I had never heard of it before today.
Didn't Hanna-Barbera try that in the mid-1960s with the Great Gazoo?
Or "My Favorite Martian".
Didn't consciously notice the name before, but I wonder if subconsciously that's why I thought of the Great Gazoo?
From "Kazuo Ishiguro Uses Artificial Intelligence to Reveal the Limits of Our Own/In his latest novel, the gaze of an inhuman narrator gives us a new perspective on human life, a vision that is at once deeply ordinary and profoundly strange" by James Wood (in The New Yorker).
I read one of his novels, and there's some interesting imagery and a lot of gloomy, alienated mood, but it just spun its wheels and never went anywhere. I'm too old to hunt for profundity in word salad.
"I know I feel pretty estranged in America in 2021. Things seem to be so far afield from what I always assumed to be normal. There are many evidently popular viewpoints that are alien to me. And what's really odd is that it seems to have happened in a very short period of time. "
But to use this literary technique, you have to take something you do understand, something that is quite normal and familiar, and write about it from the perspective of someone for who doesn't understand it. So, for example, your first-person character could be a big wokester looking at you and the way you live and describing it as if it's all very weird. Hard to believe you're like that... There's no achievement in not understanding other people and then describing it from your own perspective of seeing other people as not making sense!
A stranger in a strange land is going to learn "Caxton" before he learns the word "book"?
There's no achievement in not understanding other people and then describing it from your own perspective of seeing other people as not making sense!
The New York Times achieves that every day.
Heinlein wrote Stranger in a Strange Land in 1961
“As Time and Space come bending back to shape this starspecked scene,
The tranquil tears of tragic joy still spread their silver sheen;
Along the Grand Canal still soar the fragile Towers of Truth;
Their fairy grace defends this place of Beauty, calm and couth.
Bone-tired the race that raised the Towers, forgotten are their lores,
Long gone the gods who shed the tears that lap these crystal shores.
Slow beats the time-worn heart of Mars beneath this icy sky;
The thin air whispers voicelessly that all who live must die.
Yet still the lacy Spires of Truth sing Beauty’s madrigal;
And she herself will ever dwell along the Grand Canal.”
From “The Green Hills of Earth” by Robert A. Heinlein
Oh, Christ. Richard Brautigan all over again. Poetry is such bullshit.
he is often cited by fans and critics of the show as being an example of the show's having "jumped the shark
Interesting query: have you jumped the shark if you're jumping the shark predates jumping the shark? Fonzie didn't jump the shark until the late 70s...
We stand in that funny little room staring at the same wall. I always think dogs shouldn't get it but they all do...
So, for example, your first-person character could be a big wokester looking at you and the way you live and describing it as if it's all very weird.
Believe it or not I actually find it easier to put myself in the mindset of an ultra wokester than it is for someone who would could be considered having more mainstream viewpoints. I guess it comes down to what I see and read about the most.
In other words, I've little doubt that I could write something from an extreme viewpoint. I'd probably have to be careful to not get too absurd and end up in satire/parady (Titania Mcgrath). But writing from a perspective of someone who is "middle of the road" in America in 2021 would be pretty difficult for me right now. I think I've lost touch with normal.
Ishiguro is a great writer and i favor his short fiction. Many a night I’ve been lulled to sleep listening to Ben Marcus read Ishiguro’s A Village after Dark on the New Yorker Fiction app. This i credit to Althouse because this is where I first learned about that app for fiction podcasts.
The scene outside was one of untrammeled desolation. Scraggy blue-green grass clung to tired ground right away to the horizon scarred by ragged mountains. Dismal bushes struggled for life here and there, some with the pathetic air of striving to become trees as once their ancestors had been. To the right, a long, straight scar through the grass betrayed the sterile lumpiness of rocks at odd places. Too rugged and too narrow ever to have been a road, it suggested no more than the desiccating remnants of a long-gone wall. And over all this loomed a ghastly sky.
Captain Skhiva eyed his crew, spoke to them with his sign-talking tentacle. The alternative was contact-telepathy which required physical touch.
“It is obvious that we are out of luck. We could have done no worse had we landed on the empty satellite. However, it is safe to go out. Anyone who wishes to explore a little while may do so.”
One of them gesticulated back at him. “Captain, don’t you wish to be the first to step upon this world?”
“It is of no consequence. If anyone deems it an honor, he is welcome to it.” He pulled the lever opening both air-lock doors. Thicker, heavier ah- crowded in and pressure went up a little. “Beware of overexertion,” he warned as they went out.
Poet Pander touched him, tentacles tip to tip as he sent his thoughts racing through their nerve ends. “This confirms all that we saw as we approached. A stricken planet far gone in its death throes. What do you suppose caused it?”
“I have not the remotest idea. I would like to know. If it has been smitten by natural forces, what might they do to Mars?” His troubled mind sent its throb of worry up Pander’s contacting tentacle. “A pity that this planet had not been farther out instead of closer in; we might then have observed the preceding phenomena from the surface of Mars. It is so difficult properly to view this one against the Sun.”
“That applies still more to the next world, the misty one,” observed Poet Pander.
“I know it. I am beginning to fear what we may find there. If it proves to be equally dead, then we are stalled until we can make the big jump outward.”
“Which won’t be in our lifetimes.”
“I doubt it,” agreed Captain Skhiva. “We might move fast with the help of friends. We shall be slow—alone.” He turned to watch his crew writhing in various directions across the grim landscape. “They find it good to be on firm ground. But what is a world without life and beauty? In a short time they will grow tired of it.”
Pander said thoughtfully, “Nevertheless, I would like to see more of it. May I take out the lifeboat?”
“You are a songbird, not a pilot,” reproved Captain Skhiva. “Your function is to maintain morale by entertaining us, not to roam around in a lifeboat.”
“But I know how to handle it. Every one of us was trained to handle it. Let me take it that I may see more.”
“Haven’t we seen enough, even before we landed? What else is there to see? Cracked and distorted roads about to dissolve into nothingness. Ages-old cities, torn and broken, crumbling into dust. Shattered mountains and charred forests and craters little smaller than those upon the Moon. No sign of any superior lifeform still surviving. Only the grass, the shrubs, and various animals, two- or four-legged, that flee at our approach. Why do you wish to see more?”
“There is poetry even in death,” said Fander.
Heinlein wrote Stranger in a Strange Land in 1961
Which is why I expected people to know that when I said "a stranger in a strange land" I meant a Martian. It was easier to work in that phrase than "Where's the kaboom?".
This Martian poetry reads like something across the broadsheet from the comics--next to the crossword and whatever preceded sudoku. The riddle of the day:
"What's as light as air but can only be held for a short time?" Your breath.
Mary Beth said...A stranger in a strange land is going to learn "Caxton" before he learns the word "book"?
Which is why this sort of exercise leaves me cold. It's far too contrived to be interesting.
(To) write about it from the perspective of someone ... who doesn't understand it.
And in a way that the reader can decode. This is very common and closely related to, if not overlapping the literary technique of the “unreliable narrator,” which Ishiguro is adept at employing and does in fact in the short fiction i called out above. This also reminds me of some biblical passages in which the writer is describing the future, specifically the passages in John’s Revelation where he appears to describe helicopters or other aircraft using nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
These are my favorite posts from the hostess: when Althouse channels old Willy Safire’s On Language column.
I recall, from about 40 years ago, reading a passage from my wife's Anthropology textbook written in a similar fashion. It described the Nacerima people, their strange customs and the odd things they kept in their homes. One I recall was what turned out to be a medicine cabinet. It was described as a nook in the wall of their hut where healing potions and items that may have been used in religious ceremonies were stored. From there the passage posited how they may have lived and how certain artifacts may have had religious significance.
Eventually it was revealed that the Nacerima were really American(s) spelled backwards and the descriptions of Nacerima life were done as though looking back a thousand years at physical remnants of a society and trying to piece together belief systems and lifestyles. The point was to warn the student that any conclusions drawn from ancient artifacts were just educated guesses and should be viewed with caution.
For a freshman college student it was eye opening. I remember it all these years later. Whenever I read of a new archeological find and the writer starts guessing how the new artifacts may have been used as sexual totems or religious icons I am reminded of that little article in the first chapter of my wife's, well girlfriend back then, freshman anthropology textbook.
I can accept "Caxtons" being books, but not in a poem where a few lines later "the world is dim and bookish."
More on the Nacerima: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema
Apparently this is a real thing and it's been around for a long time.
Estrangement?
Those are riddles. Trust a pretentious intellectual to make dreary that which is fun.
7 In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, 8 their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; 9 they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. 10 They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails.
From Revelations 9, ESV on Kindle
Do not these “locusts” have helicopter or fighter jet elements as described with 6th Century language?
Ha! Son of a gun. I found the article. Who knew it was so famous. It was definitely written in the form a Martian in order to distance the reader and the narrator from the subject. Here's a link. Good stuff.
https://web.archive.org/web/20061004083040/http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/bodyrit.pdf
Perhaps Elizabeth Bishop either anticipated or sparked the craze with her odd and amusing “12 O’Clock News”?
At any rate, an Episcopal variation on the theme (predating the theme by a decade):
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1973/03/24/12-oclock-news
JOB
Persian Letters, anyone?
Some of those are very striking, but too many strive without really connecting.
Narr
I was wondering if Heaney ever came up around here
It looks like there are still traces of the Nacerima on the Internet.
Ostranenie, (defamiliarization or "making it strange") was a big thing in Russian literature and criticism. If literature stays alive, it's because it makes us look at the familiar in unfamiliar ways, in the way that a Martian might see them. Wikipedia relates the concept to Brecht's "alienation effect," Derrida's différance, and Freud's "uncanny." Raine must have been into things Russian: he married into the British branch of the Pasternak family.
Science Fiction had a lot to do with estrangement or defamiliarization. A standard trope of the sixties was astronauts landing on some strange planet and discovering that it was Earth after all. Craig Raine was part of the generation that would have been familiar with such films and TV shows, assuming things were similar in Britain.
really makes you wonder, how these bizarre Naciremas would have dealt with Covid?
I mean they seem Crazy Enough; that i wouldn't be surprised to learn that they Voluntarily IMPRISONED themselves in some weird attempt to placate the Gods
Heck! they'd probably think that wearing ornamental face coverings would prevent death
LOL!!!!
Oh wait, then i bet there's Naciremas that would INSIST that They knew what they were talking about, and how anyone that doubted them was stupid :)
You know, people that wouldn't even know if they lived in northern Nacirema or southern Nacirema; but thought that, for some reason; they knew more than anyone else!
Naciremas are weird!
Narr:
If you want to bring him up, I’ll second that motion!
He has one poem, that I'm aware of, that sort of fits the bill for the discussion - a sort of inversion whereby the mundane becomes intergalactic:
“The Milk Factory”
Scuts of froth from the discharge pipe.
We halted on the other bank and watched
A milky water run from the pierced side
Of milk itself, the crock of its substance spilt
Across white limbo floors where shift-workers
Waded round the clock, and the factory
Kept its distance like a bright-decked star ship.
There we go, soft-eyed calves of the dew,
Astonished and assumed into florescence.
—from The Haw Lantern (1987).
Very nice, JOB. Thanks. I'm not that deep in his work.
Narr
But I know what I like
Winner of the prize for Best Martian Poetry: John Carter. (Runner-up: Tars Tarkas.)
I always enjoyed Heinlein's forays into poetry... channeling Kipling, always, ISTM.
Stranger In A Strange Land hides in plain sight in this genre. Yes, of course Heinlein's himself meant it this way, but it's too easy to read as straight '60s SF, or as (now exceedingly mild) softcore, or as a coming-of-age story (quite a lot different from his usual ones).
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