VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM (17)
By:
August 29, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of science fiction novels and comics from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn.
SARAH CANARY | KAREN JOY FOWLER | 1991
In 1991, Strike The Gold won the Kentucky Derby. Nirvana released Nevermind. The Soviet Union dissolved. Fox Broadcasting aired the first condom advertisement to be broadcast in the U.S., a 15-second spot in which a man said, “I’m a nice guy and go out with nice girls. But these days, some pretty terrible things are happening to some really nice people.” A box of Trojans was shown, an announcer said “Trojan latex condoms: reduce the risk,” neglecting to specify the nature of the risk. Karen Joy Fowler’s first novel, Sarah Canary, was published. She was an instructor at the Clarion Workshop for writers of science fiction and fantasy. I was one of her students.
Sarah Canary never speaks in a way that others can understand, but I like to imagine the book’s epigraph, taken from Camille Flammarion’s Lumen, as Canary’s reproach to other characters: “You only comprehend things which you perceive. And as you persist in regarding your ideas of time and space as absolute, although they are only relative, and thence form a judgment on truths which are quite beyond your sphere, and which are imperceptible to your terrestrial organism and faculties, I should not do a true service, my friend, in giving you fuller details of my ultra-terrestrial observations…”
We can’t properly perceive her. Although each character’s interactions with Sarah Canary can be read as a version of first contact, we’re never told whether or not she’s an alien. Chin, the first character to meet her, initially mistakes her for a ghost, because ghost women often appear to men of his age. Everyone who meets Sarah Canary interprets her through the lens of what their educations, cultural backgrounds and lived experiences tell them must be true. They persist in regarding their ideas as absolute. And it’s not only the unfathomable Sarah Canary that the rest of the characters make assumptions about; they can only perceive each other through what they already believe about the world, their place in it, and the places others should and should not occupy.
Whenever B.J. — a character whose mental and physical experiences of the world are equally vertiginous — hears a story, he grasps for stability by linking it to one he already knows; instead of X it was Y, he explains, instead of Y it was Z. But except for that, it was the same story.
Sarah Canary is an immortal. She is an opium addict. She fits Lombroso’s description of the accomplished or potential poisoner. She has recently menstruated, causing her desires to be exaggerated and perverted. She sings like an angel. She can curl into a hole until the weather turns warm. She’s as comfortable in the woods as any creature. She’s a murderess.
At Clarion, Karen told us that what you demand from the reader must be balanced by what you give them. Sarah Canary gives us characters from widely disparate spheres; surprising and sad historical details; deadpan humor. It demands that we recognize, as Chin writes in his civil service examination, that the story we hear is ourselves. We are the only ones who can hear it.
VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on SNOW CRASH | Mandy Keifetz on THE GENOCIDAL HEALER | Matthew De Abaitua on SWAMP THING | Carlo Rotella on THE PLAYER OF GAMES | Lynn Peril on GEEK LOVE | Stephanie Burt on THE CARPATHIANS | Josh Glenn on DAL TOKYO | Deb Chachra on THE HYPERION CANTOS | Adam McGovern on KID ETERNITY | Nikhil Singh on THE RIDDLING REAVER | Judith Zissman on RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE | Ramona Lyons on PARABLE OF THE SOWER | Jessamyn West on the MARS TRILOGY | Flourish Klink on DOOMSDAY BOOK | Matthew Battles on THE INTEGRAL TREES | Tom Nealon on CLAY’S ARK | Sara Ryan on SARAH CANARY | Gordon Dahlquist on CONSIDER PHLEBAS | Alex Brook Lynn on VURT | Miranda Mellis on STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND | Nicholas Rombes on RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH | Adelina Vaca on NEUROMANCER | Marc Weidenbaum on AMERICAN FLAGG! | Peggy Nelson on VIRTUAL LIGHT | Michael Grasso on WILD PALMS.
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