The numinous in America

[klwilliams]

At Westercon, both Lois McMaster Bujold and Michael Swanwich brought up the idea that fantasy needs to contain "the numinous", a spiritual or divine element, the supernatural. I've been thinking about that in regards to fantasy set in the United States. I find that stories with elves set in the downtown of a major city usually (though not always) feel grafted on, because elves aren't something that started out in the U.S. Neil Gaiman's American Gods were gods brought over to the U.S. from other countries. There are good stories with Native American gods and mythology, but I've been wondering what "the numinous" means in the WASP, urban United States, without bringing over gods or mythologies from other continents.

Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series springs to mind, based as it is on American folk magic and the Mormon religion. While both have their roots in Europe, they are still distinctly American. (The Book of Mormon is, roughly, the story of Jesus traveling though North America bringing his Word to the Indians.) Nina Kiriki Hoffman's The Thread That Binds the Bones, and her other supernatural stories, are another example. Michaela Roessner's Vanishing Point, while more science fictional than fantasy, is set in the Winchester Mystery House and contains at least a supernatural (science indistinguishable from magic) element.

What are the numinous elements in, say, downtown Manhattan, or the Financial District of San Francisco, or even downtown Pocatello, Idaho? There are always ghosts. Neil Gaiman created the Endless. American churches, such as the Baptists or Presbyterians, don't have the same kind of almost-magical liturgy that Catholic-based churches have.

I'd love to hear your suggestions.

Comments

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

What are the numinous elements in, say, downtown Manhattan, or the Financial District of San Francisco, or even downtown Pocatello, Idaho?

I'll suggest, actually, that there are largely none. American history is so tightly bound up in actual history that supernatural claims are almost always tacked on, as you correctly put it. Which is why no book of "American" fantasy has gone very far -- because, as a nation, we simply don't have the dizzying mysticism of Europe. We have no goblins in our forests. We have no dwarves in our mountains. We have no dragons in our lakes. We are amongst the most materialist nations on earth, which is why when we go for fantasy we overwhelmingly go for a pastiche of European feudalism, which is sufficiently removed and yet culturally relevant to us to provide background for fantasy elements.

(The reason why First People's fantasy has never taken off is because for most of us there is far less resonance between ourselves and that sort of mythology than ourselves and European mythology and legendry.)

The closest we Americans get to legitimate fantasy mythology as a culturally relevant form is more science-fiction, really: conspiracy theory. Our mythology, insofar as we have one, as to do with aliens from the stars and vast conspiracies to dominate the world than traditional fantasy. I could probably go on about why that is, too, if a body was interested. ;)

Just my 2 cents. ;)

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I think the reason science fiction is such an American form is because we don't have a legitimate fantasy mythology, and because we are such builders. Although the superhero comic is an American fantasy mythology, though embued with science fiction elements.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not sure we're more builders than, say, the Japanese or Germans. I honestly do think it is because we lack the medieval experience, specifically. We have no stories like King Arthur, where history and fantasy are mixed up inextricably. I feel pretty stronger it's the American lack of that that makes it hard to write distinctly American fantasy combined with our extreme technophilia. But it can't just be the technophilia, because Japan is even more absurdly technophile than we are, but they have a lot of Japanese themed fantasy -- because they, too, had a dark age where legend and history gets mixed up.

But the reason I said conspiracy theory instead of comic books is because the same sort of mixing of fact and the absurd happens with conspiracy theory as it does with legend. Oh, comic books routinely produce the most iconic characters in American literature, but no one past the age of 8 believes in Batman -- but a lot of people believe that aliens come down and probe people, or slaughter cows, or make art in fields, or even have replaced the government with robots. Like with King Arthur or Robin Hood or Roland, they can't seperate fact from fiction.

(And, for what it is worth, comic books are far more sci-fi than fantasy. Almost all the popular and successful characters have sci-fi backgrounds and the number of sci-fi stories strongly outweighs the number of fantasy stories, in large. So comics are more sci-fi with some fantasy than the other way around, for what it is worth.)

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I think the combination of no historical mythology plus being builders is what makes us a science fiction culture rather than a fantasy culture. We have hints of fantasy, but as others have said, we tend more towards horror than the numinous.