"With the intention of upsetting, disturbing, or confusing the audience"

[kathleen_dailey]

Weird Nonfiction: A longish, difficult-to-summarize, impressionistic, and highly readable essay that addresses such topics as simulation theory, boundary eradication, and early and latter-day examples of "[w]orks that are about the real world or some subject within it but also question their container or their ability to be about that thing—or which veer from the thing at hand toward the cosmic, horrifying, or absurd."

Weird nonfiction shirks fantasy for the real world in much the same way that modern leftists have dropped the sloganeering of the 1960s in favor of concrete action. For those attuned to the occult and unreal aspects of being alive, “genre” fiction is no longer adequate. Creative world-building must be applied more violently to our own reality. Weird nonfiction is dreamlike, but urgent, cutting in its humor and suggestion. Even Philip K. Dick died believing his books were coming true.

I don't remember Clayton Purdom's name, but a Google search shows that he's written articles for some publications that I read regularly. Must pay more attention to bylines!

Comments

[flemmings]

Well, as for Phillip K Dick, I read The Man in the High Castle in the very late 80s. Starts, you may recall, with Japanese tourists (from victorious Japan) buying up American goods in New York which, uh yes, they certainly were then. Made me feel most peculiar to read that.

[kathleen_dailey]

I remember almost nothing from the book, which I read probably at about the same time you did, except that somehow Canada wasn't part of either the Japanese or the German hegemony? I may not even have that much right. I do recall that PKD was all about parallel universes, transdimensionality, unreal reality, etc., all of which subjects appeal to me now a lot more than they did a few decades ago.

[flemmings]

The only other thing I remember from the book was, if you wanted to get in touch with this mighty whatever-he-was, you uhh looked him up in the phonebook and gave him a call. He would answer it himself.

I really should reread it.

[kathleen_dailey]

you uhh looked him up in the phonebook and gave him a call. He would answer it himself.

Just like the unspeakable Rob Ford, who used to brag about answering all his constituents' calls. It appears that DoFo is doing the same thing.

(Apologies for the link to the Toronto Sun. I know you probably didn't want to see that pop up on your screen.)

[flemmings]

So one can talk directly to the premier, or could, but if you want a civil servant who can actually address the problem, it's still phone trees and no guarantee of a human at the end of it. Populists, feh.