Supernatural stuff drives me mad.

[Freewheeling Andy]

I think I might be alone in this. And it's probably because I'm a harsh, cold-hearted empiricist and rationalist.

 

But when I'm reading fiction I am driven insane by the amount of times people need to stick a random ghost, or some magical stuff, into the stories.

 

I don't mean in fantasy stuff, or vampire/horror stuff. Although I can't stand that magicky nonsense either, but it's perfectly reasonable to assume that those books are going to be full of fantasy elements.

 

It's when it crops up in "serious" fiction. Books that, to all intents and purposes, really don't need ghosts and magic.

 

Sometimes I can get past it - in David Mitchell or Murukami or in something like Midnight's Children. Other times I can't. But whichever way, it just annoys the hell out of me.

 

The world is interesting enough and has interesting enough characters who can do interesting enough things to really not to need to create new powers.

 

Basically all of magical realism falls into this category. In some instances - when it's done for satire, like The Master and Margarita - it's obviously vital to the book which wouldn't work without it. But in others - that bloody stupid floating island in the Life of Pi - it just makes me sit and say "this book is garbage, that stuff actually can't happen so it makes the rest of the book assume the aspect of a book of the impossible" Which, to me, says that I might as well assume that all the other actions of the characters are equally unreliable, and the book will tell me nothing, really, useful.

 

Anyway, I'm clearly inconsistent, because I love Murukami and Bulgakov, but I don't think I'm that inconsistent - those are, effectively, "fantasy" books. Ones which write more directly to modern life than most fantasy, but which use fantasy as a tool. But the magical stuff in Life of Pi or 100 Years of Solitude or Midnights Children is, it seems to me, largely unnecessary and just makes the book worse.

[Echo]

Hmmm...I wish I had read the books that have bothered you, but I haven't. I've never really come across a modern fiction book that uses fantasy or magical elements in a strange way, or in a way that isn't necessary. I do like to read some fantasy, but like you said, the supernatural element is expected there. Maybe I need to read more contemporary fiction.

[MDR124]

In good literature it may happen to the reader to come across something which is not rationally explicable, but I find it essential to the plot, to the novel as the real characters themselves. Imaginary things are important even in life. I'm not saying I believe in supernatural things, only you have to trust sometimes unexplicable things as a mean to a deeper understanding of the nature of things themselves. in mathematics we use imaginary numbers and they helps us to solve a lot of problems without us being bothered by their unreality. So if even a mathematician can believe in unreal things, why can't we who sail in the world of immagination?

[BookJumper]

... but look at the classics, the biggies. Without the ghost of Hamlet's father (whether you take him to be a real apparition or a nice mass hallucination), there would be no indecisive, inactive hero, there would be no "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I", no "To be or not to be, that is the question". Without the witches' predictions, Macbeth would never kill Duncan, and if he never heard voices inside his head (again, whether you take them to be real or a concretisation of his feelings of guilt) then the play would lose so much psychological death.

 

Plus I find the distinction between fantasy and not-fantasy, in this case, to be unnecessary. Granted, in fantasy supernatural elements are "expected" in a way that they are not necessarily in other types of fiction, but the way I see it is that such elements are usually employed for the same reasons: ghosts, for example, can be used to explore metaphysical questions about the afterlife, or show the immortality of certain sentiments/values i.e. love, or force a character to resolve their past, etc.

 

Don't you think?

[Bronwen]

Wasn't there a ghost in MacBeth too? Was it Duncan's ghost?

[Freewheeling Andy]

Hmm. OK, in some cases it is a necessary plot device - pace Macbeth, Hamlet, a Christmas Carol, Master and Margarita.

 

In those cases, I'd better let it pass.

 

But even then, there's something deeply, deeply unsatisfying to me that the author needs to create something imaginary to work the plot. Arguably more defensible for Dickens or Shakespeare who were less of an age were rationalism had removed ghosts and spirits from the mainstream; where we know they are nonsense.

 

Bulgakov can only tell his satire on the soviet state by hiding it under layers of devils and demons.

 

As I said in the opening thread, I'm sure I'm pretty much alone with this. But I like my novels to be plausible, basically. And the presence of the mystical or supernatural elements really bug me.

 

It's not a very good explanation, is it?

[Seiichi]

in mathematics we use imaginary numbers and they helps us to solve a lot of problems without us being bothered by their unreality. So if even a mathematician can believe in unreal things, why can't we who sail in the world of immagination?

Well, mathematicians work with abstract concepts. Complex numbers are no more unreal than the number zero, or negative numbers, concepts which were considered absurd when they were first suggested.

 

... but look at the classics, the biggies. Without the ghost of Hamlet's father (whether you take him to be a real apparition or a nice mass hallucination), there would be no indecisive, inactive hero, there would be no "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I", no "To be or not to be, that is the question". Without the witches' predictions, Macbeth would never kill Duncan, and if he never heard voices inside his head (again, whether you take them to be real or a concretisation of his feelings of guilt) then the play would lose so much psychological death.

 

Plus I find the distinction between fantasy and not-fantasy, in this case, to be unnecessary. Granted, in fantasy supernatural elements are "expected" in a way that they are not necessarily in other types of fiction, but the way I see it is that such elements are usually employed for the same reasons: ghosts, for example, can be used to explore metaphysical questions about the afterlife, or show the immortality of certain sentiments/values i.e. love, or force a character to resolve their past, etc.

He's not complaining about the supernatural phenomena occurring in books where, due to the genre or the beliefs people held at the time, this kind of tale could be expected. If I understood correctly, he's talking about books which are grounded in modern reality, where the reader doesn't expect a supernatural element to be part of the story, yet the author decides to put one in. E.g., a man is found murdered (stabbed) in his home, his past is revealed, and none of the suspects is the murderer because the author has decided at the very end of the book to reveal that it was the ghost of his wife that killed him. It's just nonsensical.

 

As I said in the opening thread, I'm sure I'm pretty much alone with this. But I like my novels to be plausible, basically. And the presence of the mystical or supernatural elements really bug me.

 

It's not a very good explanation, is it?

You got your reply in before me.

[Freewheeling Andy]

He's not complaining about the supernatural phenomena occurring in books where, due to the genre or the beliefs people held at the time, this kind of tale could be expected. If I understood correctly, he's talking about books which are grounded in modern reality, where the reader doesn't expect a supernatural element to be part of the story, yet the author decides to put one in. E.g., a man is found murdered (stabbed) in his home, his past is revealed, and none of the suspects is the murderer because the author has decided at the very end of the book to reveal that it was the ghost of his wife that killed him. It's just nonsensical.

 

 

 

Yep. That's pretty much right. Although even when I know it's necessary, like it Hamlet, there's still something nagging away at me.

 

But it's really the latter case that drives me nuts. The example you post is the worst of the lot - the introduction of the deus ex machina who suddenly makes everything right/explains the problem, at the end of the book. But also those plots which have a ghost tootling along around the pages, but who has no real business with the story.

 

To be honest, ghosts are the worst. Really, the whole of modern fiction should be free of ghosts, and I should be given a free pass by the law to go round to the house of any author who includes one in their book, and apply a crowbar to their knees.

[BookJumper]

Arguably more defensible for Dickens or Shakespeare who were less of an age were rationalism had removed ghosts and spirits from the mainstream; where we know they are nonsense.

There's a lot of people who don't think they are nonsense, Andy - what may seem impossible to yo finds its roots in beliefs that, like it or not, are still quite widespread. No author would litter their otherwise "normal" book with ghosts & co. if there weren't people in the world who either believe in them, or wish they were real, or are open to the possibility of their existence should they ever see one with their two eyes. Possibly I belong to the latest category: I'd give anything's existence the benefit of the doubt.

 

I do agree with you that when the crime author turns around on the last page and says, "the ghost did it" it's ridiculous - but it's ridiculous in the same way that him turning around on the last page and saying, "the butler did it". Bad storytelling is bad storytelling no matter whether the devices it employs are supernatural or not. The way I see it, it's not the ghost's fault.

[Freewheeling Andy]

I find "The butler did it" is less bad, if you know there's been a butler there all along.

 

Anyway, as I said at the outset, I'm probably in a minority of one. But I still find the presence of mystical or supernatural elements deeply unsatisfying. Even if they're an essential plot device or cypher. The presence is something I find really, really grating. Thinking back, I actually find it grating even in books I love, like Ghostwriten. It may be essential, but it's something that, to me, still winds me up. And I would just rather it wasn't there and that authors wrote books that didn't need the supernatural element.

[BookJumper]

Odd really - I'm the complete opposite you see; with few notable exceptions (Jane Austen, for example) I tend to steer clear of authors who write things that are completely, empirically "believable" as I find those types of books more easily dull and mundane. Obviously a bad writer is going to make a mundane and boring book even out of the most fantastical elements, so my choice of books doesn't always work as well as I hope it might; still, I prefer to pick up a book that allows for things that I don't really encounter in my "real", everyday life - or I might as well go and experience those things for myself rather than read about them in a book.

 

Of course, I might be the one missing out - can you suggest a couple of completely supernatural-free books that might make me change my mind about their risk of being dull and mundane?