Parenthood and the perils of sordid fiction…
by rsbakker
A few world fantasies ago – I can’t remember when – I had this discussion about Neuropath with this guy – I can’t remember who – who was curious about whether I had children, which I didn’t at the time. His argument was that Neuropath would read a lot different to me if I was a parent. It would be more ‘sordid’ he said. The huge generic mistake I made in Neuropath, I’ve since discovered, was to allow harm to come to the hero’s kids. Apparently putting them in peril is all well and fine, but injuring them is a big no-no.
Well today I dropped off my little girl for her first day in daycare, and have lost my ability to concentrate on anything except the legion of potential harms that could befall her in the absence of her superhero father. Fear, I’ve come to realize, is a large component of parental love, indistinguishable from it at times. And I finally understand full well why parents would be so unsettled by Neuropath – it concretizes the terror that creeps through all parental love.
Which just goes to show that nothing is simple, not even a father’s love for his child. Human emotions are tangled masses, where one mode continually animates, permeates, and consummates others.
The weird thing is that not all of us experience this complexity. Introspective access to our emotions varies between people: some of us can see something of the messy bolus, whereas other only see unitary shape – ‘low-feelers’ I’ve seen them called. Perhaps this is why so many people can think that Britanny Spears provides profound commentary on the human emotional condition – why sentimentalism, cartoon representations of emotional complexity, can reek of truth for so many.
And this is why, I’m guessing, psychological realism so often backfires in genre fiction. People like their representations to match up with their experiences, and since no one wants to be the ‘too little feeler,’ they will invariably accuse your characters of ‘feeling too much,’ of being whiny and self-obsessed and the like.
But then what the hell does it mean to possess emotional conflicts that we can’t experience?
Anyway, in my next book, Disciple of the Dog, I experiment with a kind pseudo-sentimentalism to see if I can’t simultaneously ring both bells. I’m curious to see how it works…
Three Pound Brain 
Oh thank goodness, I was beginning to worry that everyone else but me would think the characters I’m writing are too whiny and self-obsessed. This must be one of the reasons I connect with your writing.
I think this very topic will be the basis for today’s post.
Scott, do you believe it’s possible to raise ‘low-feelers’ capacity for emotional experience through writing / art?
I’ve had ‘low-feeling’ acquaintances take psilocybin and are plunged into emotional depths which they usually describe as a ‘bad trip’. Despite their negative experience, the mushrooms usually have quite a profound lingering effect on their emotional experience of life – changing their artistic tastes, relationships …etc
In DotD do you find a way to engage these types in a ‘walk-throughish’ method? I find the inability to maintain emotional ambivalence / cognitive dissonance a staple of the ‘low-feeling’ types. I find most of your fiction directly taking on those facets of reality – especially in regards to certainty and morality, which is not only difficult for types who enjoy that kind of speculation, but likely impossible for those who don’t or ‘low-feeling’.
Great post, I can’t wait to see where being a Father and your daughters influence will take your writing.
I have no bloody idea. The whole thing creeps me out, and makes me wonder what society will look like once science begins devising metrics for these kinds of things. Will low-feeling be regarded as a kind of retardation? Will high-feeling be regarded as a kind neurotic disability? Will new forms of bigotry organize themselves along these metrics. The Low-feeler Wars… Has a creepy cool ring to it.
That’s a pretty intriguing concept. I recently read a book called ‘The Male Brain’ by Dr. Louann Brizendine where she discusses the differences between male/female emotional processing at one point. Apparently most males feel emotion stronger during the unconscious phase, but then block it and engage the problem solving emotional ‘brain circuit’ to relieve the emotional stress, whereas females are more inclined to amplify the emotions they feel when they reach the conscious brain, then dwell on them longer.
If that is correct, then the low-feelers could actually end up being the more adept problem solvers as well. So if the scenario you described were to play out then a strange rift in culture might lead to isolation between the emotionally adept and the problem solvers. That would make a pretty strange tiered society actually.
As for the real world I think that understanding these kinds of differences in order to better communicate and appreciate others is a good step. Unfortunately your prediction seems along a more realistic path, although I would guess more along the lines of job discrimination and riots rather than all out war.