Prosthetic Imagination

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MacAl Stone

Okay, someone said something this week that got me thinking about the Poetry Engine projects. For those of you unfamiliar, there are various computer programs that generate poetry:

Drawing word associations from its language database, the Engine’s grammar uses a probability-based approach to constructing syntactic constituents, which it aggregates into utterances, which it in turn aggregates into compositions. The project postulates that the construction of its texts does not actually occur within the software—these constructions, absent authorial intent and divorced from any underlying message, assume their status as poems only as they are read. The process of textual construction is firmly situated within the reader, not the software. Over the last year a dozen poems composed with the Poetry Engine’s aid and submitted under the pen name Erica T. Carter have been accepted for publication in a number of little magazines and literary journals. As evidence of the project’s success (or perhaps indicative of its failure), one editor accepted a poem with the comment, "I found your works intriguing, but have to admit I couldn't wrest the meaning from them." (-from the Slought Foundation website, linked above)

Now, we've discussed at length here--on at least a couple of different occasions--what makes for scary. I'm wondering how much of genre is defined by the reader's expectations. I'm sure we can all think of more that one book that we bought and found to be hopelessly mis-classified...

It's long been a pet theory of mine that horror has to do with examining taboos rather too closely for comfort, and one's taboos, though usually culturally derived, are yet personally held close and dear.

And horror, when it works, seems to me to work on that same visceral level as slash, erotica, or the other genres that specialize in staring directly and unflinchingly at topics that we might be more comfortable dealing with in a more distanced and peripheral manner.

*picture the shrug emoticon here* Anyhoo, just sayin'.

What do ya'll think?
 

HConn

Okay. Because you guilted me into it:

... staring directly and unflinchingly at topics that we might be more comfortable dealing with in a more distanced and peripheral manner.

I think reading them in a book is distanced and peripheral. A good book is completely immersive... until I look up from the page and glance around my comfy living room.
 

MacAl Stone

you've got a point there. In some ways, even more distanced than going to a movie, where they dim the lights and throw the images onto a giant screen, to aid you with the suspension of disbelief.

What that means, however, is that the act of reading--in and of itself--is a choice to participate, and suspend one's disbelief. And in so doing, the reader brings a unique filter to the experience of the text.

And thank you for taking pity on me.

Sometimes I spend a little too much time thinking about this stuff. Heh.
 

HConn

you've got a point there. In some ways, even more distanced than going to a movie, where they dim the lights and throw the images onto a giant screen, to aid you with the suspension of disbelief.

And you can't make it stop, even if the movie has become too intense for you. You can only hide your eyes and pretend not to hear. Or run out to the lobby and sit on a bench until your dad finishes watching Jaws 2.

I'm just saying.

And it wasn't pity--it was only guilt.

:D
 
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