The long essay

The third semester of the MFA program includes writing a long essay. Apparently, early on this essay had to be 30 pages long. Now it's been reduced to 15-20 pages. I've heard various theories about the reasoning behind this. The most pragmatic is that an essay of 15-20 pages could be published. I have no idea if this is true, since I don't really read essays on any sort of regular basis, except in books. I don't really know how manuscript pages convert to book pages, but some of the essays I've read in books are certainly longer than 15 pages. I guess all this is moot though, since I don't expect tat I will try to get my essay published. But maybe I will. You never know.

I'm sitting in Espresso Royale right now, preparing to work on my essay or my book. I thought I'd take advantage of the wifi and do a blog entry. Marc is downstairs at the Labyrinth. We had lunch at the Red Hawk because I begged and said we needed to get out more.

As far as I can tell, this essay is meant to be about a personal experience of literature as it intersects with our lives and writing. It's odd. I didn't expect to learn anything about myself and my writing in the preparation of this essay. But as it turns out, even I didn't understand why I write what I do. And maybe I will never fully understand. But in trying to sort out what I should say to people about why some fantasy is literature, why it's important, why they should reconsider its validity, I've discovered some clear connections between my own spiritual longing and what i write. I've also identified the ways in which fantasy has shaped my life, the presence of fantasy in my life from a very young age. I think I've even come up with a fairly strong case for fantasy being the American/Western/industrialized equivalent of magical realsim in the motivation behind it and the purpose it serves for both the writer and the reader. Now of course, not all fantasy falls into this category. I'm leaning toward drawing the conclusion that it's mostly fantasy written in first person, and mostly by women or people of color or other people who have for some reason experienced oppression. I'm leaning toward saying that where the "magic" in magical resalism arises out of the cultural norms of societies heavily influenced by organized religion, the magic in the kind of fantasy I am referring to, the kind I write, arises out of the lack of such cultural beliefs. It arises out of a longing for the existence of some great power for good, something that could rescue us all, no matter what. It arises out of the fear that such a being or force does not exist, or perhaps out of the refusal to accept what seems obvious to our logical minds. We are alone, trapped in prisons of flesh, unable to control anything outside ourselves and actually not even our own physical bodies and often even our own thoughts, unable to count on anyone's help, always wondering if we will be let down, abandoned, disappointed, doomed. It arises as a response to the knowledge that death is inevitable, yet seems impossible to even contemplate. How could we simply cease to exist? It's the original human question about the meaning of life, re-framed by science and technology and the recent change in cultural standards.

Fantasy, well-written, character-driven fantasy, allows us to suspend our disbelief and belong to a world where there is a great force for good, where the impossible can be hoped for, where, though we are all in great danger, there is something that could save us, no matter what.

OK. I've pretty much written a book here. I'll stop now and get to work.