America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that science fiction reflects American culture's tendency to embrace comforting falsehoods.
Thomas M. Disch's quote critiques the fabrications prevalent in American society, asserting that science fiction uniquely captures and explores these narratives. He argues that within a culture enamored with deception, science fiction serves as a vital literature form, effectively presenting the fantasies and lies that the populace prefers to believe, allowing for a deeper understanding of both society and the self.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture on the evolution of American literature and its societal implications.
My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’” She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasn’t easy.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
For a lot of readers these days, a book is something you have to agree or disagree with. But you can't agree with a novel. For my generation, it was assumed that a book is a dramatic thing, that the eye of the book is not telling you what to think.
You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
A Christian novelist tries to describe the world as it is.
Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love.
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