This morning Nalo Hopkinson produced this entertaining blog post about an author reacting snarkily to an interviewer who assumed that his novel was somehow autobiographical. The snark itself is amusing enough, but it got me thinking about why this sort of thing happens.
Journalists, I’m afraid, like to link writers to the characters in their books because they are looking to spice their interviews up with a bit of “real life” drama. They do that for pretty much the same reason that reality TV exists – people like to think that real life is full of drama.
But, as Mr. Whitehead pointed out, it isn’t. And consequently we humans spend an inordinate amount of time and effort trying to make it so. I don’t just mean people getting overly dramatic on LiveJournal, though that’s clearly part of it. The whole conspiracy theory thing is also part of the same phenomenon. Kevin is fond of saying things like, “never assume conspiracy when a simple cock-up could have produced the same result”; but people do, all the time. Even the quest to find “meaning” in the failure of the Seattle in 2011 Worldcon bid is a natural part of this basic human tendency to try to find the “real story” behind mundane an often accidental events.
PZ Myers might comment that the whole of religion arises from the same impulse. Natural disasters happen, we humans need to find meaning in this, so we invent gods.
Generally I’m pretty positive about the role of fiction in society. I think it is good for us to think about how other people live, and how the world might be different, but sometimes I think that our loves of stories can also be a cause of much stupidity.
Of course, the simple, plain fact of the matter is that convictions for Criminal Conspiracy happen frequently. I just did a rough search at AustLii, and came up with over 300 hits of the phrase in Australia court proceedings, 18 last year (mind you, I didn’t check and see how many were convictions… but I doubt it was zero).
PZ Myers and pareidolia notwithstanding, calling something “conspiracy theory” is a nice easy way of attacking rumour. But it’s also Begging the Question.
I know nothing about the Seattle situation beyond what you’ve written about here, and I have no doubt there was anything untoward in what all agree is a tragic occurance. Affirming that as the case would seem to me to be the best way of addressing rumour.
(Incidentally, the New Yorker interview mentioned is pretty good in toto.)
Dr Jon @1:
I have some inside information on this — I’m not allowed to quote directly — but from such knowledge, I would say that talk of Deep Conspiracies is misplaced when it comes to the Seattle bid having to withdraw. In the end, they simply could not get a workable agreement for dates that are politically acceptable (roughly any five-day period including a weekend between the first weekend of August through Labor Day). They worked at it, and considered alternatives, but the filing deadline caught up to them. That’s one reason we have a filing deadline. By 180 days out, we assume any legitimate bid should have their act sufficiently together that they can show the relatively minimal requirements we impose upon bids, and that any bid unable to meet those (low) requirements is not worth considering.
Thank you for linking to Deb’s post. She makes some *very* good points. Having now seen things from the inside…I especially like the “people need to have their lives back” comment.