Since the first grumblings about Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia have now been voiced, I want to confess that I actually like the book. I freely acknowledge that the writing is not particularly elegant or complex, by our early twenty-first century standards, but I think that's part of the point. Ecotopia takes us back to the Utopian fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in which the need to convey details tended to overwhelm the desire to exhibit good form.
A common adjective used in criticizing that fiction, one which could apply to Ecotopia too, is "clunky." The word suggests, not only that the texts to which it is applied are like machines -- as opposed to natural creations with a life of their own, I suppose -- but that their mechanical parts are not engineered or oiled well enough to function smoothly. Of course, the idea of the deus ex machina, which long precedes the advent of modern machinery, is also contained within the metaphor invoked by "clunky." But there seems to be something specifically modern about the sound associations it conjures.
Perhaps we should shift our approach a bit and talk about the literary "device" instead of the literary "machine." Good literary breeding typically conditions people to regard literary devices unfavorably when they don't disappear into the story or imagery that they help to structure. I can imagine a critique of Beloved that would complain that the haunted house dimension to the novel remains too visible as a device for the book to really "come to life." I don't feel that way myself, but I can see the possibility for feeling that way.
With Utopian fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the device is often all-consuming. Reading it, we have a hard time paying attention to the development of character or to the turns of phrase with which the plot is ornamented, because our eyes are drawn to the massive, unwieldy device that makes the work work.
I fear that Ecotopia will produce a similar effect in many of you. With that in mind, let me propose that you leave room in your minds for the possibility that Callenbach wanted to achieve that effect, that he may, indeed, have set out to write a 1970s version -- simulacrum? -- of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Utopian fiction.
I'm adding two new links to the right. One is a Frederic Jameson essay directly relevant to the discussion of Utopian fiction, which you should read prior to next week's class on Ecotopia. The other is an interview with Frederic Jameson that gives a sense of the way he views history, specifically as it relates to thinking about theory, which often proceeds in a strangely ahistorical manner.
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