We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The Language of Presence in Varley's "The Persistence of Vision".
- Authors
Koelb, Clayton
- Abstract
John Varley's ‘The Persistence of Vision’ proposes a linguistic utopia in which ordinary speech, which is composed of signs inevitably possessing an element of distance and ‘absence’, is replaced by a language (or set of languages) in which the process of signification is set aside in favor of the direct ‘reading’ of the world. Since Varley is fully aware that such a language or presence is incompatible with the structure of the world we live in, he separates his utopia from this world. The separation is at first relatively slight, and the story stays close to the margins of credibility; but at the end Varley leaves no doubt that his tales is a magical fantasy treating a world very different from the one we inhabit. What happens in Varley's story is impossible and not to be believed. This impossibility and this incredibility are precisely the point, for if we were to suppose that Varley meant to solicit the reader's belief, either directly or allergorically, his story would appear either curiously self-destructive on the one hand or emptily pretentious on the other. Neither is the case. This story that at first gives every appearance of expressing absolute faith in the possibility of a prefect form of communication unmasks itself at the end by showing decisively that this dream-language can exit only in the realm of outright, incredible fantasy. The language of this fantasy world is shown to be most powerful precisely when it is most incredible.
- Subjects
SCIENCE fiction; BOOKS; LANGUAGE &; languages; SPEECH; SIGNS &; symbols; SOCIALISM; UTOPIAS
- Publication
Science Fiction Studies, 1984, Vol 11, Issue 2, p154
- ISSN
0091-7729
- Publication type
Literary Criticism