Fabulist Fiction

[close] A book club to collect and discuss the best imaginative writing about illness. But there is one rule: absolutely no misery tomes allowed. There are enough tear jerkers out there. This group is dedicated to developing a list of fiction and poetry and art writing that takes illness as its subject, but takes it to interesting, captivating, bizarre, speculative, fabulist, formalist, and otherwise not miserable places. As the late Anatole Broyard said in one of his last articles for the New York Times in 1990: "There's too much talk about anger among the sick and in the books about them, and I think writers should be cautioned against this. The feeling of being unjustly singled out is a dead-end kind of thinking and you can't get rid of it in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's screaming room. I'm past middle age, and I've never been really sick before - what have I got to be angry about? Anger is too monolithic for such a delicate situation. It's like a catheter inserted in your soul, draining your spirit." No anger, no misery: just genius and daring. Inspiration: Susan Sontag Michel Faber Thomas Mann Kafka Virginia Woolf Jenny Diski Malcolm Lowry Maggie Nelson William H. Gass

[close] Discussing the merits of Fabulist writing, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi (as well as any genre blend) as more than escapism in the vein of Ursula K. Le Guin.

[close] A group for readers of S.G. Browne's novels and fans of dark comedy and social satire.