by Isaac Asimov
Socrates set the fashion for irony for all time. He pretended to be ignorant when he was actually piercingly intelligent, and ever since then, ironists have pretended to believe and say the opposite of what they wanted the reader to understand. Instead of exaggerating the evils they are denouncing, they reverse them and call them good.
The satirist induces laughter by his exaggeration, the ironist induces indignation by his reversal.
The satirist is often good-natured, the ironist tends to be savage and bitter. Satire is a comparatively mild technique whose purpose is easily grasped. Irony is a difficult technique whose point is frequently missed, and the ironist may find he is holding a two-edged sword and is himself badly gashed.
Most satirists find themselves indulging in irony sometimes, and I know exactly where I first encountered irony. I was reading Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers for the first time (as a pre-teener) and in chapter two, I encountered Dickens’s description of Tracy Tupman’s zeal at “general benevolence.” Said Dickens, “The number of instances…in which that excellent man referred objects of charity to the houses of other members for left-off garments or pecuniary relief is almost incredible.”
I was astonished. I thought to myself that it wasn’t very kind of Mr. Tupman to send poor people to other members instead of giving them something himself, so how could he be benevolent? And after a while, the light dawned. He wasn’t benevolent. In fact, I decided indignantly, he was a stingy bum, and my liking for him was strictly limited for the rest of the book and ever since. I did not know that what I had just read was irony, but I understood the concept from that time on, and I eventually learned the word.
If you want a savage and prolonged bit of writing with a great deal of irony in it, I refer you to Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger, which was not published till after he was safely dead. I warn you, though, it’s not pleasant reading. It certainly makes plain, however, Twain’s bitter feelings about humanity and the assorted evils that seemed (to Twain, at any rate) to be inextricably bound up with it. And it may, for a time at least, embitter you with humanity, too.
Even that, however, must take second place to the all-time high in caustic irony-a pamphlet by Jonathan Swift, published about 1730, entitled “ A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country and for Making them Beneficial to the Public. “ Swift served in Ireland and could see first-hand, and with enormous indignation, the manner in which the English brutally and callously ground the Irish into helpless and hopeless poverty.
He therefore pointed out that since the only thing the Irish were allowed to produce and keep for their own use were their children, it would supply them with needed money, and others with needed food, if those Irish children were sold in order to be fattened and slaughtered for sale at the butcher’s. With an absolutely straight face, and with incredible ingenuity, he pointed out all the advantages that would accrue from such cannibalism.
If anything could possibly have evoked shame and even reform from those responsible for the Irish plight, that pamphlet would have done it. Undoubtedly, many of those who read the pamphlet were shamed; some may even have altered their attitudes and behavior. By and large, however, the exploitation of the Irish continued unchanged for nearly two more centuries and the light that casts on humanity is not a good one.
And yet, you know, not everyone has a “sense of irony,” which is by no means the same as a “sense of humor.” I firmly believe that one can have one and not the other. It is possible to be confused by a pretense to believe the opposite of what you believe, as I was for a few minutes by Dickens’s description of Tupman as benevolent. Of course, I caught on, but if I had lacked a sense of irony, I suppose I wouldn’t have.
There were, actually, good and kindly people who read Swift’s pamphlet with indignation, not at the mistreatment of the Irish, but at Swift’s apparently callous and immoral advocacy of cannibalism. They thought he meant it, and denounced him with immeasurable vehemence.
And that finally brings me to Asimov’s for sometimes what we publish contains irony, and if irony is hard to handle even for the absolute master of the art, good old Swift, you can understand that it is a slippery tool for lesser mortals.
In the February 1984 issue, Tom Rainbow wrote a “Viewpoint” article entitled, “Sentience and the Single Extraterrestrial,” that dealt with the requirements for such things as intelligence, sentience, and self- awareness. He described the kind of extraterrestrials that might, or might not, possess such things.
From the title alone, you can tell that he is writing in the humorous mode, and indeed, when you read his essay, you will find that he is saying perfectly serious things in a deliberately funny way.
In one place, he uses irony. Having talked of the requirements of self-awareness in terms of brain/body ratios, he points out that women’s brains are smaller than men’s but so are their bodies, leaving the brain/body ratio nearly the same in both sexes. (Actually, if there’s an advantage it’s on the side of women.) With heavy irony, he says, “this reasoning leads to the somewhat startling conclusion that women must be self-aware.”
How can one believe that Rainbow really thinks the conclusion is “startling”? He’s using ironic dissimulation. He’s pretending to think it’s startling (and italicizing “self-aware” as a typographical indication of astonishment) in order for you to understand thoroughly that this is not startling and that people who consider women inferior beings are ignorant, and even stupid.
And to make it even plainer, he puts himself in the ironic position of these ignoramuses and says in the next sentence, “Heck, guys, if even girls can be self-aware, then there’s hope for Giant Dill Pickles.” The use of the adolescent term “Heck,” and the equally adolescent “guys,” and the shift from “women” to italicized “girls” all show that he is not speaking in his own persona and that he has nothing but contempt for the attitude. He is relying, poor fellow, on his readers having a sense of irony.
Well, they do-by and large.
But there are always exceptions, and a few women have written indignant letters to point out that this was insulting. One said that it wasn’t funny or cute.
No, indeed, Swift’s advocacy of cannibalism wasn’t funny or cute, either, but he was trying for something else.
To be sure, Swift’s entire pamphlet was aimed at his target and Rainbow was merely bringing in the matter of women’s brains as a side issue, and perhaps if he were doing it again, he might decide it would be more judicious not to indulge. But please, women, the man is on your side and tried to show it by the use of that two-edged sword, irony. You may think the irony didn’t work, but that doesn’t make
Rainbow any enemy of womankind.
Plagiarism
To the ancient romans, a “Plagiarius” was what we call a kidnapper, and to steal children is certainly a heinous crime. It appears to those who work with their minds and imagination, however, that to steal one’s brainchildren is almost as heinous a crime, and so “plagiarism, “ in English, has come to mean the stealing of the ideas, forms, or words by someone who then puts them forth as his or her own.
A scientist’s formulas, an artist’s paintings, an inventor’s models, a philosopher’s thoughts, might all be the subject of plagiarism, but common usage has come to apply the term, specifically, to the theft of a writer’s production.
Plagiarism is a horrid nightmare to writers in several different ways; and it is much more serious than nonwriters may realize.
If a writer, for any reason, commits plagiarism, copying some already published material, and if he gets away with it to the extent of getting the plagiarized material republished, he is bound to be caught sooner or later. Some reader, somewhere, will notice the theft. In that case, even if the plagiarist isn’t sued or punished in any way, you can be sure that no editor who knows of the plagiarism will buy anything from that writer again. If the plagiarist has a career, it i
s permanently ruined.
You may think that such a literary thief deserves a ruined career, and certainly I think so, but copying an already published item word for word is such a surefire failure that only an idiot or a complete novice would do it. What about the case where someone simply makes use of the central idea of the story, the series of events it contains, the climax, the emotional milieu, and so on, but does not repeat it word for word? What if he uses his (or her) own words entirely, changes the incidents in nonessential details, puts it in a different setting and so on?
In that case, it becomes more difficult to decide whether plagiarism has taken place. After all, it is possible to have the same ideas someone else has had.
Thus, Ted Sturgeon once wrote a story which he sent to Horace Gold of Galaxy and which was accepted. I wrote a story which I sent to Horace Gold while Ted’s story was still unpublished. There was no communication between us; we lived in different cities and had not exchanged phone calls or letters in months, nor had either of us discussed our stories with anyone. Nevertheless, not only did we both center our stories about a double meaning in the word “hostess,” but two of my characters were Drake and Vera, and two of his were Derek and Verna.
It was the purest of coincidences, for except for the double meaning and the character names that we shared, the stories were miles apart. Nevertheless, even the appearance of plagiarism must be avoided. I had to make enough changes in my story (because it was the later one received) to destroy the appearance. To do so spoiled the story in my opinion, but it had to be done anyway.
In the same way, when I am writing a story, I must be conscious that there have been other stories dealing with similar ideas or similar characters or similar events, and I must make every effort to dilute that similarity. When I wrote a story once called “Each an Explorer,” I never for a moment forgot John Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” and spent more time trying to avoid his story than trying to write my own.
In the same way, when I wrote “Lest We Remember” (published in this magazine), I had to steer a mile wide of Keyes’s “Flowers for Algernon.” It’s part of the game.
But I haven’t read every story ever written and many that I have read, I have completely forgotten, at least consciously. What if I duplicate important elements of stories I have never read, or have forgotten? It’s possible. I once wrote a short-short that ended with a certain dramatic climax in the last sentence. Eventually, I received a letter from another writer whose story had been published before I wrote my story and who had made use of the same dramatic climax in his last sentence. What’s more, I had his story in an anthology in my library. I did not remember reading it, but I had had the opportunity to do so. The two stories, except for the climaxes, were completely different, but I promptly wrote the other author and told him that although he had my word that there was no conscious imitation, I would withdraw the story from circulation and it would never again appear in any anthology, any collection, any form whatever-and it never has.
Fortunately, the other writer accepted this, but what protection do I (or any other writer) have against the accusation of plagiarism over what is a bit of unconscious recall, or, for that matter, an outright coincidence?
Actually, very little. I rely, to a large extent, on my prolificity and my unblemished record. No one as prolific as I would seem to have to depend on someone else’s ideas, and my own mental fertility is obvious to all. Secondly, I am cautious enough never to discuss my stories before they are published, nor will I listen to others who might want to discuss their stories. In fact, I won’t even read unsolicited manuscripts sent me by strangers. They go back at once, unread.
Even so, every established writer lives under an eternal Damocles’s sword of possible accusation of plagiarism. A casual reference, a small similarity, a nonessential duplication may be enough to produce such a suit. Such a suit, however unjustified, however certain of being thrown out of court, can be hurtful to an innocent writer. It is, after all, an expense. Lawyers must be paid, time must be lost and, invariably, one is urged to “payoff the kook.”
But what if you, the established writer, have been plagiarized? That has never happened to me to the extent of publication-that I know of. To be sure, there have been pastiches of me, deliberate imitations of my robot stories, or my Black Widowers mystery stories, and so on. These come under the heading of fun. The writer who turns them out makes no secret of it, and the editor knows that it’s a pastiche.
Sometimes, they send the manuscript to me to ask if I have any objection. I have always given permission. Then, too, there are stories that are bound to be similar to mine in some benign way. The Star Wars movies have some distant similarities to my Foundation stories, but, what the heck, you can’t make a fuss about such things.
Unpublished plagiarism is more common. An English professor once sent me a story written by a student in first-year English. It didn’t seem to her likely that the kid could have written that good a story and there were things in it that seemed reminiscent of me-like the Three Laws of Robotics. I went over the story and it was my “Galley Slave” word for word. I returned it to the professor and told her to (a) punish the student appropriately, and (b) not let me know anything about it. (I’m soft-hearted.)
And what if you’re an editor and get stuck with some material that might conceivably be plagiarized. In the first place-is it? A completely original, nonreminiscent story is possible, but very rarely met up with. Similarities with some particular published story are almost unavoidable. However, the more similarities there are, with the same previously published story, the greater the possibility of plagiarism.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to establish certainty if the copying isn’t word for word.
Should an editor refuse a story, however good, if there are too many similarities? Of course! Remember that I said even the appearance of plagiarism must be strictly avoided.
There is, however, a catch. An editor has not read every story that has been published. Sometimes an editor, being human, has not even read every famous story ever published. Or an editor has read many stories but some of them have completely gone from her mind. Such an editor may, in all innocence, therefore publish a doubtful story. He (or she) is then a victim and not an accomplice.
Just as honest, established writers must live, constantly, with the fear of being accused of plagiarism, or of themselves being plagiarized, so must honest, established editors live, constantly, with the fear of being victimized into publishing a doubtful story.
What does one do in such a case? One can’t entirely ignore the matter. For one thing, the similarity between the new story and an older story is sure to be seen by some readers. Even if the older story is very obscure, someone will have read it and remembered it. If it is a well-known story, letters will come in heaps.
One can ask the writer of the doubtful story for an explanation. If the explanation seems unconvincing, one can avoid buying stories from the writer again. One might warn other editors in the field to be careful. And one can try hard not to let it happen again-knowing full well that there is no way of stopping every piece of literary prestidigitation.
It is comforting to know, however, that if an editor lets something suspicious get into print, the fact will not remain unreported for long. We can be sure, then, that if no indignant reader has written within two weeks of the appearance of an issue, we have probably committed no ghastly mistakes of this nature in that issue.
Symbolism
To a child, a story is a story, and to many of us, as we grow older, a story remains a story. The good guy wins, the bad guy loses. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. We don’t want anything beyond that-at least to begin with.
The trouble is that if that’s all there is, one is likely to grow weary eventually. Children love to play tick-tack-toe, for instance, but it’s such a limited game that, after a while, most children don’t want to play it any more. In the same way, children, as they grow old
er, may stop wanting to read stories that are only stories.
Since writers get as tired writing stories that are only stories, as readers get tired reading them, it is only natural that writers begin to search for new and different ways to tell a story-for their own mental health, if nothing else.
A writer can try to find a new kind of plot, or he can indulge in stylistic experimentation, or he can strive for events that are ambiguous and conclusions that are inconclusive, or he can blur the distinction between good and evil, or between dream and reality. There are many, many things he can do and the one thing all these attempts have in common is that they annoy those readers who still are in the stage of wanting stories that are only stories.
Mind you, I don’t sneer at such readers. For one thing, I myself still write stories that are primarily stories, because that’s what I like. In my stories, there is a clear beginning, a clear middle, and a clear end, the good guy usually wins, and so on.
Nevertheless, you can’t blame writers and readers for wanting something more than that, and those of us (1 include myself, please note) who are suspicious of experimentation and fancy tricks ought to make some effort to understand what’s going on. We may fail to grasp it entirely, but we may at least see just enough to avoid an explosion of unreasonable anger.
One game that writers very commonly play is the one called “symbolism.” A story can be written on two levels. On the surface, it is simply a story, and anyone can read it as such and be satisfied. Even children can read it.
But the simple characters and events of the surface may stand for (or symbolize) other subtler things. Below the surface, therefore, there may be hidden and deeper meanings that children and unsophisticated adults don’t see. Those who can see the inner structure, however, can get a double pleasure out of it. First, since the inner structure is usually cleverer and more convoluted than the surface, it exercises the mind more pleasantly. Second, since it is not easy to detect, the reader has the excitement of discovery and the pleasure of admiring his own cleverness. (You can easily imagine what fun the writer has constructing such symbolic significance.)
