REAL LIFE IS SO UNREALISTIC, DON’T YOU THINK?: I was reading my old post about “The Bride of Frankenstein,” and came across my appreciative citation of this line from an otherwise unsatisfying piece from Bright Lights Film Journal: “…a genre effort like ‘Bride,’ full of fantasy and monster-outsiders, was clearly the perfect medium for indulging the most radical aspects of a gay sensibility…”

At the time, I didn’t elaborate on that, and I don’t know that I understood it especially well. Rereading my post, I wondered why it struck me so much. Here’s why: Anyone who is or feels herself radically opposed to the currents of the day is liable to feel that her own account of her life is “unrealistic.” Her perspective is not realist. Her perspective is fantastic, outside, genre.

“Realism” only works for people whose worldviews are already accepted as realistic. The rest of us must make do with genre.

I expect that’s why I sense no appreciable difference between my “realist” (augh! are my archives fixed yet???), sci-fi, and surrealist short stories.