Date:         Thu, 6 Mar 1997 10:43:37 EST
From: did I say that? <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: TECH: Fictional Places

aaaah...my apologies if I gave the impression that setting wasn't
important.  That's not what I'm getting at.  Can I try again?

Suppose that our pet writer puts two descriptions into the grinder.
One is of a real setting which the writer knows but we don't.  The
other is of a fictitious setting which we also don't know.

[I.e., I'm not talking about conflicts with our direct knowledge, or
even our body of shared knowledge.  Both settings are "new" to us as
readers.]

When we read the two descriptions, is there anything in the
descriptions (given that our writer has done an equally good job with
both) which will identify the "real" one or the "fictitious" one?

Yes, there are parts of our "shared reality" which the descriptions
should match--you and I both know something about the weather in
California.  And in fact I (as writer) must be careful to avoid
tripping over the boundaries of your knowledge--for example, setting a
story in the desert in Japan would probably not work for most
Americans, unless I spend some time telling you about Tottori and the
great sand dune there.

[and if I happen to sneak in an extra small town along the coast,
with a fish market and all the other fine details to make it live
in your mind--what are the odds of you ever finding out that I made
it up "out of whole cloth"?]

It's a quirky point, really.  For more details, see The Social
Construction of Reality by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966).

The main point being simply that for masses of what we think we know,
the truth is that we only have experienced it "at a distance" through
the descriptions and representations of media.  I might not consider a
story setting in Africa "real" because it conflicts with the
collection of stuff I have been exposed to about Africa--and if I went
there and looked, I could discover that the setting was completely
accurate, my knowledge was just wrong.

tink