Is there no way to re-enchant our mundane, dreary lives while preserving the myriad benefits of the machine age?
According to cultural historian Michael Saler, during the late 19th century — the fin de siecle — people attempted to do just this through an increasing immersion in the fantastic. Spiritualism, the occult, Eastern beliefs and extreme aestheticism offered various paths back to Eden. But all too often these creeds — like some of their modern successors — required one to surrender reason and independent thought as a prerequisite to entering the lost garden.
As an alternative, argues this brilliant if sometimes densely written book, one might instead turn to an early form of virtual reality. Through certain literary texts, people found that they could immerse themselves in various imaginary or secondary worlds. Moreover, by maintaining a sense of irony, they could experience enriching delight without surrendering to delusion.
In effect, “As If” explores the rewards of participatory fandom, concentrating on three groups: the devotees of Sherlock Holmes, especially the famous literary and dining club called the Baker Street Irregulars; the connoisseurs of H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos; and the scholarly enthusiasts of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
To some onlookers, people who pretend that Sherlock Holmes existed, who don’t laugh at Lovecraft’s tentacled or piscine horrors, or who take the trouble to learn Elvish should all go out and get a life. One might reasonably answer: That’s just what they’ve done. By periodically inhabiting vicarious realms, they have created a second life, discovered a way to gladden their souls, gained fresh perspectives on the real world and enjoyed a genuine human connectedness with their fellow enthusiasts.
People accomplish this, Saler repeatedly stresses, through the maintenance of “the double consciousness” of the ironic imagination — a willingness to play a game whole-heartedly while understanding that it is only a game. This is, in essence, the same attitude we bring to enjoying a conjurer’s performance: We revel in the tricks and illusions without believing that they are achieved through actual magic.
Such “as if” play, one might argue, is a source of inner enrichment and essential to our full humanity. Virtual communities and environments teach us, in the words of critic Marie-Laure Ryan, “to live, work, and play with the fluid, the open, the potential.”
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