Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site topaz.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!columbia!topaz!BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA From: BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: criticism Message-ID: <2175@topaz.ARPA> Date: Mon, 3-Jun-85 01:13:46 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.2175 Posted: Mon Jun 3 01:13:46 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 4-Jun-85 00:32:19 EDT Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 65 From: Bard Bloom Bill Ingodly writes: > How many of the following authors have you read, for > example; Jorge Amado, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Saul Bellow, > Thomas Berger, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Italo Calvino, Robert Coover, > Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Jose Donoso, Stanley Elkins [sic], Carlos > Fuentes, . . . > In what way are > the best writers in SF more numerous or better writers than these > mainstream people? We're talking superior craftsmanship here, things > like real dialogue by real people, little things I find infrequently > in much SF. I've recently read _Invisible_Cities_ (Calvino); saying that it had either characters or dialogue is an act of considerable generosity. (It is virtually pure structure, more like an abstract painting than a novel; recommended, but *NOT* for personality.) Didion's _A_Book_Of_Common_Prayer_ was somewhat better, in that the dialogue captured the characters -- but if the characters were real, they were not especially sane; neither did many of their actions make sense. They were more plausible before I started then after I finished. Other books, further in my past, had realer dialogue and characters; but it does not seem strange to me that the two I've read most recently don't. > because Zelazny doesn't really believe in these characters. I > challenge the best of you out there to care about a character and > bring him or her to life for your readers when you yourself have no > faith in your own characters or any real interest in them other than > as devices to carry the plot along! I can't read Zelazny's mind, except such of it as he broadcasts. It seems to me that he does care about his characters. Ignoring internal evidence in his books, he writes stories about the same characters and _doesn't_ try to publish them -- except once, in a short story collection which I can't find [help?], when he published one. This doesn't quite sound like a sign of intense apathy to me. Again, Mahasamatman strikes me as a more believable character than any in the Calvino, Didion, or Elkin I've read recently. > "...Some call me Sam, and most call > me ham, but you can call me Jim, or you can call me Slim..." Is this > believable or well-done? If you had read _Lord_Of_Light_ recently, I would flame at you for not checking your parody-quotation. Sam doesn't say it; it's description and thus believable. It appears in the first and last chapters. Things being as they are, it foreshadows and summarizes the novel, sketching in a few sentences Sam's personality and the important conflicts and their resolution, and placing the novel in a frame. Very well-done. Zelazny's works in general concern rather unusual characters: gods, Princes of Amber, and other people who wield intense personal power -- power derived from their personalities. He describes how such power alters these people, from causing them to become mature (e.g. Sam, Corwin) to destroying them (Dr. Render in "He Who Shapes"). Such people are rare (-8 except for Unix wizards 8-), but are certainly valid characters for SF. Real enough for you? > Lift your heads out of the SF ghetto, people... I hereby allow you, or encourage you, to stop reading SF. With excessive flame, Bard -------