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From: redford%avoid.DEC@decwrl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: re: attacks on "Lord of Light"
Message-ID: <2184@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 3-Jun-85 20:06:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.2184
Posted: Mon Jun  3 20:06:25 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Jun-85 08:16:10 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 33

From: redford%avoid.DEC@decwrl.ARPA  (John Redford)

Bill Ingogly writes:

"The dialogue, characterization, and narrative in Lord of Light and
Creatures of Light and Darkness are amateurish; consider the clumsy
and stilted passages where Mahasamatman (sp? I don't own the book any
longer and haven't read it for some years) 'heroically' names himself
for us mortals' benefit: "...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? ..." 

True, that is a stilted passage, but Zelazny didn't write it.  The correct
quote is:

"His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god.  He 
preferred to drop the Maha- and -atman and called himself Sam."

which sounds considerably better.  It's on the cover blurb for the novel.

What's odd here is not the faulty quotation, but that Ingogly goes 
on to suggest that SF readers do a detailed comparison of "Lord of Light" 
with V. S. Naipaul's "A Bend in the River".  This will show the superiority
of a mainstream writer's powers of characterization and dialogue.  Why should
we do the comparison when Ingogly obviously hasn't?  How can he say 
that Naipaul is a better writer when he doesn't even remember Zelazny's 
cover blurb?  In any case, it's weird to compare "A Bend in the River", 
the story of an alienated Indian shopkeeper in an
African town, to Zelazny's mixture of class warfare and mythology.  Their
themes, settings, plots, characters, and audiences have nothing in common.

John Redford
DEC-Hudson