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From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Criticism
Message-ID: <228@rti-sel.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Jun-85 17:54:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: rti-sel.228
Posted: Tue Jun  4 17:54:21 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 06:26:41 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC
Lines: 142

In article <2175@topaz.ARPA> BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA writes:
 
>Bill Ingodly writes:

I sincerely hope this is a typographical error, since I'm sure most
mature posters to the net are offended by 'humor' that pokes fun at
people's names or racial/physical characteristics. Please take care to
get people's names right in the future, since errors of this sort can
lead to bad feelings. Catch my drift?

>> 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.  

In at least one other response prior to this one, I discussed my
overstressing realism in dialogue and characterization in my posting.
As I pointed out in that response and in at least one private mail
exchange on this topic, many excellent contemporary writers are
unconcerned with realism in these senses. Invisible Cities is an
example, but you might make a case that Calvino's working at the
margins of fiction as we ordinarily understand the term. Fiction,
poetry, realism, dadaism, etc. are all categories created mainly for
critical or didactic purposes and many modern writers have worked
deliberately at the margins of these categories, in part to illuminate
their artificiality. Joan Didion is an example of a writer whose
fiction is closer to a 'classic' understanding of what the novel is
about.

Few SF writers, it seems to me, work consciously to redefine or
subvert the nature of their own tools (i.e., language and fiction
itself) in the way that certain non-SF writers like Calvino and at
least some of the other names on my list do. Most SF attempts a more
or less realistic presentation of events, although certain techniques
of the early 20th century avant-garde like stream of consciousness and
nonlinear temporality are quite common (notice, please, that I said
MOST SF, not all SF). Fiction that's structured as strangely as
Calvino's Invisible Cities, or (perhaps a better example) his If On A
Winter's Night A Traveller, is quite scarce in the SF genre. I used
realistic presentation of dialogue and characterization in my argument
because (rightly or wrongly) I believe many SF writers, including
Roger Zelazny, are attempting to present characters and situations in
a realistically convincing manner. Furthermore, my recollection of
Lord of Light is that it dealt with a fantastic world, but that the
main characters in it were presented in an entirely realistic fashion
(note for example the 'scientific' explanation in the book of the
origin of the gods and their powers). In this sense, your invocation
of other contemporary writers' deliberate subversion of realism is
beside the point, since what I'm saying is that I believe that
Zelazny was in certain senses (but not all) attempting realism and 
that he failed. And I fully realize I haven't read the book in ten 
years, and intend to do so (this point was also made in another of 
my recent postings on this subject, which you may care to read). 

Please note also that I invoked Zelazny and Ellison to make a point:
that there are many so-called mainstream writers who are AT LEAST as
good as the best SF writers; I just don't personally think Zelazny
and Ellison are the best SF writers that can be invoked, but many
other people who post to this group do. Since no one has directly
addressed the central issues in my original response, I can only
conclude that in the future I'll have to attack only those writers who
EVERYONE will agree is bad so no one gets so riled up that s/he misses
my point.

>> 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.  

So we disagree on Zelazny. Chacun a son gout. The point I was trying
to make in all of this is simply that Steve Brust was wrong when he
said most of the best modern writers are writing in SF; you'd seem to
agree with me on that point. I have nothing against Mr. Ellison and
Zelazny; in the past year I've purchased both Madwand and Shatterday
in hardcover and read them both. I don't feel, however, that they're
the best people in the SF field, a claim I'm sure other posters to
this group would dispute. I picked on Zelazny and Ellison because
they're not my personal favorites; ANY SF writers I'd chosen to
criticize would have been SOMEONE'S favorites, so no matter what I
said I was bound to be a villain in someone's book.

>> "...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.

I found it rather silly and not well done at all. I admitted I hadn't
read Lord of Light recently, and the quote is clearly a parody of the
original. My parody DOES capture my own reaction to the original
passage, however, which I found obtrusive and unrealistic. By the way,
I read Lord of Light twice at the time, so it's not like my
recollections are based on a cursory skimming of the book.
 
 
>> Lift your heads out of the SF ghetto, people...
>
>I hereby allow you, or encourage you, to stop reading SF.

Let me see ... anybody who doesn't agree with YOU and who thinks a
writer YOU like has certain shortcomings as a stylist shouldn't read
SF? Why do you find criticism of you personal favorites threatening?
Perhaps you're objecting to my reference to an SF 'ghetto.' It was
(again: I'm getting sick of referring back to the posting that started
all of this) in response to Steve Brust's claim that most of the best
writers working today are in SF, a statement I've heard from other SF
fans and writers which I take as evidence of a lack of knowledge of
and/or interest in fiction written outside the narrow bounds of the
genre. Ghetto was perhaps the wrong word, since it implies an external
cause for the ghettoization of its members; the insularity of some SF
fans is self-imposed.

Oh, yes, I've been reading SF since the age of seven (1952), so I
resent your 'encouraging' me to stop reading SF.

                                   -- Bill Ingogly