Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site duke.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!mcnc!duke!crm From: crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: Criticism Message-ID: <5909@duke.UUCP> Date: Fri, 7-Jun-85 14:58:52 EDT Article-I.D.: duke.5909 Posted: Fri Jun 7 14:58:52 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 10-Jun-85 06:42:50 EDT References: <228@rti-sel.UUCP> <5897@duke.UUCP> <234@rti-sel.UUCP> Reply-To: crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) Distribution: net Organization: Duke University Lines: 236 Summary: In article <234@rti-sel.UUCP> wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) writes: >In article <5897@duke.UUCP> crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) writes: > >>is really true: Sturgeon's Law applies to everything, mainstream or >>not. ... > >I completely agree; one of my responses in this exchange made exactly >this point (though I mistakenly attributed Sturgeon's Law to Arthur >Clarke). I have never made the point described here; if you think I >have, I've either failed to communicate correctly or you've misread >me. note please that I am not replying only to you -- one reason that I wrote this as an essay in itself was that it was not only your criticism to which I intended to respond. So, since I didn't make it clear, I'll do it explicitly for everyone to see I AM NOT CRITICIZING BILL IN PARTICULAR -- AND THE POINT I WAS RESPONDING TO HERE WAS ORIGINALLY MADE BY (I've lost his/her first name) TUCKER. I did an F of Bill's article for convenience, and because I wanted to respond in particular to points that had been made in his letter, too. > >>Have you ever read (or tried to read) a story in which you were never >>able to become engrossed in the story? Where you were always conscious >>that you were ... reading ... a ... book? Then I believe you were >>reading something that I call sterile. >> >>Now, note that two different people would believe different things >>sterile. I find it hard not to be conscious of ...reading ... the ... >>book... (I promise I won't do it again) when I have read Moby Dick. > >As you point out, this is the problem I have (or had) with Lord of Light. >I found some of his techniques intruding on my enjoyment of the story. >Do you find Nabokov's fiction sterile, by the way? I blush to admit that I haven't read much Nabokov, except for interviews with him. When he was widely available, I was considered ``too young,'' and there is now so much back stuff to read.... >He was a *very* >self-conscious writer who deliberately played games with the authorial >presence not necessarily bad, just hard to pull off -- >Try rearranging the letters in Vivian Darkbloom's name ...). Nabokov >and Melville are two of my favorite authors, I think that Melville would have been one of mine, too, had I been born seventy-five years ago. But my little mind was warped by early years of reading less ornate authors, and I've never managed to adapt to the more ornate verbal style. But I'm not arguing that Melville is a bad author, just inviting commiseration and sympathy. As I said, my problem is not that _Moby_Dick_ is bad, but that it's too good: the pleasure of seeing the words work interferes with my ability to fall into the book, see the waves and hear the voices in the movie theatre in my head. >>that _Finnegan's_Wake_ is read by *anyone* for pleasure -- or if it is, I misstated this a little, because I *do* read Finnegan Wake for pleasure -- I love puns, and enjoy finding them in FW. But I can only do it a page at a time, and it's not really the *same* pleasure I was talking about. >know who have made a study of Finnegan's Wake claim to get great >enjoyment from tackling the task, however, so I suspect that this is >another case where a certain amount of personal taste is involved. >Perhaps it's like the guy who likes to beat himself over the head with >the baseball bat because it feels so good when he stops. :-) I kind of think it's more like jigsaw puzzles -- but not like reading fiction. >> ... But the idea >>originally proposed was that we who prefer to read SF should get our >>minds out of the ghetto and find out what *real* fiction is like. > ... >that SF in general is not real fiction, or put down the entire SF >genre. If you think I did, I suggest you reread my posting. Once again, let me stress that I was not necessarily replying to only Bill-Ingogly words, but rather taking up the side of the SF-is-okay people in general against the Forces Of Literature. Knowing you as a fan I took this as being (on your part) hyperbole. I realize that you are partial to SF. Let me recast once-and-for-all what I felt had been the thesis proposed: that most or all of SF was crap, that most mainstream fiction was better, and that SF readers who thought otherwise should get their minds out of the pulp-lined gutters of the paperback ghettos, and learn what *good literature* was, so they wouldn't say these foolish things. >Yes, I've >made extreme statements I firmly approve -- can't have a fun discussion unless you take a strong stance. >What I've >reacted strongly to in this group and others in the past are what I've >felt were absolutist statements that pigeonholed whole genres of >fiction, types of music, or groups of people unfairly. But you see, that is the same thing to which I am reacting -- statements that SF readers don't know what ``good'' is, and refuse the ``good stuff'' in favor of endless serial episodes masquerading as novels. The statements to which I've been responding have been very strong -- not just ``there's a lot of crap out there'' but ``the reason there's so much crap out there is that you turkies can't tell the crap from good stuff.'' I know you know better, and I admit that your posting was not quite this strong (although I certainly felt the out-of-the-ghetto phrase suggests it -- but let that pass; hyperbole is fun, and other postings on this subject have certainly been that strong, or seemed to have been.) I stick to my original point -- there is (in my mind) AT LEAST as much trash out there in Literature (proportionately) as there is in SF. > >>The usual response to this has been an essentially elitist one: ``if you >>were a literary sophisticate, you wouldn't find it so.'' ... >>believe that there is more good writing in SF than in mainstream are >>simply near-illiterates, as the more strenuous pro-literary voices seem >>to have claimed. > >Then you've had one or more bad experiences with 'English Lit' people >that you shouldn't generalize from. I've known several people, >undergraduates and graduate students alike, who were rabid SF fans >in first-rate English Lit departments (University of Virginia and >University of Iowa at Iowa City, for example). I think this is an >unfair generalization. Maybe so -- it's been nearly ten years since I was an English major, and that didn't last very long. But it has been my experience, and has been an experience shared by many of my acquaintances who have been in the same position. Hard to tell if a generalization is unfair unless you can examine the whole class about which you are generalizing. But my experience is at least partly based on the responses I've had from my near-stepmother, who is busily getting a Ph.D. at Drake, after having been at UI/Iowa City for some time. I don't think I quite follow the point of SF fans at the Lit Departments -- I don't believe that there is some reason English majors can't like SF. I just think that the current ``direction'' of formal academic English and what is being called ``Literature'' is such that, to be respectable within these departments, an SF-fan/Lit Major had better praise the obscurity over _Dahlgren_ over the more clear style and form of something like _Ender's Game_. (Aside: if anyone hasn't read _Ender's Game_ yet, do so immediately. It's bloody wonderful.) >And defending the claim that there's more good >writing in SF by accusing myself and others of character assassination >isn't a fair argument in my book. If you took the phrase about ``near-illiterates'' that way, well, I'm sorry. But that's the way the ``ghetto'' statement read to me, that is even more so the way that ?? Tucker's articles have read to me, and I stand by it. Note that ``near-illiterate'' refers in no way to one's character -- but does seem to me to say clearly in few words the attitude that I felt was being taken. > >Certainly, graduate or undergraduate programs in English encourage >their students to conform in more or less subtle ways; ... >.... And as far as 'accepted interpretations' goes, I >think you're talking about critical consensus regarding quality >judgements in fiction. .... >My feeling is that the 'lit-crit' >consensus is correct in many cases, and just plain wrong in others. And I agree. But *my* feeling is that the consensus is often *compelled* by exactly those forces which encourage conformity. (I hope my elisions haven't resulted in me taking you out of context -- but I was trying to abstract what I think is an essential point.) And I see these ``up out of the gutters! We're here to save you, and lead you to the true light of Good Literature'' sorts of statements as an attempt to get the consideration of SF to get in line. My problem is that I suspect that they're standing in the wrong line, on what I feel are strong philosophical and literary grounds >Guess what? It's no different in any other field of intellectual >endeavor, including the sciences and engineering disciplines. It's just a little harder, because we can't go out and pick up a VTGLM (Vacuum Tube Good Literature Meter) to make our measurments with. But I've proposed a VTGLM of my own (admittedly influenced by reading a number of EngLit people whom I admire, most notably John Gardner): does it encourage the reader to enter into the Dream with the dreamer? By my measurements, more SF and fantasy (and mystery fiction, and thrillers, and 19th century novellists who were writing for a living, like Dickens) get a high rating than what has been offered to me as ``literature.'' Admittedly, the form of ``meter'' I'm suggesting does not really allow us to agree, or even allow me to repeat my own measurements -- but it does allow me to have a reasoned basis for my assertion that the proportion of crap is higher in Literature than in SF. I'll listen to other arguments, and I still try to read outside SF (for example, I'm reading Montaigne now), but I've not yet been offered any other arguments. > >>A postscript: Bill Ingogly has mentioned _Lord_of_Light_ as an example >>of SF that he disliked, especially mentioning the ``he was called >>Mahasamatman, and Binder,... but he preferred to be called just Sam'' ... >>sophistication required to read it, perhaps -- just perhaps -- the >>sophistication that was lacking was not Zelazny's. > >I've already admitted that it's been ten years since I read the book. >I am not an unsophisticated reader, and you know it; just a human >being with a memory that's sometimes defective like everyone else. The >quote, as you and at least one other poster have pointed out, is >little like my recollection of it. If I've unfairly criticized >Zelazny, I apologize. Honest-to-Ghod, I am someday going to get a function key for sarcasm added to this terminal. You are right -- I know perfectly well that you are not an unsophis- ticated reader. Instead, this was an attempt to point out that allowing ``sophistication'' to be a measure of Good Literature can be a two-bladed sword. (By the way -- I never took that as a real quote at all, but as a parody intended to point up what you felt was a bad technique. If you felt I was accusing you of misquoting, I'm sorry -- I was really accusing you of crafty and well-composed exaggeration in order to make a point.) -- Charlie Martin (...mcnc!duke!crm)