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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!decwrl!chabot@miles.DEC (All God's chillun got guns)
From: chabot@miles.DEC (All God's chillun got guns)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: re: anti-Art Snobbery
Message-ID: <359@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 6-Sep-85 12:22:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.359
Posted: Fri Sep  6 12:22:14 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Sep-85 06:42:52 EDT
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> I mentioned that the authors who've won the most combined Hugo and
> Nebula awards were Harlan Ellison, Ursula LeGuin, Poul Anderson,
> and Fritz Leiber. Now, without having exact numbers at my fingertips,
> I'd guess that the division between Hugos and Nebulas was about even.
> that means that the writers choosing for "best literature" and the
> fans choosing for "favorite" tend to have fairly similar tastes.
> 	It might also be said to point out that fans can choose the
> more literary authors (Ellison, LeGuin) just as easily as the writers
> can and that the writers can choose the less literary authors (Leiber,
> Anderson) just as easily as the fans.

Ahem, er, well, not to really disagree with you, Jerry, but I actually find
Leiber to be enjoyable on many depths, and since I got older and more
sophisticated than I used to be (maybe)(well, it *was* an improvement for *me*
:0) ), I began to enjoy more Leiber stories because of his literary qualities. 
But this is _just_ my humble opinion, and frankly, I can't come up with which
Leiber book won both the Hugo and the Nebula, and it might well have been one
with not much literary depth.  I'm not flaming.


> 	But this brings up the point of whether anyone has the "right"
> to call *anything* a piece of hack work. Can you truly say that Piers
> Anthony puts less love and effort into writing any of his books than
> Delany does into his? If so, why? Because he publishes six times as many
> books per year?

Which reminds me of some recent discussions in net.startrek about whether 
anybody who abases themself enough to write a startrek novel could really
have any talent.  Lots of flaming, talent-assassination of Vonda McIntyre,
pooh-poohing of Clarion, lists of talented and publishing authors.  I bring it
up because "hack" got bandied about in that discussion also.

On a lighter side about "hack", from "TURBOTOME" by Polly Frost in a recent 
_New_Yorker_ (used without permission):

   " Congratulations on purchasing TURBOTOME--a software program designed 
   especially for the Professional Writer (YOU)!  TURBOTOME enables to bypass
   the rough draft, the first and second drafts, the galleys--even the test
   of time!--and lets you get on with the business of writing."

L S Chabot   ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot