Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!columbia!topaz!kanders From: kanders@lll-tis-a Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: anti-art snobbery -- a clarification Message-ID: <3618@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Wed, 11-Sep-85 20:26:29 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.3618 Posted: Wed Sep 11 20:26:29 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 14-Sep-85 05:55:02 EDT Sender: daemon@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 43 From: kanders@lll-tis-a (Kevin Anderson) Okay, okay, I'll come out of the woodwork one final time. I did the original posting about Anti-Art Snobs, which Jerry Boyajian alone of all the net seems to have taken as a personal attack on his own reading tastes. Please listen again to what I was trying to say. SURELY everyone has met people who take pleasure in disliking "artsy fartsy" writing/painting/music, simply because it IS art? SURELY you have seen people who actually take pride in the fact that they don't understand 'works of literature?' I know so many of them they must be fairly common critters. Many times I have met people who scorn taking English courses in college because they make you read "literature" -- they thumb their noses at "literature" because 'we all know nobody but English teachers like that stuff!' There IS a snobbery *against* artis- tic work as much as there is snobbery on the part of art-types. I was perceiving undertones in the net discussion of DHALGREN that some people disliked it *because* it was artsy, and once they had come to that decision, they gave up reading the book without further effort. They loudly flamed against the book (not necessarily you, Jerry Boyajian -- my posting was neither aimed directly at you as a person or DHALGREN as a book), and seemed to be implying that nobody should bother to read it because it was just artsy drivel. There are some books which can give en- joyment without requiring any ef- fort on the reader's part, such as pure action/adventure SF and other subgenres, but there are other books which do require reader participa- tion, and one should not simply dismiss such a book as "oh well, that's just arsty crap anyway!" . I'm not saying that everyone must like DHALGREN or *any* book; I'm saying that to dismiss such a book because it is "art- sy" is not being fair. I'm rather surprised and disappointed at the vehement reaction to what I had considered to be a fairly innocuous posting. Kevin J. Anderson