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!ZEVE From: ZEVE@RED.RUTGERS.EDU Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Critics and how DID we form our dislikes for them? Message-ID: <3630@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Thu, 12-Sep-85 03:49:01 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.3630 Posted: Thu Sep 12 03:49:01 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 14-Sep-85 06:13:40 EDT Sender: daemon@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 91 From: Steven J. Zeve Although I have no great love for the majority of critics, who to me seem to be critics mostly because they are incapable of doing anything more creative than downgrading other peoples work. I am somewhat disturbed by the virulence I see in the "anti-critic" side of this debate. I wonder where people picked up such hardened and harsh points of view (I'll come back to this later). I suppose I should be as disturbed by the harshness of some the "pro-critic" debaters also, but I have come to expect it of that side of the argument. I have met far too many supposedly educated, liberal people who were totally incapable of admitting that there might be any viewpoint but their own. My experience has been that these people argue like Mr Tucker. It is arguments like his that provoke my own dislike of "Art" and those who espouse it; in politics it is people who argue the way he does that push me away from the "liberal" side of issues and towards the conservative side. As the old line goes, "I may not know Art, but I know what I like"; and I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone else deny me the right to make my own choices. Even when my preferences changes from year to year and even day to day. I would rather be an ignorant barbarian (but not a philistene since I am of the wrong religion for it) than one of the elite who deny others the right to an opinion. I don't know about anyone else, but for me one of the great turn-offs on "Art" and "Literature" was the English classes at all levels that made reading and writing into chores. It seemed as if their intent was to deny me the right to have a personal interpretation of a work different from the teacher's approved interpretation. Poetry wasn't read for the sake of poetry, but instead to determine the meter, count the alliterations, pull it apart and label the onomatopaeia (sp?). I had one teacher that had us searching in Hamlet to find all the "famous" quotes (there are a surprising number of them by the way), and she gave out work sheets with busy work of finding particular lines in the play, no particular reason for the lines, just busy work so she could give us grades. I think if she had had her way, we would simply have wandered back and forth in the text without ever seeing a performance of Hamlet (and let's face it Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed not to be read out of a book), fortunately she had been ill for quite a stretch and another teacher standing in for her took us to see a video-tape of a very good production of Hamlet and worked us most of the way through Hamlet AS A PLAY so that we did get some appreciation for the skill and beauty that went into Shakespeare's works. Hmm, that last paragraph went on a bit didn't it? Well, at any rate these experiences in high school and junior high pretty much soured me on "Art" and "Literature". It's taken years to recover from the damage done by some of those "teachers"; I must also admit that being one of the social outcasts of the school system peer groups tended to harden my attitudes a lot by driving me deeply into escapist literature. I wonder how many of the other "anti-critic" faction have suffered from similar ways of being force fed culture, art, and literature in the wrong way or at the wrong time. Or in other ways denied the right to have their own opinions and interpretations. Each work speaks to each of us in a different way, depending on the other things we have seen and done in our lives. To deny someone the validity of their vision, or belief simply because it is not the same as yours is, in some ways, to deny that person's very humanity; the very same spark of humanity you claim to be promoting by trying to forcefeed your opinions on "Art" and "Literature". I read SF primarily to be entertained; I always have. I don't want to have to work too hard at it; I have to read too many computer manuals and other technical things at work and for school. But I must admit, it is nice to know that there is a Gene Wolfe out there in the field (even if I don't understand everything in the Book of the New Sun), and a Harlan Ellison, and others writing something besides the purely entertainment things. And maybe I'll understand all of it one day, but I don't see why it HAS to be TODAY that I understand it all, or even tomorrow; there are so many things out there waiting to be seen and understood that if I rush out and throw myself into all of them I might easily overload and not enjoy any of them because I am woking so hard at it. After all of this, I also want to say that it is nice to be able to pick a critical analysis written by someone that doesn't have an axe to grind; or at least tells you in advance that they are grinding an axe instead of being reasonably objective. It can really provide new light on a work when you are able to find out how someone else interpreted it, when you are really getting criticism of the work itself instead of watching the work be used as a soapbox by the critic to present a lecture on some favored topic of its. Hmm, my watch says it's way past my bdetime, so I think I will just send this semi-coherent ramble and toddle off to sleep ... Happy Flaming, Steve Z. -------