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From: BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: SF-LOVERS Digest   V10 #377
Message-ID: <3772@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Tue, 24-Sep-85 12:45:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3772
Posted: Tue Sep 24 12:45:38 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Sep-85 06:33:53 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: Bard Bloom <BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA>


>  Good writing can be about anything; great writing could
> probably be about nothing - not that this is necessarily admirable
> or desirable. Hoary plot devices must be discarded, wherever they
> occur.  

These seem inconsistent.  Unless predicate calculus doesn't apply to
criticism, (Good writing can be about anything) ==> (good writing can use a
hoary plot device.)  Kind of like _Paradise_Lost_ and the writings of James
Branch Cabell and lots of others.  Perhaps Tucker meant, ``Hoary plot
devices should be used with caution.''

>  Real people don't expostulate for pages, like
> Jubal Harshaw or Lazarus Long
 
or Davis Tucker?  

I know several people who do expostulate for hours, and sound very much like
Lazarus Long (except less competant).  

>  As a concrete suggestion, I think more works
> by South American surrealist authors, of whom there are many, should
> be published in science fiction magazines and by science fiction
> publishing houses - and don't condemn it as boring literature, or
> highbrow, because much of it is exuberant, interesting, and
> well-written.  

I only know of Borges, and would very much like names of others.
Especially if their works are available in translation.

Pax VAXque vobiscum,

Bard
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