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From: mr@hou2h.UUCP (M.RINDSBERG)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Excerpt: "A Little Leaven", by Isaac Asimov, in F&SF
Message-ID: <1086@hou2h.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 11-Oct-85 10:43:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: hou2h.1086
Posted: Fri Oct 11 10:43:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 18:33:37 EDT
References: <1181@druri.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 53

> > EXCERPT FROM: "A Little Leaven", by Isaac Asimov
> > THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 36th Anniversary Issue - OCT '85
> > My beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter, Robyn, who is now on
> > ...... much stuff .......
> > discovery of yeast and enzymes.]
> > 
> Well, where should one start? With the simple truth that the great Dr. A
> doesn't know jack about commas, and uses them in the wrong place at the wrong

For one thing, people keep buying and enjoying his books.

> time? Or with his smug, egocentric male chauvinism toward his daughter, her
> "lovely co-worker", and his wife, whom he refuses to name? How about some-
> thing more substantive - like why in the hell is this vignette included in a
> science history article about the discovery of yeast? What does his con-
> descension toward his beautiful daughter and his resultant foul aspersions
> on her parentage have anything whatsoever to do with anything that any human
> being besides an Asimov worshipper would want to know? I mean, "unmistakeable
> Asimovian features" my left hand of darkness! Does anyone you know talk about
> his daughters "Jacksonian features" or "Alberryesque features" or "Rospachian
> features"? How many people do you know who would refer to their daughters in
> print as "gorgeous women"? How many writers have you ever read that would 
> say "she was asked to play the role, at sight, in her grammar school...",
> and totally forget that there is no such construct as "at sight" (it is
> correctly "at first sight")? 
> 
> More questions - how does even the demigod of science fiction, the master of
> prolix spew, get away without having this kind of ridiculous, embarrasing
> drivel of a father slobbering over the fact that he actually raised a daughter
> that ended up looking good and going into some sort of social worker program
> (that he not-so-subtly hints at being amusingly disapproving of) edited out
> of his otherwise good and informative article? Why does he think that anyone
> in his right mind or even his left mind would find what he has to say about
> his daughter, her adorable liberal tendencies and her Aryan makeup, in any
> way germane to his article about yeast, or even to the more global, meta-
> fictional point of essay-writing? 
> 
> I just don't get it. Could somebody clue me in?
> Davis Tucker

What Asimov trys to do when he writes these seemingly inane pagagraphs is to
get the reader involved with himself and his thinking on a personal basis
thereby enabling the reader to be more comfortable while reading the text
of the actual tale to follow.

Usually he tries to lead up to how, and under what circumstances, the text was
written.

I happen to enjoy the bits and pieces of real life that he usually places
between stories in an anthology and read them just as avidly as the stories
themselves.
						Mark
						..!hou2h!mr