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From: desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe flames and reviews
Message-ID: <11860@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 14-Feb-86 06:11:09 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.11860
Posted: Fri Feb 14 06:11:09 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Feb-86 05:29:18 EST
References: <1603@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: desj@brahms.UUCP (David desJardins)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 98
Summary: Reply to "you jerks" (we jerks? I jerk?)

In article <1603@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> benn@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (T Cox)
writes [in reply to my reply to a reply to a query about the Book of the
New Sun, in which I criticized the one who replied for insulting those
who didn't consider it the best SF novel ever written (best I can do; if
you missed the original posting just give up...)]:

>Flame on.

>You total bozos.  I really cannot understand such gross stupidity in 
>people who would otherwise strike me as bright:  readers of SF/Fantasy
>stories.  You amaze me.
>	You can swallow spiders on Mars.  You can read the future
>history of the Earth a million hears hence without blinking.  You can
>handle the twisting and writhing of every physical law of the universe.
>And then, then you fall flat on your collective faces when someone uses
>strong rhetoric.  This is too much.

   We are talking about two different things here.  One is suspension of
disbelief when reading fiction.  All of us clearly accept this or we would
not read SF.  But this has nothing to do with the case we are discussing.
The original poster noted that he had not particularly enjoyed the first
two volumes of BONS, and asked what other people saw in it.  The reply
said nothing about what was good about the book, just that everyone should
think that it is the best SF ever written and insulted those who didn't
(clearly including the original poster, since he had already stated that
he didn't particularly appreciate the book).

>	The original poster, whose article has long since vanished 
>from my site, said things like "there never has been, nor ever could
>be, an author as gifted as this one."

The actual quote which you are paraphrasing was:
In article <3840005@csd2.UUCP> krantz@csd2.UUCP (Michaelntz) writes:
"Gene Wolfe is, quite simply, the best novelist ever to write in the
science fiction genre.  His prose, his ideas - all of it.  The 
best.  Hands down."

>                                       Do you think he was serious?
>Of course not!  Great horned toads of Jupiter!  This is called, now
>read slowly here, e x a g g e r a t i o n.  Everyone catch that?
>He was overstating the case for dramatic effect.  Something any
>author can do through the mouth of a character without surprising
>any one of you.  But let someone make a sweeping generalization
>on the net, and everyone jumps down his throat.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

   Your paraphrase is clearly an exaggeration.  The original quote is
not.  It and the rest of the reply can all be taken as meaning exactly
what they say:  heaped praise on BONS and insults for those who do not
appreciate it.  Frankly, I consider it the responsibility of the poster
to tell us if he doesn't mean what he says, or better yet not to post at
all.  If for some reason you are not willing to say what you mean, I think
most people would prefer that you just keep your mouth shut instead of
making a fool of yourself.

>	Now we're going to have a little test here.  I am going to
>write something that will be an exaggeration.  I will do it for
>dramatic effect.  Ready?  Take your time.  Don't get excited; it's
>only exaggeration.  It's just a rhetorical device.  Now brace yourselves.
>
>	Not one of you is worthy of posting to sf-lovers, you
>	narrow-minded, gullible GITS!  How literal-minded and
>	dense can a human being be?!?  You are not worthy of 
>	even READING this newsgroup!  I banish you all forth-
>	with to the purgatory of net.philosophy, net.religion.
>	christian, net.women, and net.cooks!  Begone!
>
>There, that wasn't so bad, was it?  A little warm, but hardly
>threatening to the discriminating reader.  

   The OED defines rhetoric as "The art of using language to persuade or
influence others...."  The above does neither; it only insults.  If you
wrote the above in a context in which it could be taken seriously I *would*
take it seriously, which means that, as its author, I would cease to take
*you* seriously.

>Flame off.  May the elementals of fire be appeased.
   
>Please, fellow readers, next time someone uses strong language
>the way the original poster did, to make an obviously silly 
>sweeping generalization, remember that there are people in
>the world who use that kind of phrasing all the time, in normal
>conversation.  Just because you don't, that doesn't mean others
>cannot.  And if it gets under your skin, that is not the other
>guy's fault.  If the original poster had been a green-tentacled
>alien from, say, Planet 10, you'd not have reacted that way.
>Shame on you all.

   I say what I mean.  Each person has the right, and the responsibility,
to say whatever he wants.  If he chooses to say something other than what
he means, is it our responsibility to decide what he "really" meant?
   And, no matter how the original reply was meant (which I maintain it is
not my responsibility to decipher), my objection remains.  To reply to a
posting which says, "I didn't like X much, but I would like to hear why
other people liked it," with statements insulting those who dislike X
instead of describing what you like about X (as others have done in this
case) is completely unacceptable to me.

   -- David desJardins