(urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

[Antonin Scriabin]

"In other words, I think generic categories are necessary and useful. But
they're necessary and useful as *jumping off points*, not as conclusions
about a piece of work."

I second this, Craig.  I have gotten embroiled in many genre spats over
time, and bringing up writers like Wolfe, Lafferty, and Pynchon (three of
my favorites) always ends up showing you how thin the genre lines are.
Genre distinctions are useful, for example, when it comes to shelving books
in a bookstore, or recommending something to a friend ("if you like X
books, try Y or Z!"), or tracking down the history of a fictional idea.  As
a way of classifying, hard and fast, however, it isn't as useful.  Like
most things, if you analyze a book and its supposed genre long enough, you
see the walls break down.  The book itself is never going to be "contained"
by genre terms; genre terms are simply broad generalizations that have been
extracted from specific and infinitely variable instances of fiction to
suit some convenience (shelving, etc.).

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:32 AM, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Yeah, I think that's fair to say. Tolkien does get called "high" fantasy
> and s&s is a term more often associated with the pulps.
>
> Like all these terms, though, they really only work as reliable categories
> in the abstract or with very early examples. But I think where they are
> useful is in looking at how people (like Wolfe) challenge them. You say,
> for example, that Wolfe is in between them, and I think he is, too. But
> it's important to say how/why: his surface can often look like s&s (a
> gothic dude with a big sword wandering the countryside) but it serves the
> purposes of "high" fantasy (he's on a quest to save the earth, he
> encounters allegorical figures, etc.). And what that looks like in the end
> when you discover that "fantasy" is a thin veil over a "sf" story that's
> might also be a veil over a religious story/allegory/"fantasy"/gospel (?),
> then you're in another realm altogether. But you get there by moving
> through the genres and playing them off against each other.
>
> And it works with other people, too: is George R.R. Martin and those like
> him (Steve Erikson, Glen Cook, Joe Abercrombie, etc.) "high" or "low"?
> They're not just s&s because their doing a more "cinema verite" thing, and
> the scale of their world-creation often reaches for the "Tolkienesque." But
> the thematic approach takes the violent world of s&s and places it in the
> realm of politics and even religion/philosophy. These are worlds where
> politics is "real politik" and where no one, not even the supposedly
> "idealistic" characters, are really any better than Conan. There are no
> Gandalfs or figures of Good and Evil in the sky to provide the world a
> compass. So you get what often looks like the surface of high fantasy (huge
> empires with long histories and complicated mythologies), but the ultimate
> impact is like taking Conan seriously as a nihilistic philosopher. :)
>
> In other words, I think generic categories are necessary and useful. But
> they're necessary and useful as *jumping off points*, not as conclusions
> about a piece of work.
>
>   ------------------------------
> *From:* Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com>
> *To:* Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>; The Urth Mailing List <
> urth at lists.urth.net>
> *Sent:* Friday, December 16, 2011 9:03 AM
> *Subject:* Re: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?
>
> Good points again, Craig.  But I wonder if Tolkien is to some degree High
> Brow Sword & Sorcery, and Conan and the like are Low Brow Heroic Fantasy?
>  Wolfe, would again perhaps fall between these.
>
> -DOJP
>
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Lee wrote:
> >Great observation and recognition Antonio. Perhaps I am not alone in
> having assumed that LotR was
> >more of a prototype or archetype of S & S while Conan is more of a cheap
> comic book derivative.
> >A cultural bias? Conan (like Tarzan) is a European character created by
> an American, while LotR seems
> >somehow more authentic and refined- high brow British characters created
> by an Englishman.
>
> To me, the generic markers of "s&s" vs. "Tolkienesque" usually break down
> like this:
>
> s&s - adventure tales where action and "marvels" are what drives the
> story. (The magazine _The Black Gate_ is trying to revive this right now.)
> Tolkienesque - fantasy that tries to inspire a sense of scope and
> "history" and is infused with moralisms ("good vs. evil," maturation and
> "coming of age" stories, religious/mythic allegory, etc.)
>
> Some people certainly try to imply markers of quality in the definitions,
> but I've heard both terms used as praise and derision. I don't think it's
> integral to the terms.
>
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