(urth) grumble at wolfe comment made attached to guardian article

[Son of Witz]

I'm definitely with Lane on this.
It's the same with musical sub-genres. Just play good music, I don't care how you need to categorize it for the marketplace.
These preceived categories indicate nothing about the intrinsic quality of the work.
I'm reading a James Ellroy "Crime Novel" right now.  Bah!  The thing scorches!

~witz

On Feb 6, 2011, at 6:44 PM, Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com> wrote:

> SF to me has no significant differences from "literary" fiction.  Sure, there are stylistic conventions and structural differences, but those are there in the difference between a frame story and first-person narrative, for example.  Each "genre," so to speak, may contain different story structures, literary techniques, etc.  And plenty of genre fiction is uninteresting schlock... but so is your average perusal of the literary fiction section.  Good writers are good writers are good writers, no matter what they write.
> 
> And I'm reminded of the Wolfe quote that what we call "sf" is what was once called "literature."  For instance, if Homer were to write "The Odyssey" today, it would be called epic quest fantasy.  The same for the Kalevala or the Eddas, which were Tolkien's primary influences.  
> 
> And yeah, it is unjust that sf, for entirely political reasons, gets short shrift from prize committees and critics and other image conscious types.  On the other hand, their approval of what I read was never requested, nor is it important to me, although I will continue to tell anyone who will listen that there are truly wonderful writers working in sf (Wolfe, Le Guin, Bakker, Lynch, etc.).
> 
> LH
> 
> On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 7:04 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> --- On Sun, 2/6/11, Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > From: Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: (urth) grumble at wolfe comment made attached to guardian article
> > To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> > Date: Sunday, February 6, 2011, 4:38 PM
> > Literary fiction is entitled to its
> > pretensions. That is, after all, what distinguishes one made
> > up story from another sufficient to call it "literary."
> >
> >
> 
> I guess.  But then you know there are these grants and stuff, like Vollman getting 50,000 tax free for five years, for, as you said, creating a made up story.  Just reeks of ... injustice?  I don't know.  But those pretentions are so ... repetitive and boring?  The best SF is sometimes pretentious in novel and interesting ways.
> 
> 
> 
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