(urth) grumble at wolfe comment made attached to guardianarticle

[Daniel Petersen]

Can't resist chiming in with the chorus - crap writing is crap writing and
good writing is good writing and genres have zero to do with this.  Similar
to what some others are saying here, Gene Wolfe has nearly ruined a lot of
perfectly decent fiction for me as most things pale and lose their lustre in
comparison to his best stuff.  To my mind his greatest works artistically
sits side by side with more accepted classics of modern fiction that I
respect and admire - say, Lord of the Flies, Old Man and the Sea, The Pearl,
Cormac McCarthy's novels, Flannery O'Connor's short stories, etc.  I totally
understand that people don't like certain subject matter and themes (e.g. I
despise Jane Austen's material), but it's still possible to recognise the
genuine excellence or genius of a writer whilst just not being the least bit
interested in their work (indeed, a lot of Shakespeare is like that for me).
 That's the artistically reasonable courtesy I wish people would extend to
excellent writers like Wolfe and Le Guin and others who just happen to
largely write material that usually more or less fits into the f./s.f. genre
(though so many also partake of other genres and more 'mainstream' themes
simultaneously).  If your skin crawls at fantastic, speculative themes, so
be it.  But if one is going to claim to be any kind of judge of literary
merit, then one must look past such personal preferences when considering
whether a writer is a good craftsman.

One more flourish to crown this rant:  I myself have written (lyrics) for a
few decades and aspire to write fiction and other prose, and I study English
Literature and the art of writing, and I am simply a devoted lover of
exquisite CRAFT when it comes to prose style, the talent and skill to simply
write the pants off nearly everyone else sentence by sentence and paragraph
by paragraph with the unfaltering brilliance of one's prose.  And I hereby
tender my considered testimony as an artist and student of writing that GENE
WOLFE IS IN A VERY SMALL LEAGUE OF ALMOST MIRACULOUSLY GOOD WRITERS OF
INIMITABLE PROSE.  Open just about any book by him to just about any page
and read for no more than a page or so and one finds his writing sincerely a
literary *meal* for the literarily hungry.  Do I rhapsodise and hyperbolise?
 Perhaps some.  But not too much, I think.

DOJP
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