................................. To leave Commie Hardcore, hyper to http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html .................................
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Reject.html Le Guin on science fiction: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/OnDespisingGenres.html ' (...) the librarians admit that they use personal evaluation of the quality of the book in deciding where to shelve it. Tolkien is famous, so Tolkien gets shelved with Realism. But almost no sf gets deghettoised this way, because few librarians read enough sf or fantasy or know enough about it to pick out the books of "genuine literary value" from the commercial schlock. Commercial schlock is not limited to genre fiction, and so fiction of absolutely no literary merit at all, commercial junk realism, gets shelved with Austen and Bronte and Woolf, while sf and fantasy of real merit and real interest gets treated as junk by definition. No wonder writers like Kurt Vonnegut deny strenuously that their sf is sf � no wonder fantasists try to crawl under the magic realism label. They want respect.' (...) 'Some authors, they say, "transcend genre." They say that about me, and I know they mean well, but I do not understand what they mean. If a book gets called or shelved with "literature" because you think it transcends its genre, the implication is, it�s good because it�s more like realism. So it would be even better, more literary, if it was entirely realistic. Moby Dick, or Frankenstein, or The Time Machine, or The Baron in the Trees, or The Lord of the Rings, or A Hundred Years of Solitude, or The Man in the High Castle, or The Left Hand of Darkness, or The Handmaid�s Tale, or Carmen Dog, or The Dazzle of Day � would these books be better, be a "higher" form of Literature, if all the events were mundane and all the characters were ordinary � if they were classifiable as realistic? Realism is not a standard of excellence in fiction. Realism is not an adequate definition of literature. To use it as such is to misread every kind of fiction except realism. You can�t read Gulliver's Travels the same way as you read War and Peace. That�s obvious to most critics and teachers � yet they try to read Tolkien the same way they read James Michener. No wonder they don�t get it! Realism is a genre, just as fantasy is a genre or romance is a genre.' (...) '(...) I had no intention of living in some fancy literary gated community just to get respect from the ignorant. (...) So, represented by an agent who was willing and able to sell work in any genre, and having some very broadminded editors, I could just sit around in Oregon and write. I had freedom. Why should I give that freedom up? What for? Well, I know what for, every time they give an award to another brand- name novel, or some lady says to me, "Oh, my son just loves your books � of course I don�t read Sci Fi." And she stands there expecting me to say "no of course you don�t, you�re far too mature intelligent discerning and above all, tactful." Then I usually find out she thought I was Madeleine L�Engle, anyhow. And the critics � "if it�s sf it can�t be good, if it�s good it can�t be sf," and so they tell me LHD, The Handmaid�s Tale and The Dazzle of Day aren�t sf. What ignorance.' A recent Le Guin interview: http://www.sfsite.com/03a/ul123.htm Earthsea map, big (700Kb, 3736x823): http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Harcourt/map_lg.jpg Earthsea map, small (38Kb, 700x529): http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Harcourt/map_sm.jpg ---> jab | commie | http://commie.oy.com "Less is moo" -- The Holy Mad Cow ................................. To find out, what address you were using, when joining Commie Hardcore, hyper to http://commie.oy.com/whocommie.html
