It's not journalism, it's an opinion piece. The only thing that bugs me about the piece is that Ms. Lutgendorff does not compare the books on the list from a given author, with the other books that that author will have written over the course of their lives.
For example, Magician (to paraphrase Ms. Lutgendorff) has few female protagonists, and indeed most of the female characters *react* to their environment or *act in accordance with the traditional medieval rôles* that high fantasy uses as the framework under which it is written. It isn't until Mara and Miranda show up that you start getting strong female protagonists, who, through their own agency, rebel against their rôles and work to drive their own outcomes rather than simply exist within the background framework. To get back on my point, because there are no comparisons, the reader of the article is left with the idea that "I won't like [Magician], therefor I won't like [anything by REF]. So, the article is very broad but has no depth, and as such should be viewed as simply her opinion. And the moment you start saying things like 'buzzword-laden crap', you've fallen into the trap of "my opinion is worth more than her opinion", which -- since she was paid to express her opinion -- is probably false. As a mental what-if, I sometimes wonder what people would have said, if Martin Longbow had been female. Probably would have had the same kind of uproar that happened when Ray admitted that Kulgan and Meecham were partners. rip On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 1:33 PM, Nick Andrews <[email protected]> wrote: > Sorry but this article is the kind of buzzword-laden crap that has ruined > what used to be called journalism. And why choose this list of books to > read? NPR is hardly what could be called expert on anything anyway. Was > the ' author ' just ranting against NPR? If she wants a book with a female > protagonist then go find one and read that. Or write one yourself. Most > of these books were written by males for what used to be an almost > exclusively male market. Now, times have changed and so has the > material. But in the end it doesn't matter if the hero is male or > female, white or black. It only matters that they get the job done, > whether they survive the epic battle or not. This reminds me of those AP > English teachers in high school trying to read way too much into novels > where the authors were long dead, as if they had some secret knowledge of > the author's intent. In the end, it's just a story... Enjoy it. > On Aug 15, 2015 11:48 AM, "Richard Williamson" <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Including some (true*) comments about Magician: >> >> >> http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/08/i-read-100-best-fantasy-and-sci-fi-novels-and-they-were-shockingly-offensive >> >> On the one hand, it was written 35 years ago, and it was pretty much par >> for the course. >> >> On the other hand, you kind of want to tell the author of the article to >> go read the Mara books, and ask for her opinion on the Mara character. >> >> But, yeah. I'm pretty much in agreement with the author's comments. >> I've read a couple of them for nostalgia reasons, but hey -- some of these >> are only suitable for lit-crit courses in university. >> >> rip >> * see REF's comments on opinions. this post is rife with my opinion. >> >
