LOLiterati

[bellatrys]

So randwolf mentioned & recced the current issue of Ansible, and I went to see what was going on there, and in the midst of its sober and ponderous commentary (it's not that it's easier to type with a straight face, it's just that on the internet, nobody can tell if you're sporfling) I hit a reference to, and parody inspired by, a piece on SF over at Slate

Comments

It's like there's some sort of compulsion to puff themselves up

[bellatrys]

by picking on SF - they get "Jock Cred" that way, I guess, in the grown-up, post-college version of the jocks vs. the chess club...or the Heathers, establishing their alpha-dominance amongst themselves by mocking the unfashionable.

Since trying to carefully show them how they're being inconsistent (I saw in a recent discussion of some lit crit snobbing again about LOTR, the poster saying that they need to come up with a new rule that will solve all their problems of having to explain why book X is bad despite fitting all their former standards for Great Writing: No book that has Elves can be good, QED) or finding lots of examples of SFF that fit their criterion (doing their homework for them) has obviously not worked these many years, it's time to stop taking them seriously and just snark 'em into submission!

Good woman yourself, Ursula

[deiseach]

And it does no harm at all that it reminds me of Ray Bradbury's "The Emissary".

I had no idea genre fiction was lying in a shallow grave with its head stove in, and I suspect neither did all the writers of detective/crime/horror/fantasy/science fiction/speculative fiction did, either.

Poor Michael Chabon - I bet he feels "with friends like these, who needs enemies?"

[fledgist]

I've never understood the literary types' objections to science fiction and fantasy. There's more than just snobbery going on.

I wonder if part of it isn't the same as Hendrix' hostility

[bellatrys]

only higher up in the Literary Food Chain: how DARE these upstart yokels show up and outsell us! How DARE they say that the commoners can decide what's good or bad art for themselves, without our permission, without Cardinal Bloom's imprimatur? and how dare they indeed, suggest that maybe our stuff doesn't sell as well because it's lacking in the Storytelling quality, no matter our honing of ironic tropes and obscurantist self-referry? Pah! It MUST be no good, being produced by ink-stained pulpy wretches!

...Only, of course, "We called Dibs! You're taking OUR marketshare!" isn't something THEY can come out and say, either.

Re: I wonder if part of it isn't the same as Hendrix' hostility

[fledgist]

And yet good writing is good writing, whether by Le Guin or Naipaul.

Wull, yah

[bellatrys]

but you don't admit your *rivals* are doing just as good work as you, how does that help you get ahead? --Though it's even more weird than that, because it's the whole *secondary* literature thing, these people are (for the most part) not writing original fiction themselves, they make their money *critiquing* other people's writing and telling readers what to buy or not to buy. They're restaurant reviewers, not chefs. So there's got to be a simultaneous element of "We The Elite" going on, as well as "Hey! You're cutting into our profits!" because otherwise (in Libertarianland where everyone makes decisions based on Sound Economic Principles, aka Schlarafenland) they'd just set up shop reviewing and reccing SF and Horror and all, and do it (in their opinion) better and more skilfully with all their highly-trained critical vocabulary. I mean, there are plenty of websites that get a lot of traffic because what they do is review pop culture of all kinds and places - this is something useful to a whole lot more people than the NYRB, around