When you mentioned the range of the Newbery winners, my first thought was of the novels I encountered in school which enticed you in with what looked to be a promising story, and then turned out only to be vehicles to teach a moral lesson. Prime example: The Pigman by Paul Zindel. That book probably taught me to distrust literature more than anything else I've read
For what it's worth the Newbery Award uses, wossname, Australian rules voting. Which means that the winners are all about compromise and the 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) "best" book that the committee can agree on.
Yep. And so some surprising results that caused everybody to go "Huh?" I've been told, at least, that this happens more often when there are a couple of extremely hot contenders--ones that everyone either loves or hates passionately, so rate them five and one. The 'three' vote will sometimes edge those two out.
I had the exact same experience with the Newberys and A Wrinkle in Time. Our sixth-grade teacher read the L'Engle to us and showed us the Newbery medal on the cover, and I went and got a whole bunch of Newbery winners out of the library and was desperately disappointed. Later on I saw that many of them were quite good books, but they were just not want I wanted. What I wanted was pretty thin on the ground, too.
Yup! Every so often they'd hit for me--like Alexander's The High King in '69, when I was graduating high school. I felt so vindicated, especially as I was exchanging letters with him by then, about world building and writing. (Geez, I was an arrogant little turd, and he was so kind.)
I, too, loved the overall message of her speech. But I also have some quibbles with it - namely, the contrast between art/capitalism and profit/freedom
( ... )
If it helps at all, the recent interview with Kate Wilhelm (who's a year older than Le Guin) includes that trenchant bit about keeping one's day job. No less influential, I think, if less visibly so at times.
I suppose it helps - except it also doesn't. Many people can hold a job and write, and many do exactly that. But that seems wrong to me somehow.
But worse - not everyone can do that, essentially work two jobs at the same time year after year. And so what falls to the wayside is the writing. And that seems wrong as well.
As I said in another conversation about this same speech: I don't have any answers to the problem. I just see the problem itself.
Great and beautiful works are produced by artisans in many developing countries for a pittance not because they don't care about money but because they can't get it in any other way. So if they can they send their children to school so that the next generation doesn't have to be starving weavers, woodcarvers, painters, bronze-casters or lacquer-workers, but prosperous engineers, lawyers, accountants and doctors instead. Or even slightly more prosperous clerks and secretaries and shop-workers and teachers.
I do not respect contempt for money on the part of the prosperous.
You know, I don't think Le Guin was being contemptuous of the need for money. ("We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds" kind of indicates otherwise.)
I think she was saying that money is not the overarching meaning/purpose/point of art and when it becomes the overarching meaning something dies. Once they talk you into focusing exclusively on "monetizing your talent", it becomes much easier to sell you like a stick of deodorant because even you will start to view yourself that way.
On the other hand, I agree that it's a lot easier to have high sentiments about these things when you've gotten both types of rewards and a lot harder when you've gotten neither.
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Honestly, read the Honor books :-)
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P.
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But worse - not everyone can do that, essentially work two jobs at the same time year after year. And so what falls to the wayside is the writing. And that seems wrong as well.
As I said in another conversation about this same speech: I don't have any answers to the problem. I just see the problem itself.
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I do not respect contempt for money on the part of the prosperous.
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I think she was saying that money is not the overarching meaning/purpose/point of art and when it becomes the overarching meaning something dies. Once they talk you into focusing exclusively on "monetizing your talent", it becomes much easier to sell you like a stick of deodorant because even you will start to view yourself that way.
On the other hand, I agree that it's a lot easier to have high sentiments about these things when you've gotten both types of rewards and a lot harder when you've gotten neither.
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