Busytown: Holiday reading lust
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Okay, apologies for being late to the party. I felt like standing back during the whole sci-fi debate.
Anyway, David Peace's the Damned United has been the most impressive book I've read in a while. I love the harshness of the process, the way the embittered, circular stream-of-consciousness from "Clough" plays off against the real-time drama. In its own way, it's just as noirish as his justly celebrated Red Riding Quartet- it's just that the violence is self-inflicted and almost entirely psychological. It reminded me of Nick Tosche's novellistic Jerry Lee Lewis bio, Hellfire, in the way its lead character is clearly on a one-man mission to self-destruct, almost out of spite for what he's chosen- in Jerry Lee's case, it's chosing the path of sinful rock'n'roll over god's work, in Clough's case, it's going with the hated Leeds United.@philipmatthews:
The blogger and, more recently, novelist Mark Sarvas says that he has read The Great Gatsby at least 20 times. I've read it maybe three or four times and can imagine another three at least and I know other people who regularly go back to it as well. Why is this? I think the closing paragraphs might be the greatest, and most moving, that I know of. These lines below give me goosebumps every time I read them or think about them and I'm not sure why:
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
There aren't many sentences better than that last one. It's a small book that contains a huge amount and I think that's why we keep going back to it. Somehow there's always more in it. It's the Tardis.
I'm exactly the same with that book- only the last lines of Maurice Gee's Plumb have a similar effect on me- the realisation that our protagonist still, after all that he's lost, has no idea what his stubborness has done to those that loved him the most. It's heartbreaking.
Speaking of Gee, although I haven't read his latest, I thought Blindsight was superb. Possibly the most devestatingly compact novel he's written in a long time, and it just feels like a Wellington novel, much like many of his early novels apparently (according to my mother who lived there during the time) were very much late 50s/early 60s West Auckland.
As for JG Ballard, he's one of my absolute favourites, but his strength is as much his ideas as his (admittedly distinctive) prose. Ballard's greatest strength- his unblinking, relentlessly serious treatment of frequently absurd dystopians, his treatment of surroundings as characters- is sometimes his biggest weakness- dialogue isn't his strongest suit, for instance. I guess the exception to the rule was Empire of the Sun, his most affecting, lyrical novel- which might be because it was heavily autobiographical.
High Rise, The Drowned World and Crash are my favourites though- not just because I read them at just the right time (second year of university)-but because they're perfectly conceived, and utterly brutalist (or feverish, in the case of the Drowned World)
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Ballard, LeGuin, Sturgeon, Bradbury, bits of Zenna Henderson, Jas. Tiptree jnr., Greg Egan, China Mieville, Justina Robson - there are so many (that's an nth of my favourites and I havent even started on the fantasists yet) that to herd them into one group and dismiss them with a distainful - flick! is just silly. And warrants using rude words to people who do the distainful flicking-
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There aren't many sentences better than that last one.
If there are any, they may well be from earlier in the same book. A perhaps impossible task would be to choose the best line from The Great Gatsby.
It's a small book that contains a huge amount and I think that's why we keep going back to it. Somehow there's always more in it. It's the Tardis.
Yeah. I'm with Matthew and Philip on Gatsby. Brilliant book.
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And warrants using rude words to people who do the distainful flicking
I hope you are not referring to me, because I was doing no such thing. I did not devise the canon - it exists because it is widely accepted. Atwood is in it because of her genius, Ballard as well. It is the quality of the writing and the concern for the human condition which matters, not the genre.
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And, whilst we are at it, your justification for being uncivil is lame.
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Your opinion, Paul Litterick and it neither 'suades nor alters my opinion of your ridiculous comments in the least.
'Canon'? Save us! In scifi/scific/fantasy -and all permutations thereof-
the boundaries are almost infinite, but the indicators are clear. Margaret Atwood *does* write scific (as she eventually acknowledged she did) but - because clearly she thinks it is a lesser -*field* shall we say? - she doesnt like her writing to be associated with this pleb kinda stuff.And, I dont choose to continue a discussion with you.
My passion is for speculative works, not litcrit. -
There are canons in all genres, especially Sci-Fi.
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"Canons", Sacha, one en.
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Boom! There it is... Where's that death-star pony?
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Heh. By the way, that's not scifi, just the main defensive system on our anzac frigates. 2400 rounds per minute. Better be one bloody fast pony..
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From a long-ago discussion on a userthread - so it has just as much relevance now as - o, a fart?
"-but canons are made & maintained by gatekeepers.Gatekeepers are generally academics or pursestring-holders or pinched-mouth censors all with viewpoints so narrow they are -at least- legally blind. Readers & fans have the wildly blooming endless prairies/seas/interplanetary multidimensional everness to play in and we can hurl ourselves out there, shining temporal body & osoquesting omnisighted mind."
My copyright.
(Yeah, ok, nearly 20 years ago.)
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Surely canons are made by modern smithies; wordsmithies if you insist :)
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It's a ZOOM Pony, so we sweet.
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It is the quality of the writing and the concern for the human condition which matters, not the genre.
What happened to the "hierarchy of genres"?
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Good writing becomes accepted as part of broad literary culture, regardless of its genre. Wells, Ballard and Wyndham have been recognised as good writers. Others might also be recognised for their literary merit.
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By respected recognisers
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By respected recognisers
Or gatekeepers, if you will.
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But who recognises their respectability?
snap
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If anyone knows a better way of judging merit, they are most welcome to draw a diagram. I am sure there must be gatekeepers in the Sci Fi world, just as there are in any artistic environment. There are prizes, which must have judges. There are magazines, which must have editors. There is a canon of Sci Fi writers: the same names are mentioned often; their qualities and influence are widely discussed. So why should the literary world be any different?
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So why should the literary world be any different?
... than SF, in terms of gatekeeping?
Paul, I don't think that was Islander's argument; the contrast made there isn't between SF and literature, so much as between "recognised serious literature" and "writing that engages and captures readers, regardless of whether it gets endorsed by academics".So, the thing literature (including SF) has that other academic fields don't is: readers (and more specifically: readers for pleasure).
That's even more true today, when you don't have to go through a publisher to reach a large audience, than 20 years ago."Gatekeeping" is pretty much equivalent to "peer review" in any academic field. (An important part of Islander's point, I think, is that gatekeeping in "literature" is almost by definition about dissecting the form of the text as an academic enterprise, or possibly focussing on the text<->author relationship, rather than considering the relationship between text<->reader, or even [and again, this becomes more generally possible in the electronic age] author<->reader.)
(Though I don't mean to imply that editors are unnecessary.)
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(Still trying to formulate things more clearly...)
"literature" (again, including SF) is the name of both an artistic and an academic enterprise, and as a result, the notion of "canon" is also ambiguous:
{works that denizens of literature departments recognise as important}
is not the same subset as
{works that readers relate to}
even if we acknowledge that most lit dept lecturers are also producers of literature, and are reasonably well-read, so that their opinions count for something.Gatekeeping on publication should, ideally, be some reflection of potential reader interest -- but in practice, it is often an indirect and distorted reflection, as publishers and editors try to second-guess the reactions of readers who are not themselves publishers and editors. (Again, not saying this is an unnecessary process, nor that it is doomed to failure in any individual case; but it isn't guaranteed to succeed in producing a "canon" that accurately reflects the effect on a reader, either.)
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Maybe we need a thread entitled 'Sci-Fi is for bunnies' and PL and the Marionettes can go at it unencumbered for days, weeks even. Oh, they are already.
Shit a brick, who bloody cares. How about we carry on reading books, and those who prefer Architecture Porn (which I quite like also, as it happens) go and froth over some Corbusier, and the baiters who seem to enjoy stoking the fire sit on their hands for a bit (me included I suppose).
This has turned one of the loveliest threads into a pee soup, and I'm seriously regretting dragging it back from the bottom of the list. Sorry Jolisa.
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Sci Fi doesn't need corrupt judges and rigged prizers, it has Armageddon.
Imagining a Sci Fi/Fundy Christian cross over. I want to see Bishop Brian lay hands on people like this:
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(Still trying to formulate things more clearly...)
I really do appreciate your efforts, but Paul is now shifting to canonicity a discussion that was always about the trolling. Science fiction people are Emo, sci-fi is to literature as painting kittens is to art... remember? That he claims to be defending Atwood's right to define her own work is also disingenous, for Atwood wasn't saying I don't feel I belong in science-fiction, she said science-fiction is for teh stupid. Paul thinks that too. But please remember to be civil to him whenever he feels like pointing it out.
Can we move on now?
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