Elitism gives itself a bad name when it tries to dismiss entire categories of cultural artefact.
Yes, but those "entire categories of cultural artefact" -- in this instance, genres -- have to (a) aspire to the elite and (b) at the very least not be resistant to the aspiration. I think skiffy at the moment is, by and large and outside the small presses, being hugely resistant to the kind of experiment that's a necessary part of the aspiration: there are plenty of skiffy novels around that I'd regard as good, solid examples of the genre, but damn' few that show much promise to blast my socks off. And, when something radical comes along (immediately my head empties of examples!) it's as if the "professionals" within the genre shrivel up like a snail on contact with salt. This may be an American thing: I was about to say that a reviewer like yourself, who casts the net wide, would be a bit of an exception and then I realized that, of course, in the UK there are plenty of eclectic reviewers. Here there are far fewer, I think, so that someone like Jeff VanderMeer is especially valuable.
Did you see the brouhaha that came about when Adam Roberts took the Hugo shortlists to task for being -- as he saw them -- mediocre?
Yes. I both tended to agree with him and didn't, on first reading his piece, think he was saying anything very controversial or, to be blunt, new: it's a criticism that's been leveled at many Hugo lists over the past couple of decades at least. So I was startled by the subsequent furore!
Usually, even in years when the Hugo shortlists are a bit drab (as no one sensible could doubt they sometimes are), they're compensated for by the World Fantasy Awards, which almost always have a pleasing independence -- even an idiosyncracy. It's very depressing that this year's WFA list, despite one or two shafts of sunlight (Kathy Sedia's antho Paper Cities is a noteworthy example), is so grey and same-old same-old. I'd been vaguely thinking of trying to make it to WFC, even though it's on the far side of the continent, but when I saw the WFA list my heart just plummeted and I abandoned the notion; if that's the best a supposedly innovative genre can muster up for the year, who can be bothered with it? Such a pity. Let's hope next year's judges are a bit more imaginative.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-08-15 01:42 pm (UTC)Elitism gives itself a bad name when it tries to dismiss entire categories of cultural artefact.
Yes, but those "entire categories of cultural artefact" -- in this instance, genres -- have to (a) aspire to the elite and (b) at the very least not be resistant to the aspiration. I think skiffy at the moment is, by and large and outside the small presses, being hugely resistant to the kind of experiment that's a necessary part of the aspiration: there are plenty of skiffy novels around that I'd regard as good, solid examples of the genre, but damn' few that show much promise to blast my socks off. And, when something radical comes along (immediately my head empties of examples!) it's as if the "professionals" within the genre shrivel up like a snail on contact with salt. This may be an American thing: I was about to say that a reviewer like yourself, who casts the net wide, would be a bit of an exception and then I realized that, of course, in the UK there are plenty of eclectic reviewers. Here there are far fewer, I think, so that someone like Jeff VanderMeer is especially valuable.
Did you see the brouhaha that came about when Adam Roberts took the Hugo shortlists to task for being -- as he saw them -- mediocre?
Yes. I both tended to agree with him and didn't, on first reading his piece, think he was saying anything very controversial or, to be blunt, new: it's a criticism that's been leveled at many Hugo lists over the past couple of decades at least. So I was startled by the subsequent furore!
Usually, even in years when the Hugo shortlists are a bit drab (as no one sensible could doubt they sometimes are), they're compensated for by the World Fantasy Awards, which almost always have a pleasing independence -- even an idiosyncracy. It's very depressing that this year's WFA list, despite one or two shafts of sunlight (Kathy Sedia's antho Paper Cities is a noteworthy example), is so grey and same-old same-old. I'd been vaguely thinking of trying to make it to WFC, even though it's on the far side of the continent, but when I saw the WFA list my heart just plummeted and I abandoned the notion; if that's the best a supposedly innovative genre can muster up for the year, who can be bothered with it? Such a pity. Let's hope next year's judges are a bit more imaginative.
[/curmudgeonly]