(no subject)

[james_davis_nicoll]

[Poll #1730770]

Comments

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Even "I disapprove strongly of Roger Zelazny", a.k.a. "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie"?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Yes, along with my memories of every RZ book except Doorways in the Sand.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Tsk. I don't see how one could forget Lord of Light, if only for the first and last lines.

[refugee50s.livejournal.com]

I have often wondered what it felt like to have that last line come out of his fingers.

Only other last line I wondered that about was from Stand On Zanzibar. (Um, that would be that last line from the story itself, not the "Word From Our Sponsors".)

[death4breakfast.livejournal.com]

Erk...just read that. If she thinks that Zelazny and Leiber are bad, I wonder if she's read any of the last two decades worth of popular Fantasy?

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

She's writing as if the only acceptable form of fantasy is High Fantasy, and we can't -- and shouldn't -- all be Eddison. I would add that many of the great premodern epics have heroic figures, some the actual heroes, who are whiny as hell. Oliver plays the "I TOLD you so" card on Roland repeatedly, which I call damned restrained in the circumstance, the opinion being better conveyed with a Very Large Rock.

[daev.livejournal.com]

Zelazny? No, Katherine Kurtz.

She's saying that the primary way fantasy works is through evocative language. Zelazny's great with that.

If there's a prototypical anti-Elfland it's probably the Unknown genre, named after John Campbell's fantasy magazine where all the magic had to be scientific and the writing had to be plain-spoken.

That Le Guin book, in particular "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," had a huge effect on my thinking about SF/F. I was dirt broke in Glasgow one summer, squatting in an empty dorm room at the university there, worried the authorities were going to check and throw me out. I had exactly one book to read -- The Language of the Night -- and I re-read it over&over and argued with it and fell in love with it. She had finally put a finger on why I was transported by Tolkien and James and Lovecraft (even though she didn't like him), affected in emotional ways I never got from Pratt or Garrett or Anthony. That book turned me from a child to an adult reader, and meant that I'll buy anything Le Guin writes, and wrestle with it until I appreciate her point of view. (This has worked with absolutely everything except Tehanu; I've made four attempts at that one and I still can't see any value in it.)

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

She's hitting Katharine Kurtz hardest, but there are also some sideswipes at Zelazny's abrupt descents from the high voice to the low.

Some of the universal principles she states are simply wrong. There are high heroes who whine (Achilles), who say "I told you so" (Oliver in Song of Roland; Mercutio in R&J); and heroes who are both vulgar and high-toned as appropriate to the situation (Mercutio again, or just about anybody in Shakespeare).