Do Critics Still Sneer at SF?
A friend sent me a link to a thread on the Guardian blog kicking off from a post entitled Why Do Critics Still Sneer at SF? I thought about posting, and then thought better of it.
Then the funny thing is I noticed a blink on the Locus web site to an article in the Times Online which gives their 50 greatest British writers since 1945. It struck me as kind of interesting cause you have a handful of poets:
1. Philip Larkin
4. Ted Hughes
23. Penelope Fitzgerald
31. Derek Walcott
36. Geoffrey Hill
39. George Mackay Brown
47. Alice Oswald
48. Benjamin Zephaniah
You also have a couple of non-fiction writers:
40. A. J. P. Taylor
41. Isaiah Berlin
You have a grand total of ten writers who have worked solely within the idiom of contemporary (or near contemporary) realism:
7. V. S. Naipaul
12. Iris Murdoch
20. Anthony Powell
21. Alan Sillitoe
25. Barbara Pym
30. John Fowles
33. Anita Brookner
37. Hanif Kureishi
45. Colin Thubron
46. Bruce Chatwin
You have two writers who've worked in the populist genre of the spy novel:
14. Ian Fleming
22. John Le Carré
Of the rest, well, we'll separate out the writers who've played around with historical and prehistorical fiction, because while these could be seen as artificially constructed elsewhens, comparable to those of Fantasy or Alternative History they're more exotic than fantastic, strictly speaking, and we wouldn't want to push a point:
3. William Golding
26. Beryl Bainbridge
49. Rosemary Sutcliff
Then, however, you have a whole bunch of fiction writers, the majority of whom have, at some point in their career, written works which I think it's entirely fair to describe as strange fiction. Some writers have done that sort of slipstreamy blend of naturalism and the unreal, some have only had one or two works utilising a speculative conceit of some description, and some are best described as magical realists. But more than a few have written straight-up SF, Fantasy or Horror:
2. George Orwell
5. Doris Lessing
6. J. R. R. Tolkien
8. Muriel Spark
9. Kingsley Amis
10. Angela Carter
11. C. S. Lewis
13. Salman Rushdie
15. Jan Morris
16. Roald Dahl
17. Anthony Burgess
18. Mervyn Peake
19. Martin Amis
24. Philippa Pearce
27. J. G. Ballard
28. Alan Garner
29. Alasdair Gray
32. Kazuo Ishiguro
34. A. S. Byatt
35. Ian McEwan
38. Iain Banks
42. J. K. Rowling
43. Philip Pullman
44. Julian Barnes
50. Michael Moorcock
By my count that's twenty-five of the Times Online's fifty greatest British writers since 1945. Which is to say fifty percent. As opposed to ten dyed-in-the-wool realists. Which is to say twenty percent.
So, yeah, that damned mainstream with its literary establishment, always pissing on our genre cause they're, like, mundanes and boring and banal, and they can't deal with anything that's too weird, like SF or Fantasy, so all they'll ever take seriously is that dreary, dull, depressing realism stuff, which gets all the awards and the kudos and respect and the best toys in the sandpit. Or whatever.
Hmmmm.
Just... hmmmm.
posted by Hal Duncan | 8:49 am
8 Comments:
Wow, Alan Garner is on that list? I know that I loved his novels when I was younger, even though I didn't get most of it (which is probably one of the reasons why "The Moon of Gomrath" scared the shit out of me). Now I'll have to check out some of his stuff again, if I can find the books ...
To me, it feels like most critics are actually over the sneering (probably because a lot of them really love Tolkien, or Rowling, or Pullman, or Moorcock, or Garner themselves). However, a lot of readers are not. Most of my friends simply can't imagine to take up a fantasy novel (besides Harry Potter) and find anything of interest in there.
By the way, what kind of straight-up SF, fantasy or horror has Ian McEwan been found guilty of?
Jakob
Jakob: From what I understand, McEwan's THE CHILD IN TIME has the protagonist going back in time at one point in the narrative and watching his parents have a drink in a pub. His mother later confirms that what he saw actually took place, indicating that it's all meant to be read as bona fide time travel rather than, say, hallucination.
Thanks! Interesting ... I've been trying to get into McEwan, but I never managed to. Maybe I'll try CHILD IN TIME. It might be easier for me If I can tell myself that it's SF (Which probably says more about some of my preconceptions about "mainstream literature" than I'd like to admit ...).
As a bookseller I've found the general public very rarely listens to the critics.
The best selling genres are:
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Romance
Mystery
In that order.
I read, and deeply enjoy, a broad range and genres but have found there are usually only a wonderful few I can recommend my favorite authors to. Authors such as:
Hal Duncan (sorry, man, but the average Joe Blow brain-candy imbiber would be either frightened by or totally lost by your books. I'm a discerning book pusher so the people whom I do recommend your books to ALWAYS come back asking for another recommendation)
Mark Z. Danielewki
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Elizabeth Kostova
Gordon Dahlquist
Thomas Pynchon
The list goes on with the same common theme: If there is too much meat or deliciously dark weirdness the average reader will turn away with a shudder.
I'm not pointing this out as a snide commentary on the average reader. The truth is most people who come into a Waldenbooks live very hectic lives and are often a bit (or a lot) overwhelmed. They are looking for nothing more or less than a well deserved and much needed vacation from the brain strain.
The literary establishment would do well to talk to an actual book-buying human. They would learn most people get enough of the "dreary, dull, depressing realism stuff" in their everyday life and every time they turn on the news.
They also might learn it's not their snub-nosed elitist opinions which sell books; it's the needs and desires of the populous which get the credit cards swiped and the checks written.
But mind, my observations and opinions may be naught but crap because I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books. *big grin*
I hit sir, a palpable hit. Nice one Hal.
Ah, you forget Fleming also wrote a children's fantasy, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!
McEwan also has the short story Solid Geometry, which has to count as fantasy or science fiction or something
Jakob,
try "The Cement Garden". Great and awful.
All,
As concerns the sneering, most of my non-weird-fiction-addicted friends seem to draw a clear line between "good" or "literary" fantasy (for some reason I don´t entirely get, Tolkien is mentioned as a forerunner in this category, probably because he was, like, a professor and knew a lot about old languages and smoked a pipe and...) and "pulp" or "cheap" fantasy on the other hand. Anything that is exciting and fun and clearly tries to be so (with cool aliens and spaceships and nekkid barbarians with big penis replacements) is "bad", while everything that "just uses fanatsy as a disguise" to be, oh, educational and , bleargh, make you think, is "good". I should maybe hit some of my friends over the head. With a stick or other big penis replacement.
- Jasper
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