Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!Pavel.pa From: Pavel.pa@Xerox.ARPA Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" Message-ID: <3346@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Mon, 19-Aug-85 15:32:17 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.3346 Posted: Mon Aug 19 15:32:17 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 22:31:57 EDT Sender: daemon@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 44 From: Pavel.pa@Xerox.ARPA Charley Wingate writes: I happen to own _Language of the Night_ by LeGuin, ... First, we have "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie", in which she takes apart (as it happens) K. Kurtz (who seems to have learned from the article). I had the good fortune to talk to Katherine Kurtz about this very article at Westercon in Sacramento last month. I was interested in whether or not she had been affected by the article and, in particular, whether it was responsible for what I perceived as a long gap between books (i.e., had the article soured Katherine on writing in any way). She made some interesting comments on the subject. First, she assured me that she had in no way been discouraged by the article; the gaps between her books all stem from the fact that she's just a relatively slow writer. Another comment was that while she wouldn't go so far as to claim that LeGuin had been wrong to write the piece as she did, Katherine would never have published something so bald about another's work without at least sending a copy to the subject. Katherine claims she never even heard about the piece until she stumbled across it much later (I think when reading ``Language of the Night''). I think I agree with her on this point. As a final point, she agreed with me (unsurprisingly, I suppose) that LeGuin's claims in the article were just plain wrong. (The article takes a couple of paragraphs out of ``Deryni Rising'' and, by changing the proper names into modern ones, transforms the writing into a 20th-century political novel. LeGuin makes that statement that in true fantasy writing she shouldn't be able to do that.) Katherine is not trying to write ``high fantasy'' in the tradition of Lord Dunsany and Tolkien. She is writing what she calls ``historical fantasy''; she is trying for a greater sense of realism and identifiability in her characters. Their style of speaking is always appropriate to the situation: ``forsoothly speech'' is not for every-moment use. I believe that LeGuin takes far too narrow a view in her criticism of Ms. Kurtz. To sum up the reason I wrote this in response to the excerpt above, not only do I not think Katherine has ``learned from the article'' anything about writing, but I believe that the article really had nothing to teach her in the first place. Pavel Curtis