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From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Critics and SF
Message-ID: <343@rti-sel.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Aug-85 17:57:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: rti-sel.343
Posted: Sun Aug 11 17:57:46 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Aug-85 00:29:46 EDT
References: <3206@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC
Lines: 70
Summary: 

In article <3206@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> moreau%babel.DEC@decwrl.ARPA writes:

>It seems to me that critics are only happy when either decrying the
>lousy taste of the public by automatically condemning any work which
>sells well, or lauding to the skies a work which most people (me) find
>totally unapproachable.  I gave up on the New York Times Book Review
>column for precisely this reason.  I grant you that tastes differ, but
>that doesn't mean that the public (me again) is incapable of finding
>out *BY THEMSELVES* whether "this work is any good".

Here we go again. I read both the New York Times Book Review and the
New York Review of books regularly, and I fail to see the attitudes
you people are constantly bemoaning appearing regularly in these mags.
Now I do sometimes see reviews I disagree with, but I like to think
I'm mature enough to appreciate alternative points of view. Including
the 'intellectual' approach to literature some of your compatriots in
this newsgroup seem to loathe.

Fact: Gerald Jonas writes a column in the NYTBR every other week. He
hardly trashes every SF book he reviews. Another fact: I believe
reviews of SF works have sometimes appeared in both the NYTBR and the
NYRB over the past few years, including reviews of Stanislaw Lem's
works. These reviews did not 'trash' SF out of hand. One more fact:
although reviews of esoterica do appear in both these magazines, both
regularly publish reviews of popular fiction and bestsellers. I
challenge you to prove to the readers of this group that the reviewers
in these mags automatically trash any work of literature that's not
written for 'eggheads' by 'eggheads.' Better still, I challenge the
readers of this group to check it out for themselves. Your comment
suggests that some reviewer said something nasty about one of your
particular favorites and you chose not to read the NYTBR any more as a
consequence.

>I applaud Spider Robinsons comment that "A critic tells you whether 
>it is *ART*, a reviewer tells you if its a good read".  To me this
>indicates that the two concepts are orthogonal, and have nothing to
>do with each other.  Thank you, I will ignore both *ART* and critics 
>who talk about *ART* because I have found this bias to be pretentious, 
>boring, unapproachable, and generally gives me no pleasure.  

What Mr. Robinson's comment indicates is that he has peculiar personal
definitions of 'critic' and 'reviewer.' It says nothing about the way
I approach the SF genre or about the way I *should* approach the SF
genre. It should be abundantly clear by now that there's no consensus
among the readers of this newsgroup on what good SF is or on the
'proper' way to read SF. You're welcome to your opinions, but don't
assume you've found some great 'truth' or that anyone who doesn't
agree with you doesn't belong in this newsgroup (there have been
replies to some of my postings, for example, that questioned my
'right' to post in this newsgroup because of my 'incorrect thinking').

There's been a fierce hostility toward intellectuals in American
culture for a long while; I doubt many other languages can rival
American's variety of pejorative slang for intellectuals (although I
suspect the Chinese language acquired quite a few back around the
cultural revolution :-). I see some of the hostility toward 'critics' 
in this newsgroup arising from the perception of SF as a popular 
genre, and a certain resentment that the 'eggheads' are seen as either 
(1) choosing to ignore SF or (2) choosing to say bad things about SF 
as a matter of course. My feeling is that this wrongheaded hostility 
is neither productive nor mature. It stereotypes people and makes 
incorrect assumptions about their actions and motivations (where ELSE 
have we seen this kind of thinking? Can you say 'bigotry'?) and assumes 
out of hand that readers and writers of SF have nothing to learn 
from what's going on in the mainstream literary community. This 
attitude is a sure road to sterility and intellectual bankruptcy in 
a genre that's given me a great deal of reading pleasure over the 
last 30 years or so.

                                   -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly