Teacher's Bad Rowling Advice

[Bêthberry]

Oh my! Between all this talk of bullying literati and dumbing down, why, I hardly dare know if I should admit to enjoying such as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare--Abridged. But seeing as its for the stage--always a tart--I suppose it can't be held against me.

Originally Posted by superversive

At this point, with rich irony, we find Christopher Tolkien publishing The Children of Húrin. Half a century ago, his father could hardly find a publisher because his masterpiece was too long.

Problem is, that struggle Tolkien faced had nothing to do with quality or precision/concision. He was just as much at the mercy of publishers' requirements as these other fellers superversive mentions these days. (He really belongs here on the Downs--has anyone sent him an invite?) It was an economic imposition, nothing to do with quality.

Both of those RandomHouse "100 Best" lists give me the giggles. Ayn Rand has four in the Top Ten and L. Ron Hubbard has three and Charles de Lint has seven overall but there's no Asimov in the Student list? And the list created by The New York Times readers is so perfect in hitting all the correct books for a University Syllabus in Modern Literature 301, complete with just the right touch of irony, sex, and social commitment-- it is positively suspicious as a send up. V.S. Naipaul is met by Salmon Rushdie--there's a good laugh.

Really, both these groups are notorious for playing with words and so I wouldn't find their lists as evidence for anything other than, well, what we do here.

I suppose the only place where fantasy is free of this pernicious conspiracy of fans, writers and publishers is on the Net.

EDIT: I inserted the Merisu smilie after the Squatter one, but it doesn't appear on my post on my screen. I do hope others can see it.

[davem]

Just a quick addendum.

I don't know whether Fantasy is judged to be junk, or relegated to children's literature because most of it is bad (& in the judgement of critics all of it is bad) or simply because it contains Elves, Dragons & dark lords. Perhaps it’s a combination of the two. Certainly there is a lot of junk churned out in all genres, but there isn't the same conviction that all crime, or all historical, novels are 'trash' just because a good deal of them are. So it does seem to be the subject matter that is the basis for this negative judgement.

Which probably means that even if all fantasy was of the standard of Tolkien it would still be adjudged to be trash – which kind of negates my earlier point. It seems that fantasy is considered trash because its fantasy & is not judged on its 'quality' as fiction, because it is believed to be impossible for fantasy literature to have any quality.