My cluebat is shaped like 1984
Apr. 7th, 2012 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lokifanGRUMPY LOKIFAN IS GRUMPY.
Not enormously so, because I haz a kitty, and he makes all things better. But still. I am BATTLING with this fic. And it’s really, really late, and meant for someone I both admire and like a lot, and ARGH. I AM SO CLOSE I CAN TASTE IT. But I keep forcing more words and they’re just not good words. I am okay with forcing out a few hundred words if I’ll keep them mostly the same, and I’m okay with just splurging out a thousand words that will be mostly rewritten. Forcing stuff that’s no good anyway is just the worst of both worlds.
BUT I’M SO CLOSE I CAN TASTE IT.
Also, Eastercon is happening right now and I am not there. Which is a sad. Especially since there’d be no better place to discuss Christopher Priest’s HILARIOUS epic meltdown over this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist.
Speaking of literary snobbishness, I generally like the Guardian’s literary stuff. But OH MY GOD FUCK OFF.
That article is full of the worst kind of “genre = downmarket, bad literature, formulaic, doesn’t engage the brain, you can just finish one and leap into another which is a bad thing because you should SIT AND PONDER GRATE WORKS OF LITERATCHUR when you finish them.” It literally SAYS genre fiction can’t include ‘future classics’. YOU NEED TO BE HIT WITH A CLUEBAT. A CLUEBAT SHAPED LIKE 1984. AND PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. AND MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.
It’s not LAZY to read genre fiction and it wouldn’t matter if it was. “In digital, dross rises” indeed! The snobbery is incredible in its unabashedness.
UGH. I don’t make a great distinction between LITERATCHUR and trash anyway - I somehow escaped being contaminated with that distinction and worries about writing GREAT AND ORIGINAL WORKS as a kid/teenager, and I don’t intend to fall into that trap now. And even if I did, the idea that genre fiction is automatically not LITERATCHUR, the rampant classism and sexism, the whole idea of reading as a guilty pleasure, the ‘confession’ that sometimes the author does read something not-literary BUT HARDLY EVER BECAUSE IT IS NOT GOOD...
SHUT UP GUARDIAN.
AND ALSO SHUT UP “GROWN-UPS SHOULDN’T READ CHILDREN’S BOOKS” GUY, BEFORE I BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH TOM’S MIDNIGHT GARDEN. WANKER.
My rage in the face of literary snobs, it is mighty. And I am armed with the Bartmimaeus trilogy in hardback. Don’t mess.
Not enormously so, because I haz a kitty, and he makes all things better. But still. I am BATTLING with this fic. And it’s really, really late, and meant for someone I both admire and like a lot, and ARGH. I AM SO CLOSE I CAN TASTE IT. But I keep forcing more words and they’re just not good words. I am okay with forcing out a few hundred words if I’ll keep them mostly the same, and I’m okay with just splurging out a thousand words that will be mostly rewritten. Forcing stuff that’s no good anyway is just the worst of both worlds.
BUT I’M SO CLOSE I CAN TASTE IT.
Also, Eastercon is happening right now and I am not there. Which is a sad. Especially since there’d be no better place to discuss Christopher Priest’s HILARIOUS epic meltdown over this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist.
Speaking of literary snobbishness, I generally like the Guardian’s literary stuff. But OH MY GOD FUCK OFF.
That article is full of the worst kind of “genre = downmarket, bad literature, formulaic, doesn’t engage the brain, you can just finish one and leap into another which is a bad thing because you should SIT AND PONDER GRATE WORKS OF LITERATCHUR when you finish them.” It literally SAYS genre fiction can’t include ‘future classics’. YOU NEED TO BE HIT WITH A CLUEBAT. A CLUEBAT SHAPED LIKE 1984. AND PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. AND MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.
It’s not LAZY to read genre fiction and it wouldn’t matter if it was. “In digital, dross rises” indeed! The snobbery is incredible in its unabashedness.
UGH. I don’t make a great distinction between LITERATCHUR and trash anyway - I somehow escaped being contaminated with that distinction and worries about writing GREAT AND ORIGINAL WORKS as a kid/teenager, and I don’t intend to fall into that trap now. And even if I did, the idea that genre fiction is automatically not LITERATCHUR, the rampant classism and sexism, the whole idea of reading as a guilty pleasure, the ‘confession’ that sometimes the author does read something not-literary BUT HARDLY EVER BECAUSE IT IS NOT GOOD...
SHUT UP GUARDIAN.
AND ALSO SHUT UP “GROWN-UPS SHOULDN’T READ CHILDREN’S BOOKS” GUY, BEFORE I BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH TOM’S MIDNIGHT GARDEN. WANKER.
My rage in the face of literary snobs, it is mighty. And I am armed with the Bartmimaeus trilogy in hardback. Don’t mess.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-08 12:25 pm (UTC)Also, as much as I share your ARGGHH! about lit. critics, I am a tad bit relieved that literature has this inane idea too. Musicology sure as fuck does have it's "high" and "low" very firmly set - and it's VERY sexist - and classist.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-09 04:44 pm (UTC)Oh, yeah. Even people who think they're out of all that Establishment rubbish - the sheer scorn romance gets from all sides fills me with rage. Even in that article, you get the stuff about how the non-literary reading public are 'lazy' and the snide remarks about paranormal romance.