Article-I.D.: druri.1153
Posted: Tue Aug 13 23:37:36 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Aug-85 22:23:29 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 79


>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.  
>
>              [KEN MOREAU]

Spider Robinson... (the sound of spitting in derision and disgust) knows
absolutely nothing, or next to nothing, about being a reviewer, as he has
so amply demonstrated in his review columns, and even less about being a
critic. Gene Shalit gives more depth; Rona Barret gives more detail; and
"Entertainment Tonight" gives more understanding. I have never understood
why *ART* is so bad, such a pejorative, in America and especially in American
science fiction. In most places in the world, to say that something is "great
art" is a compliment. To you and Spider Robinson (author of such art as "Harry
Callahan's Crossroad Five-Guys-In-A-Bar-Trade-Stupid-Puns-And-Act-Superior-And-
Incredibly-Sophomoric"), it is an insult. Art and a "good read" may have no-
thing to do with each other, but I and many, many others will disagree
violently at such a purposefully ignorant attitude. These hedonistic tendencies
will leave you with little fulfillment, less enlightenment, and no under-
standing of the world outside D&D games and national news programs. To
ignore art because it gives no pleasure is synonomous with ignoring edu-
cation because it gives no money. A backward, Luddite, barbarian attitude
which makes me wonder how anyone who ever held this belief ever got the drive
and motivation to learn how to read. 

This is not idle electronic banter, and it is not specifically directed at you,
or at Mr. Robinson. But to champion a "good read" over "great art" is very,
very egocentric. It also belies an inferiority complex about one's ability to
appreciate art and uphold one's personal standards as opposed to lying down
and accepting the tyranny of entertainment. Many definitions of great art en-
compass being a "good read", but this quality is but a portion of what it 
takes to write a great novel. Spider Robinson's championing of ease of reading
over depth of feeling is simple laziness. He, and many others, choose not to
exercise their minds or their hearts, but to relax and enjoy and treat books
as if they were TV sit-coms. Subsequently, he says that because this is what he
enjoys - semi-mindless entertainment such as he and so many others in his
field have made a career of - it is what is good, and is better than what he 
does not enjoy - art. I have never made any statements to the effect that some-
thing is good because I enjoy it. I have appreciated many works which I did not
necessarily enjoy or find a "good read". Enrichment of the heart and enlighten-
ment of the mind do not come to the lazy or the proudly ignorant. How many
"enjoyable" works have allowed you or forced you to walk a mile in another
man's shoes ("Soul On Ice"), or understand the nature of death ("The Death
Of Ivan Ilych"), or feel outrage at terrible injustice ("Les Miserables"), or
come face to face with home and family ("The Last Picture Show"), or realize
that politics affects individuals as well as societies ("A Tale Of Two Cities"),
to see the depths of depravity and hatred of self ("Notes From Underground",
"In The Belly Of The Beast", "Heart Of Darkness"), to internalize and gain
some knowledge of the human condition? 

There is so much trash and fluff and junk and silliness in our culture, so much
championing of materialism and the easy road to understanding, a sort of mental
"get rich quick" ethos. To downgrade the name of art in favor of a "good read"
is to say to the world "I am ignorant, and I am proud of it, and I shall remain
blissfully so". It is an attitude which Madison Avenue and every manipulator
loves with a fervor usually reserved for God. There are so many closed minds
in this world, so many minds which have never seen a book or heard a new idea,
too many. It is criminal to close your mind to the sublime and the new because
it does not entertain you, while these who have never had the chance remain
in enforced ignorance, an ignorance which so many in America embrace and raise
to the heights of a new religion. It is diseased, it is animal, it is a total
abnegation of the faculties of intelligence. Choose to ignore art; choose to
wallow in the filth of ignorance and the ordure of pure entertainment; hold
Spider Robinson up as a genius and a great writer and a great commentator on
the human condition. Remain an intellectual and artistic Helen Keller - but
remember that she, who had so little ability to appreciate greatness and art
and love and life, struggled her entire life to appreciate those very things
which you and Mr. Robinson and so many others of your ilk choose to downgrade
and spit upon and despise. 

I shake my head in wonder and awe at the power of ignorance and the majesty
of barbarianism. And I wish that I did not shake my head so often, or so long.

Davis Tucker

Article-I.D.: lzwi.248
Posted: Sat Aug 17 06:37:30 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 05:37:47 EDT
References: <1153@druri.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T-IS Enhanced Network Services
Lines: 76

In article <1153@druri.UUCP>, dht@druri.UUCP (Davis Tucker) writes:
> 
> >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.  
> >              [KEN MOREAU]
There are four kinds of writing:  writing that was meant to be
entertaining, and is, but can also be classified as Art (e.g.,
Shakespear); writing that was meant to be entertaining, and is
nothing more; writing that was meant to be Art, and succeeds, but
can also be read and enjoyed at some lower level; and writing that
was meant to be Art to the exclusion of it possibly be entertaining.
The latter seems to fit your last sentence well.
> 
> Spider Robinson... (the sound of spitting in derision and disgust)
. . . has written some light SF that is meant to be entertaining, and
nothing more.  It will certainly be forgotten fifty years after he's
dead.  The same can be said of the man who built my house.  Not all of
us build pyramids, no should all of us.
Robinson's also written some stories that, while entertaining, also
have the "quality" that we're calling "Art" here.  Every single one
of these stories has been flawed, some more seriously than others.
Robinson has some very strong storytelling skills, but he could be
a much better writer.  I keep hoping he'll improve.

>                                                                     To
> ignore art because it gives no pleasure is synonomous with ignoring edu-
> cation because it gives no money.
A valid point . . .
>                                   A backward, Luddite, barbarian attitude
> which makes me wonder how anyone who ever held this belief ever got the drive
> and motivation to learn how to read. 
. . . but did you ever hear the phrase, "You can catch more flies with
honey than vinegar"?  There's a difference between literary criticism and
"a severe and unfavorable judgement" (Funk and Wagnalls).  Saying that
everyone who disagrees with you is a jerk is less likely to make a point
than to make enemies (or at least to have people judge your personality
rather than your argument).

> This is not idle electronic banter,
I agree.  "Rambling" is a more appropriate word than "banter".

>                                                                   How many
> "enjoyable" works have allowed you or forced you to walk a mile in another
> man's shoes ("Soul On Ice"), or understand the nature of death ("The Death
> Of Ivan Ilych"), or feel outrage at terrible injustice ("Les Miserables"), or
> come face to face with home and family ("The Last Picture Show"), or realize
> that politics affects individuals as well as societies ("A Tale Of Two Cities"),
> to see the depths of depravity and hatred of self ("Notes From Underground",
> "In The Belly Of The Beast", "Heart Of Darkness"), to internalize and gain
> some knowledge of the human condition? 
Do you want a list?  Fiction can be "entertaining" in some sense and still
do all those things.

>                      Remain an intellectual and artistic Helen Keller - but
> remember that she, who had so little ability to appreciate greatness and art
> and love and life, struggled her entire life to appreciate those very things
> which you and Mr. Robinson and so many others of your ilk choose to downgrade
> and spit upon and despise. 
> I shake my head in wonder and awe at the power of ignorance and the majesty
> of barbarianism. And I wish that I did not shake my head so often, or so long.
> Davis Tucker

I like that statement.  I repeated it because it's stronger out of context,
the context being a sixty line flame.

I'll say something about reviews vs. criticism in a separate article.
-- 
       -Paul S. R. Chisholm       The above opinions are my own,
       {pegasus,vax135}!lzwi!psc  not necessarily those of any
       {mtgzz,ihnp4}!lznv!psc     telecommunications company.
       (*sigh* ihnp4!lzwi!psc does *NOT* work!!!  Use above paths.)
"Of *course* it's the murder weapon.  Who would frame someone with a fake?"

Article-I.D.: nsc.3140
Posted: Sat Aug 17 21:02:42 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 07:15:26 EDT
References: <1153@druri.UUCP>
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Uncle Chuqui's Lemming Farm
Lines: 127

I promised myself long ago that I'd simply ignore Davis and his holier than
thou anti-SF attitudes (Davis, if you hate SF half as much as the stuff you
write implies, why do you bother reading this newsgroup? Are you trying
to convert us with this highbrow proselytizing, or are you simply
maoschistic? Hmm... On second though, considering the volumes you pour out
at us, maybe you're sadistic.... :-|). Unfortunately, Davis has made some
comments that just cry out to be beaten into the pulp they ought to have
been written on...

In article <1153@druri.UUCP> dht@druri.UUCP (Davis Tucker) writes:
>
>>I applaud Spider Robinsons comment that "A critic tells you whether 
>>it is *ART*, a reviewer tells you if its a good read".

>Spider Robinson... (the sound of spitting in derision and disgust) knows
>absolutely nothing, or next to nothing, about being a reviewer, as he has
>so amply demonstrated in his review columns, and even less about being a
>critic. Gene Shalit gives more depth; Rona Barret gives more detail;

These is fighting words. Choice of weapons: copies of "battleship earth" 
at 20 paces... I was reading Spider's reviews religiously back in the late,
lamented Galaxy magazine, and he knows the genre quite thoroughly. He knows
what is good writing, and he burns the bad writing (a VERY fitting end for
most of those books) and he has a good grasp for what his audience is
looking for. I think his columns got a little soft when he was working in
Analog, but even he admitted that he simply didn't have the time to do it
right (and finally stopped the columns because of it). 

You seem to make the continuing misassumption that a "CRITIC" (underlined
three times) is there to tell me what I "ought" to be reading. Well, I don't
have a helluva lotta time to read what I "ought" to be reading. I look for a
reviewer that can tell me what to avoid and what I'm going to want to read,
since I simply don't have time to wade through the trash to find what I'm
looking for. I simply don't always WANT to read the sort of stuff I "ought"
to be reading, since reading for me is a relaxation tool. Education or
enlightenment are the only reasons to open a book, no matter how much you
might wish otherwise.

>To you and Spider Robinson (author of such art as "Harry
>Callahan's Crossroad Five-Guys-In-A-Bar-Trade-Stupid-Puns-And-Act-Superior-And-
>Incredibly-Sophomoric"), it is an insult.

Ah, the crux of the problem. You have no sense of humor... Not everybody
can be a Kafka, Davis. Fortunately, or the suicide rate would be MUCH
higher than it is now.

>Art and a "good read" may have no-
>thing to do with each other, but I and many, many others will disagree
>violently at such a purposefully ignorant attitude. These hedonistic tendencies
>will leave you with little fulfillment, less enlightenment, and no under-
>standing of the world outside D&D games and national news programs. To
>ignore art because it gives no pleasure is synonomous with ignoring edu-
>cation because it gives no money. A backward, Luddite, barbarian attitude
>which makes me wonder how anyone who ever held this belief ever got the drive
>and motivation to learn how to read. 

Oh, wombat do! The world simply isn't black and white, and I wish you'd
take a look at reality. I can name a lot of highly entertaining ART books:
Kafka, Cervantes, Dante all come to mind immediately. But I don't always
want art. When I've been under a false floor tracking ethernet cable for 12
hours, picking up a Dickens or a Dostoyevsky would send me jumping off a
local building room. Sometimes, believe it or not, people like to let their
hair down.

>This is not idle electronic banter, and it is not specifically directed at you,
>or at Mr. Robinson. But to champion a "good read" over "great art" is very,
>very egocentric.

Oh, yes it is. And trying to enforce your own limited beliefs on the net is
rather egocentric as well... If you HATE our little ghetto so much, go play
with net.books for a while and let us wallow in our own pleasure. please!

>I have never made any statements to the effect that some-
>thing is good because I enjoy it.

Then I feel sorry for you. I have read many a book that I would say to
anyone is "good" because I enjoyed it. They may not be the strongest
writing or great "literature" but they are enjoyable. If you can't enjoy
what you are doing, why do you bother doing it?

>I have appreciated many works which I did not
>necessarily enjoy or find a "good read". Enrichment of the heart and enlighten-
>ment of the mind do not come to the lazy or the proudly ignorant.

You're being snotty, now. "I'm better than you are because I've walked
through books that I didn't like, because they were good for me". I've done
that, too, but sometimes my brain turns to mush and I simply can't cope
with a good Russian Novel. Or even a bad one. Or Gene Wolfe, for that
matter...

>There are so many closed minds
>in this world,

Now thats an understatement... Did I hear a glass house shudder?

>hold
>Spider Robinson up as a genius and a great writer and a great commentator on
>the human condition.

I do, actually... Well, maybe not a great writer, but a damned good one.
The worst of his essays and stories has more humanism and intelligence than
the best of the Drivel I've seen come out of Davis' keyboard...

Look. If you don't like the stuff, don't read it. And please, quit bleating
at us to stop reading it as well. I happen to LIKE SF, just as I like
"literature". Before you cut off Spider Robinson as a cheap hack, I suggest
you go find a story of his called "The Time Traveller" and read it. Very.
Carefully. More than once. I also suggest you look at some of the more
serious works that have come out of SF: Most of Kurt Vonnegutt; all Harlan
Ellison; Gene Wolfe's New Sun stuff; Kate Wilhelm's "Where Once the Sweet
Birds Sang"; Ray Bradbury; SilverBob's "Dying Inside"; Sturgeon's "Baby is
Three." It is rather obvious that you write each of your essays from a
predetermined point of view, and you seem to do only enough research (if
that) to prove your own points. They are biased, not based in facts, and
not really well written at that. I suggest you know what you're talking
about before you start blathering in the future. There is a LOT of good
stuff (whether or not you call it ART) in SF, and there are a lot of people
that enjoy the SF as ART stuff. There are also a lot of good but not
terribly enlightening books, but they serve a good purpose, too --
enjoyment. You don't seem to understand that word, though, and I pity you
for that... 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some drivel to drool over...
-- 
Chuq Von Rospach nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4}!nsc!chuqui

Son, you're mixing ponderables again

Article-I.D.: azure.421
Posted: Sun Aug 18 19:16:33 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 01:44:17 EDT
References: <1153@druri.UUCP>
Reply-To: chrisa@azure.UUCP (Chris Andersen)
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 27
Summary: 

In article <1153@druri.UUCP> dht@druri.UUCP (Davis Tucker) writes:
>Enrichment of the heart and enlightenment of the mind do not come to the 
>lazy or the proudly ignorant.


*** FLAME ON ***

Mr. Tucker, if the posting from which this quote comes from is the result
of an "enlightened" person.  Thank God there aren't more "enlightened"
people like you.

*** FLAME OFF ***


Please note:  This is the first flame I have ever placed in any public forum,
computerized or not.  I am not a very easy person to anger, but Mr. Tucker 
seems to have come very close to doing the impossible.

If anyone wishes to respond to this posting, do it by e-mail to me.

Chris Andersen
-- 
tektronix!azure!chrisa

SPECIAL NOTE: I have only 3 weeks left on this computer.  I don't know when
	      I will be able to get back on the net after I go back to school.
	      Send me e-mail if you would like to keep in touch.