hsf@hlexa.UUCP (Henry Friedman) (01/07/86)
Here is a copy of followups posted to net.sf-lovers: > Gee, all the replies I've see seem unanimous on pretty much all points. But how > has this affected Mr. Friedman, the person with the original questions? Would > he care to indicate his reaction to the feedback? Is he gonna write the book > club? Ever read another book with gay characters? I presume Delany's latest > will be shelved and ressurrected only during moments of extreme insomnia. > .... > \bob usenet: decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-vaxwrk!peterson I appreciate all the feedback, criticisms, flames, etc. While there was general agreement on some points, the reactions were quite diverse, taken as a whole. Some points which hit home were: 1) Read reviews, not just ads. 2) "Blame, etc." are not issues on questions of personal taste. 3) Complain if you think an ad was misleading. (I'd like to send them all these reactions, if it were practical to expect the club managers to read them. But gee, if I complain and they give me my money back, I'll lose my two bonus points :-) ). I apparently did not make myself clear enough that I didn't find explicit gay sex scenes shocking or repugnant--just uninteresting. Also, I didn't cross-post to net.motss to complain to the gay community--just to give its members a chance to participate in the discussion of the issue.(I certainly was not surprised at the general lack of sympathy, but expect that many gay readers,in general, want to know when a book has special appeal to a gay market. I was amused by the one guy who thanked me for letting him know the book had gay appeal, as he didn't particularly like SF, anyway, and certainly not if he had to plow through pages of straight sex.) One interesting point, Jill Rose confirmed a suspicion that others had voiced: books INTENDED MAINLY to appeal to gay readers are often marketed in a purposely ambiguous fashion to increase sales. One person who actually read the book thought I exaggerated the extent to which explicit gay sex was highlighted. He may be right, as I stopped at about the exact midpoint of the book based upon expectations. At that point there were already indications that the romantic scenes were to be largely gay. And the two central characters, after having received computer indications that they were each other's perfect erotic objects down to 5 decimal places, were retiring to a bedroom to evaluate this report. I didn't find this shocking or repulsive, just uninteresting (if much of the remainder was to be in this vein). If a review indicates that a book with gay themes or characters is great (or a great read), I would not AVOID reading it, especially if the general themes, etc, seemed of interest. --Henry Friedman
rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (01/08/86)
I know, I can't seem to shut up, but just a few words in reply to Henry Friedman's reply: I read even less-than-great fiction with either no erotic content or only the heterosexual kind. "Only if it's great" sounds like "in spite of" to me. Henry implies tedium or disinterest is the reason why he'd rather not read descriptions of gay sex. Many aspects of novels can be uninteresting to a reader. I've read fiction whose general subject is of no interest to me, because the writing, ideas, characters, etc. were interesting. Henry's choices are perfectly OK, but I don't see why publi- shers ought to take cognizance of them, any more than of what bores me in a book. Finally, I think it's worth excepting homosexuality from a general policy of disclosure of contents, given current attitudes. Would a similar wish for disclosure about the race or religion of a book's characters have any validity? The fact that you often can identify race and religion from the cover is not a result of