kanders@lll-tis-a (09/12/85)
From: kanders@lll-tis-a (Kevin Anderson)
Okay, okay, I'll come out of the woodwork one final time. I did
the original posting about Anti-Art Snobs, which Jerry Boyajian
alone of all the net seems to have taken as a personal attack on
his own reading tastes. Please listen again to what I was trying
to say.
SURELY everyone has met people who take pleasure in disliking
"artsy fartsy" writing/painting/music, simply because it IS art?
SURELY you have seen people who actually take pride in the fact
that they don't understand 'works of literature?' I know so many
of them they must be fairly common critters. Many times I have
met people who scorn taking English courses in college because
they make you read "literature" -- they thumb their noses at
"literature" because 'we all know nobody but <snort> English
teachers like that stuff!' There IS a snobbery *against* artis-
tic work as much as there is snobbery on the part of art-types.
I was perceiving undertones in the net discussion of DHALGREN
that some people disliked it *because* it was artsy, and once
they had come to that decision, they gave up reading the book
without further effort. They loudly flamed against the book (not
necessarily you, Jerry Boyajian -- my posting was neither aimed
directly at you as a person or DHALGREN as a book), and seemed
to be implying that nobody should bother to read it because it
was just artsy drivel. There are some books which can give en-
joyment without requiring any ef- fort on the reader's
part, such as pure action/adventure SF and other subgenres,
but there are other books which do require reader participa-
tion, and one should not simply dismiss such a book as "oh
well, that's just arsty crap anyway!" <snort of der- ision>.
I'm not saying that everyone must like DHALGREN or *any*
book; I'm saying that to dismiss such a book because it is "art-
sy" is not being fair.
I'm rather surprised and disappointed at the vehement reaction to
what I had considered to be a fairly innocuous posting.
Kevin J. Anderson