BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA (06/25/85)
From: Bard Bloom <BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA> > Second reason. NOBODY in any branch of literature (that I have > read) can match Donaldson for vileness. Everyone else is a > bush-leaguer compared to him: constantly despicable protagonists > surrounded by even worse antagonists with just enough virtuous > characters on the periphery to make the others seem worse in > contrast. (Recommendations, for those who like to read about vile characters.) These things are hard to measure quantitatively, but I found Joan Didion's characters (not SF: _A_Book_Of_Common_Prayer_, for one) viler than Thomas Covenant. Didion is more subtle than Donaldson. Covenant was foul as an adaptation to his leprosy; without it, without [terrestrial] treatment of him as a leper, I think, he would have been a reasonably normal person. He expresses his nastiness in some fairly blatant ways, like raping people and being depressed at the reader for kilopages. Didion's characters seem to be naturally horrible; at least, they were foul *before* various nasty things happend to them. Even worse, reading Didion, you feel that her characters could be living within a few blocks of you... (Well, that may be an inherent advantage of mainstream Literature over SF: you know the setting exists. On the other talon, the ability to create an appropriate setting is an advantage of SF.) Finally, Didion's books are an order of magnitude shorter than the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, so those who only want to taste foulness can read them. Glen Cook's works -- the Dread Empire and Black Company series, and _The_Swordbearer_ in particular -- have a more interesting contrast between good and evil, fair and foul. Both sides are pretty scuzzy, both have their good points and their reasons (except for the occasional elemental force). They're better written and (like almost everything) considerably shorter than Covenant. Well, if this gets any longer, I'll have to send it to FOULNESS-LOVERS rather than SF-LOVERS. Enjoy, insofar as is possible. Bard -------