Good books don't have to be hard

[KatG]

LOL, Fung, a culture war in mid-20th century? Alrighty. You might be interested in Hal Duncan's new column (link earlier in the thread,) which has a somewhat different view of things, and a different timeline.

It certainly doesn't require everyone to agree with me. I was having a conversation with one person. Whether or not random people agree with me is immaterial. The question is whether or not she agrees with me. Of course, if she does disagree with me I'd want to see her rationale for why she disagrees because I feel that my criteria for what is or is not a Literary award is both reasonable and rational.

I'm confused here, Psylent. Who is "she" referring to?

Damn, this was the longest post ever, i think this thread should be closed before it clogs up the internet.

Don't be silly. It's not even close. It's not even one of Fung Koo's longest. The Martin due date thread is up past 700 posts.

Ok, re-start the thread from the beginning.

No.

 

[FitzChivalry]

Don't be silly. It's not even close. It's not even one of Fung Koo's longest. The Martin due date thread is up past 700 posts.

I thought it was obvious that i wasn't being serious there, but in any case, long post does not equal long thread, thread is made of posts.

Btw, PeterWilliam was not serious either.

 

[Bond]

As I said in a previous post, during the culture wars of the mid-20th century, the SFF community purposefully chose to distance itself from the literary establishment. It was the teenage phase of SFF. I'd say it's come into its mid-20s now, and is finally realizing that mom and dad aren't really all that bad. (with a few stragglers laggin behind!) But while it's been on its gap year, SFF got drunk and forgot what "literary" means.

Well from my perspective it's the other way around. It's the literary establishment that chose to distance itself from fantasy and popular culture coming up with its elaborate theories on what "literature" is and now that it has hit a block it is coming back to speculative lit because of the unlimited arena it offers. It's like doctors formulating theories on what the best diet to combat heart disease is and coming up with a recommended diet only to see that a traditional Mediterranean diet high in olive oil content still produces better results. By the way I think doctors are much further along in their area of expertise than are literary critics.

The first question is whether or not you buy into the concept of mastery. If not, then it doesn't matter what you read or why you read it, so there's no point in being involved in this debate. If yes, then the question is: what constitutes mastery?

Yes, there needs to be more frequent review of The Canon. But what happens when The Canon becomes so large that it's impossible for anyone to have read even half of it? Because that's about where we're at, now. The recent push has been for sub-Canons, based predominantly on geo-cultural distinctions. But with the advent of the internet and global market production, geo-cultural definitions are becoming irrelevant.

So -- what, if anything, should replace The Canon to help us all understand what constitutes a great achievement in literature? And how do we decide whose mastery is sufficient to make that decision?

There is the idea that education should be less about teaching things and more about teaching people the ability to think for themselves. Therefore there should be more emphasis on critical thinking and less on memorization--or so as I understand it the theory goes. Where does the literary canon fit in this? Is it supposed to be memorized and internalized? Or is it simply an example, a launching pad from which people are supposed to make up their own mind? As in many things certain agendas and vested interests have pushed and shoved to get their list presented as the common example. I have sampled it and determined that significant parts do not reflect my idea of what canon should be and have accordingly developed my own rough idea of what should. Isn't that what we're all supposed to do?

 

[KatG]

I thought it was obvious that i wasn't being serious there, but in any case, long post does not equal long thread, thread is made of posts.

Btw, PeterWilliam was not serious either.

I thought it was obvious that I wasn't being serious either, but I guess not. Or are you not being serious about you not being serious? Or...I'm getting a headache.

 

[Fung Koo]

incoming rant...

LOL, Fung, a culture war in mid-20th century?

Erm... The Cold War? The civil rights movement?

It wasn't just about nationalism, racism and sexism, eh. While the people were marching in the streets and setting their bras on fire, there was quite an important shift going on in the Literary/Academic Community and its relationship with the public and the entertainment industry.

Leading up to and following WWII, there was major upheaval surrounding the use (and abuse) of media -- aka, Propaganda. Much of this is tied to the development of popular film and small-L literature. And much more of it is tied to Mythology (in the McLuhanean/Baudrillardean sense). Some of the enlightened citizens of the world came to realize they had been hoodwinked by a sensationalist, ideological push that permeated everything in the culture, including the academic community. If you read literary criticism, philosophy, and the theoretical frameworks that were imagined/reimagined/revised/etc just before and just after WWII, there's a marked shift in the approach to literature and Literature.

Small-L "literature" was actively being usurped by the propaganda machine. This had been becoming more and more common place since the late 1700's as the publication industry became more and more centralized. (The news, for example, was already being tailored to political interests.) Fewer printers and publishers meant less variety, and greater standardization. Utilitarian ideology was well in place. Fascism was the most popular new political ideology across most of the Western world, and its primary mode of communication was media control. Everyone got on board with that, right up to the outbreak of WWII (if WWII hadn't happened when it did, for example, Scotland was very likely to go Fascist in their next election). And, literacy was on the way up, big time, through the booming 20's -- media literacy, on the other hand, hadn't even been thunk up yet. Pre-WWII was a very different time.

Mass-market entertainment publications were seen as essential to maintaining public solidarity up-to and throughout the Great Depression. In a nutshell, small-L "literature" (and other entertainment media) was a tool for use by culture shapers in the Political realm. To call small-L literature a battle ground for political ideology would not, I think, be an overstatement. McLuhan's famous line, "the medium is the message," didn't come to existence for another decade or so.

In many ways, this is the real topic in discussion in Huxley's "Brave New World." The SF elements are simply the cladding for a story about government control of the masses through entertainment media. But this concept of a "shaped" culture was relatively new, it's terms largely undefined. Adorno was simply too dense and contrarywise for most people to get, let alone care about. 1984, almost twenty years later, reified the nebulous criticisms of Brave New World and presented them as real and plausible and effective. McLuhan put the nail in the coffin two years later in The Mechanical Bride.

Big-L "Literature," on the other hand, was coming to the pinnacle of the Modernist movement -- which in many ways can be understood as Literary Deco: Literature for Literature's sake. The literary community, quite understandably, regarded what was happening to it's beloved subject matter amongst the masses with scepticism. And so a line was drawn between "suspicious" literature (what we generally call "small-L" now), and OK Literature that was free from/above such suspicion -- aka, the Modernist Canon.

Here, in the pre-WWII era, you have Huxley and Orwell, both of the Literary/Academic Community, establishing the nature of literary commentary on the usurpation of public media -- specifically entertainment media -- for the purposes of culture shaping. The Big-L crowd weighing in on the small-L crowd. ...but, doing so in an increasingly populist culture that is learning to regard the powerful institutions of yore with greater and greater scepticism.

Following WWII, the reaction to this, in total, was a broad grass-roots movement that can only be called "anti-establishment." Both the political communities and literary communities had tenuous relationships with literature in general by this point, and so in the end neither side could be trusted.

Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" in 1961 is generally regarded as the seminal anti-establishment, reactionary, populist-individualist novel. Heinlein broke away from the Code that had ruled SF since post-WWI. It marks a major turning point in the direction that SFF has taken over the past 50 years. And, understood this way, you can see the death-throes of the proscriptive, generative genre that was in place starting about 1922 and and continuing up to about 1959 (1922 is the birth of the CCA, and is arguably one of the most important factors in the development of Generative SF -- aka Classic SF. 1959 is the publication of Starship Troopers, which graduated Generative SF out of the YA audience, and eventually killed it).

In stark contrast stands the concurrent post-WWII McCarthy era. Generative SF, specifically, (amongst others, though) had been usurped by the propaganda machine to champion the ideological-cultural pursuits of major Western governments -- especially in the lead-up to WWII. The Comics Code is one of the best examples, and is the starting place of the serialized pulp SF we call Classic SF (the Genre SF that Duncan puts in bold -- what I'm calling Generative SF. Formula SF, in other words). This was, up this time, pretty normal. But suddenly, it all turned around and people reacted -- the Civil Rights Movement began in earnest.

Following WWII, literature that "questioned things" could be incredibly dangerous. Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" is perhaps the perfect example -- those who awarded it the Hugo in 1960 immediately backpedalled because the political ideology/commentary in the book was incendiary. This juvenile SF was NOT for juveniles... Especially once it came to the attention of the American ideological witch hunt. It's been contentious ever since. The follow-up of Stranger a year later solidified the place of SF in the counter culture. And the counter culture now had a full blown movement on the march.

These two books weren't contentious just on their own -- they were deliberately circumventing the strict censorship of the American Comics Code Authority, and similar publishers associations, etc. Media outlets of all sorts throughout the pre-WWII era were given an ultimatum on censorship by government -- watch what you do, or we'll shut you down.

Notably, this era marks the imminent birth of MPAA, too. The political forces in power at that time demanded "voluntary self-regulation" practices for the popular media industry, with a specifically populist agenda of culture shaping. No more was this simply a battle for the moral fibre of the citizenry, but now it was a Nationalist agenda, a systemization of cultural identity, an inoculation against foreign ideology, etc. The Cold War was begun. And with it, its critics. Suddenly, the citizenry got savvy and started wondering about their freedoms and rights.

The Literary/Academic Community, by contrast, was inversely ghettoized when it posed informed objections. Toe the line, and everything is fine. Funding was restricted to those who fell behind the ideological line. So, the Academic Community, too, split. Principles are funny that way... But the safest course was to stick with the high-brow, Lit Deco of the Modernist ideal. It was safe because it was concerned only with literature, and not with politics. Or so it said, seeing as how most everyone else couldn't even understand the stuff... Ostriches with their heads in the sand.

The bookmark denoting the shift from the Modernists to the Post-Modernists is exactly this line. The "New Critical" school of thought ruled Academia up to this point -- it was perfectly suited to Modernist lit. But in the post-Orwellian/McLuhanean world of a shaped culture, even the Modernist text could no longer be understood divorced from its context. We see an upswing in the concept of shaped cultures and the tools of culture shaping with the rise of McLuhan, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Chomsky, etc. But these concepts don't fully grasp the Academic mindset in a majorly influential way until the late 60s/early 70s (and suddenly everything else was obscured by racism and feminism), up to their heyday beginning in the 80s and still going strong.

And the subject of their intense examination over the past 40 or so years is none other than so-called low-brow, popular media. Aka - The Ghettoization of Genre. Why? Because small-L Genre lit was one of the most complicit industries in the culture shapers' efforts. It's also immensely popular, and therefore more likely to reflect the actual values of people, rather than the values of academics. Certain older ideologies from the heyday of Modernism (such as the concept of "literary") came to inform this debate, and to this day is a bone of contention for Post-Modern discourse.

Of course, the anti-establishment break-away sect of what we might now call Literary SF (post-1960 Heinlein, Dick, Asimov, Bradbury, etc) understandably took this examination and resultant denigration of their genre forefathers a bit personally. They were doing legit, serious stuff by this time, relatively free of the influence of the culture machine, and worthy of consideration by the Literary Community. No one likes to be called a sell out. Especially not by a bunch of sell outs.

So the war rages on.

But generally speaking, the older Modernist mindset that regards genre lit with suspicion is falling by the wayside. Precisely because of the growing acceptance of what these fathers of Postmodern SF did...

You'll notice that the Literary/Academic Community is currently obsessed with the "underground" anti-establishment culture right now -- SF included. The Spec Fic debate is enormous, and it's regained a place (albeit a contentious one) in the Literary and Academic Communities.

We don't yet have the hindsight to see the players involved right this minute, but I think (I hope) that the powers that be have let go their stranglehold on the arts since the end of the Cold War. It got a bit testy there again during the Bush Jr. reign, but the post-modern ideology seems firmly rooted enough to have weathered that storm, and has continued to produced the critical, and literary works of SF in the vein of Huxley and Orwell, by way of Heinlein, Dick, et al.

This economic recession, though, and its effect on the output of "literary" SFF will be interesting to analyze in about 20-30 years.

You might be interested in Hal Duncan's new column which has a somewhat different view of things, and a different timeline.

It's an OK article, but it's missing a helluvalotta stuff. Namely, everything above. The world of SF didn't end in 1959. It just changed course. If anything, Duncan oversimplifies the issue and makes it one of the unending problem of defining SF by continually seeking its origin. But SF isn't like detective/mystery fiction where we can point at two specific texts and say "yep, those two started it." SF is more nebulous than that, and comes in different forms from many different sources. In some ways, there's always been SF. One could argue that it's the oldest type of fiction there is...

I'm surprised you're not running Duncan up and down for simplifying the genre into a box, as if it were one movement.

But, I do like his division of Science Fiction and Science Fiction. Code or Generative Science Fiction (his term in bold) was certainly a limited, short-term period in the total history of SF. But, it remains a major influence. And, for some, the ideal (strange as that is to me).

The reality is that the genre remains split. "Literary SF" is, to me, about our world. The SF setting is a foil for commentary. This is a key part of the original tradition of SF, prior to the rise of Generative SF.

It's not even one of Fung Koo's longest.

Heck no. I've even had to prune posts before because the system told me I was over the character limit

 

[Fung Koo]

Well from my perspective it's the other way around. It's the literary establishment that chose to distance itself from fantasy and popular culture coming up with its elaborate theories on what "literature" is and now that it has hit a block it is coming back to speculative lit because of the unlimited arena it offers.

That's part of the story, certainly. There's rather a lot more to it than that, though. As elucidated in the previous rant re: Kat and Hal Duncan.

By the way I think doctors are much further along in their area of expertise than are literary critics.

Heheh

If only literature wasn't all made-up by us pesky humans...

There is the idea that education should be less about teaching things and more about teaching people the ability to think for themselves. Therefore there should be more emphasis on critical thinking and less on memorization--or so as I understand it the theory goes. Where does the literary canon fit in this? Is it supposed to be memorized and internalized? Or is it simply an example, a launching pad from which people are supposed to make up their own mind? As in many things certain agendas and vested interests have pushed and shoved to get their list presented as the common example. I have sampled it and determined that significant parts do not reflect my idea of what canon should be and have accordingly developed my own rough idea of what should. Isn't that what we're all supposed to do?

It is. That's exactly what it's for.

Now, imagine if you went through about 7-9 years of school, rigorous examination and dissertation and assessment by a group of people who more or less agree on what should and shouldn't be in the Canon, as defined by their unrelenting efforts toward reading absolutely everything ever written... And to pass, you have to know just about everything they know, and you have to add something that they don't to their collected knowledge.

That's how the Canon evolves, what it's for, why it exists, etc.

Here's another way to think of what it means for the Literary Community to call a work "literary":

Let's imagine that you're a school teacher. There are two awards on your desk. One is a picture of you, sorta, in crayon, with the words "World's Best Teacher Award" scrawled across the top. It was given to you by one of your students -- a 4th grader. The other is "Teacher of the Year," and was awarded to you by The State Board of Professional Educators, of which you are a member, based on the votes of the membership.

What's the difference, if any, between these two awards? Are you satisfied by each the same way?

 

[Psylent]

I'm confused here, Psylent. Who is "she" referring to?

To you, of course.

 

[KatG]

To you, of course.

Okay, I was just checking. The Whitbread (or whatever they call it now,) is an award that was created to be an award of literary excellence to promote such works, based on the subjective decisions of value of the judges who were selected by whatever criteria they thought necessary. Some people consider it to be an important and/or literary award, including newspaper critics according to Werthead, and according to what I had generally been told (the reputation, if you like.) Some people, like yourself, apparently do not consider it to be one and feel it has a different reputation. I don't particularly care. My point was that what some people, including some critics, consider to be a literary award was awarded to Rowling, in response to the question you asked. If you only wanted to specify certain awards, you should have said.

Fung -- I see, you meant the whole culture shebang. I thought you just meant the literary issue, though of course the two are related. Duncan's column was not saying that science fiction died in 1959. He was talking about perceptions of science fiction. His column was covering a time period from the 19th century into the first part of the 20th. A later column is planned to tackle the further time period beyond that, in which he will be looking at fantasy, and no doubt the New Wave, etc.

Duncan is not building boxes and talking about his perceptions. He is instead describing the perceptions of other people in general, the boxes that were built out of those perceptions, their interaction, and the historical factors and changes in publishing and society that may have, seem to have shaped these perceptions, such as the Strand offering an array of fiction, followed by the specialization of magazines. This is similar to what you did in your latest post.

Grossman was sort of analyzing perceptions in a historical context, but he was taking the less complicated two box idea of the Romantics -- genre, plot, 18th century fiction -- and the Realists, and setting them up through his perception as a factual system of domination. (Let's lay off for the moment the issue of whether Realists and Modernists were separate movements or not, as Grossman's perception is putting them together.) His argument was that it was time to move back to or include the Romantics, not the least because some writers were combining Romanticism and Realism, which he cast as a new thing for writers to do. It was this last part that maybe incurred the most ire from the SFF community, not the least because the casting of the writers as doing a "new" thing was not appreciated as an idea.

 

[Fung Koo]

Some people, like yourself, apparently do not consider it to be one and feel it has a different reputation. I don't particularly care.

This is the notion behind my last comment about the two awards on a teacher's desk. I'm not sure of you exact role in the publishing world, but let's say you're an editor. If you get a "World's Best Editor!" Award from one of your authors, or an "Editor of the Year" Award from a professional organization of editors, is there really no difference in how much you care about each?

It would seem disingenuous to me if such was the case. Professional recognition can be extremely important to advancing one's career, and one's status as a professional in the field. While you might really like the "award" from your author, it's really a show of affection and appreciation -- a thank you note, not an award proper. There's a difference between them in the intent which they're given. A "Literary Award" is not the same as an "Award of Merit for Literature" -- which, it seems to me, is what the Whitbread is.

Fung -- I see, you meant the whole culture shebang. I thought you just meant the literary issue, though of course the two are related. Duncan's column was not saying that science fiction died in 1959.

He does indicate that Science Fiction in Bold more-or-less died. And, on that matter he's more-or-less correct. The funny thing about SF specifically, as opposed to Fantasy, is that this period of Generative SF -- where SF was a very carefully controlled genre -- is still held by some as The True SF.

You talk about packaging SF into a box -- that's exactly what Generative SF was doing. And the reality is, it's the exception to the rule. And, of course, the rule is that there are no rules. It's no wonder that SF is going through an identity crisis. It's like it used to be a family under authoritarian rule, and then the strict parents left and the party raged on. Some people keep trying to clean up the mess, for fear mom and dad come home.

Grossman was ... -- and the Realists ... His argument was that it was time to move back to or include the Romantics, not the least because some writers were combining Romanticism and Realism, which he cast as a new thing for writers to do.

...funny, he doesn't use the term "Realism" even once.

And, his major point about the Modernists is not that they are Realists, but that their efforts were toward "Depicting life not as it actually happens, but as it's actually experienced" (paraphrased slightly). And that this results in a sort of circumnavigation of plot.

Generally speaking, I distrust anyone whose effort to understand genre concludes with a rallying cry of "Vive la Revolution!"

Huh? You mean you want me to get off my couch? For what?

 

[KatG]

I don't care if you see the Whitbread Award as literary or not. I don't care if the people who do the Whitbread Award see it as literary or not. I don't care if various critics see the Whitbread Award as literary or not. I would not care about this even if I were up for the Whitbread Award. The only reason it came up at all is that Pyslent was asking about critics and awards re Rowling. Some critics think the Whitbread is a literary award -- go argue with them about it, if you like.

He does indicate that Science Fiction in Bold more-or-less died.

As a perception, yes. He's prepping to show how perceptions changed in the next time period for the later column.

..funny, he doesn't use the term "Realism" even once.

Sigh, fine, Romantics versus Modernists.

Generally speaking, I distrust anyone whose effort to understand genre concludes with a rallying cry of "Vive la Revolution!"

Huh? You mean you want me to get off my couch? For what?

Well that's what the thread is about, Grossman's article, though we've occasionally wandered. Talk about that then, from your couch.


And now for the other part:

I'm not sure of you exact role in the publishing world, but let's say you're an editor. If you get a "World's Best Editor!" Award from one of your authors, or an "Editor of the Year" Award from a professional organization of editors, is there really no difference in how much you care about each?

There isn't any Editor of the Year award from editors that I'm aware of. I could be wrong, there could be one, but it would be rather difficult to do. What's an editor from Simon & Schuster supposed to do, bop over to Random House, look at the rival books the editor there is working on and say, "oh, good editing there! I'll vote for you!" You could go on how the books under the editor's belt do in sales and/or literary acclaim -- which leads to sales -- and that author list certainly does matter to an editor's career. But there's no way to determine if the editor's list is so successful or acclaimed because of the editor's editing or just because the authors are really skilled. Since the job of an editor in a publishing house encompasses a great deal more than just editing, you could base the award purely on success and not worry about actual editing. But while the publishing house an editor works for or might want to work for certainly cares about the success track record of the editor, they certainly wouldn't care if that editor got an award from other editors or not about it, especially as editors are rather low on the totem pole.

You could determine whether an editor deserves an award from talking to the editor's authors and whoever gets the most author World's Best Editor! votes wins the prize. Because editing is valuable not to other editors but to authors. Which is why an author who has an excellent relationship with an editor may follow that editor from one publishing house to another, although often not. But I can tell you that if an author is trying to do a financial deal with a publishing house, that the editor trying to make the acquisition got the Editor of the Year award from his peers is not the critical factor in negotiations. I'm not sure it would even be a factor at all in many cases.

There are, however, some awards that are given to editors in publishing houses for excellence by judging committees of authors or oddly enough from book customers, such as the Hugo. These awards may be based on whether authors who worked with the editor say good things and/or on the success or acclaim of the editor's author list -- the editor's acquisition record re what is published that year essentially.

So comparing editors and teachers isn't going to work because they are different professions operating under different parameters. Teachers are continually being judged on their teaching and its effectiveness. There are objective metrics, such as test scores, and subjective ones, such as peer review of classes. And from those, you can get a teacher's award from your school or fellows that certainly would help your career. But again, since student evaluations of teachers may or may not play a role (they play a very big role at the university level, for instance,) having students who think you are the World's Best Teacher! is valuable and certainly personally valuable in that it means that you are reaching students, that they are engaged, that you are making the atmosphere safe and fun for learning, etc.

As for author awards, it's even more complicated. I'll go into it later if I have time.

 

[Fung Koo]

Sigh, fine, Romantics versus Modernists.

Well, I'm just saying -- several of the contributors in this thread have pointed out earlier where others are dissembling. There was a whole sub-debate about "inferring" and "implying," too!

Well that's what the thread is about, Grossman's article, though we've occasionally wandered. Talk about that then, from your couch.

Well, the thread was about that for about 2.5 seconds... After that, the gear was shifted to whether or not Grossman's article was an effective piece on the issue of literaryness.

And I'm trying to point out that efficacy is only relevant insofar as the goal is known. The goal of the content of Grossman's article, it seems, is to get more non-genre writers to embrace plot, and that SFF is doing a-OK in that regard.

In fact, Grossman's article isn't even really all that much about genre (which is a-OK) as it is about non-genre (which is sick as a dog from its diet of Modernism).

Go figure...

There isn't any Editor of the Year award from editors that I'm aware of.

There's no professional regulatory body associated with editors? No standardizing institution? No union?

Who provides the course materials and assessment parameters for professional editor courses? Or is it all just done in-house?

When a book gets an award (like the Whitbread), does the editor get any corresponding recognition? Or does it all go to the author?

Surely there's some sort of professional recognition system...?

Just curious.

So comparing editors and teachers isn't going to work

I wasn't comparing the awards or the professions. I was making a point about the difference between professional and personal recognition.

Obviously the parameters are different in any given specialty.

But if you're going to claim that genre lit has been accepted by the mainstream literary crowd, then the award you use as proof should, ideally, be a professional award. Who was it that said elections are too important to be left up the voters?

 

[KatG]

Well, the thread was about that for about 2.5 seconds... After that, the gear was shifted to whether or not Grossman's article was an effective piece on the issue of literaryness.

And I'm trying to point out that efficacy is only relevant insofar as the goal is known.

Oh is that what you were doing? Because I’m not sure most of us got that.

The goal of the content of Grossman's article, it seems, is to get more non-genre writers to embrace plot, and that SFF is doing a-OK in that regard.

I think we were talking about different kinds of effectiveness, but also just different views on the subject on which Grossman was expressing a view. I think he was looking at not simply writers, but also encouraging readers and critics to try genre writing and see something useful in it.

There's no professional regulatory body associated with editors? No standardizing institution? No union?

Who provides the course materials and assessment parameters for professional editor courses? Or is it all just done in-house?

When a book gets an award (like the Whitbread), does the editor get any corresponding recognition? Or does it all go to the author?

Surely there's some sort of professional recognition system...?

Wait, I just sprayed water all over my keyboard. Give me a sec....Okay, no, hold on, giggle fit...Alright, I’m more composed now. I’m starting to understand why you have some of the views you have.

Trade publishing houses hire college graduates for entry level editorial positions, usually English majors, though that’s not 100% required. There are a few short graduate courses on publishing, not editing alone, that you can take. I took a respected one from the U. of Denver, the Publishing Institute, which was open to adults of all ages, and there’s another one out of Radcliffe. There are probably a few other programs about at some universities, and they can help you get a job, but none of these are required. Graduate school, internships, etc., can help too, but are not required. When I went for a job as an editorial assistant, there was a typing test, a basic copyediting test and an interview, and that’s it. I don’t know if they bother with the tests now or not. They might, and probably there are computer literacy requirements, but they wouldn’t be that rigorous. Likewise you could work for a house as a freelance editor, a magazine editor, or an author, and then become an editor for a house. You could start your own small press, and if it did okay, sell it to a larger house and become a consulting editor for them, and so on.

Training for an editor is on the job, as in read these ms. and make notes on them. There are no professional editing courses required by publishing houses. There are no regulations or regulatory body. There are no standards and standardizing institution. And there is and will never be a union.

Likewise, there are no regulations, licenses or unions for becoming a literary agent. (There are in Hollywood, but not in books.) There are professional organizations for publishing houses, there may be editor groups but that’s to talk about publishing and networking. In the U.S., there is the Association of Authors’ Representatives, which literary agents can join if they’ve completed a minimum sales requirement, and if you join, you agree to certain standardized business practices, but the agents’ backgrounds are unimportant and you don’t have to join the AAR.

The jobs of the editor can be summed up as finding talent (acquisition,) helping talent (editing,) being the liaison between the talent and the parts of the publishing house, and coordinating between the departments of the house on producing and launching of the books. When I was a book editor, editors changed jobs on average about every two years. Since houses have consolidated and gotten bigger, that’s probably lengthened to longer terms of service, but still, editors change jobs or leave the business regularly. Category SFF is an unusual part of fiction publishing in that editors in SFF imprints tend to actually stay there, sometimes for decades.

Academia has very little involvement with trade publishing. Academia is an excellent source for authors, as can be university presses that put out fiction – but not the main one. And universities can be book customers with course adoptions and the like, but that’s more marketing’s end of things, assuming you can persuade the individual universities/professors to buy, and is not the main market for trade.

But if you're going to claim that genre lit has been accepted by the mainstream literary crowd, then the award you use as proof should, ideally, be a professional award. Who was it that said elections are too important to be left up the voters?

But I never did claim that because I don’t approach it in those terms. I think you are confusing me with Bond. Which is why I told you to go argue with him. Again, there is no mainstream literary “crowd” as a cohesive, organized, monolithic unit. What there are, are a lot of different people from different backgrounds, including academics sometimes, media critics and journalists, authors, publishers, and just plain old people who have differing views about what literary means, what books are literary, what awards are truly important – all of it. There is no literary or awards regulatory agency either in trade publishing, nor do academics get to provide that function outside of the walls of their own institutions.

Awards are sponsored by universities, media, media critics groups, author groups, conferences, businesses, etc. Some come with money and some do not. Most awards are determined by a selected panel of judges, as are the Whitbread Awards. Psylent was asking and talking about how the media critics viewed Rowling re as genre and literary, which is how the award came up. Some media critics see the Whitbread as an important, literary award, as Werthead showed. Some may not. Some may see it as a literary award but feel that Rowling shouldn’t have won it. Psylent seemed to think that the opinion of media critics was very important, until it was brought up that some UK media critics viewed the Whitbread as a prestigious award (which is the reputation I’ve always heard of it,) and then he said that the media critics didn’t count anymore or something like that. Which is perfectly fine, if that’s his view, although kind of confusing.

Me, I was using the Whitbread as example of how there is not a cohesive, organized, monolithic literary “crowd.” Whether the Whitbread is actually considered prestigious or literary enough by everyone on the planet was not the point. It is considered that way by some, including critics. If you don’t agree with them, go argue with them about it. No one is forced to accept the value of an award given as their own value – also my point. If you argue with an academic that he must accept as literature whatever book has won the Mann Booker prize that year, he will snicker at you.

I have no interest in proving the literary value of the Whitbread Award or any other award. Please stop attributing positions to me that I do not hold.

 

[Fung Koo]

Oh is that what you were doing?

Yes. That's what I was saying to you about "scripts" in the first rant. That by labelling the war as imaginary and reliant on a scripted program, all you're doing is shifting the war up to a secondary war about the war (and the secondary war is apparently not imaginary?). And that in doing so, the question of "effectiveness" or "the better approach" becomes largely moot, as it's unclear what the goal is of shifting the discussion from the trenches to the boardroom.

I think we were talking about different kinds of effectiveness

Your position has something to do with the effectiveness of the piece at promoting SF without relying on the same-old scripts and thus inadvertently supporting the imaginary either/or genre/literary divide, yeah?

I’m starting to understand why you have some of the views you have. (Re: Editors organizations, or the lack thereof)

Hence the curiosity!

When I was in university, there was a small publisher (Gaspereau Press) that was quite involved with the English Dept. Their editor, and the publishing company generally, had been recognized with a few awards -- I admit, I'm not sure from whom/what, or the nature of the organizations giving the award. So going on the knowledge that publishers/editors do receive awards, I was just curious to know who/what those might have come from.

Plus, there's usually a professional organization of some sort for just about every field in existence these days. The HR push has permeated pretty much every industry. What about the so-called "corporate universities"? Do any of the large publishing houses do internal professional development? And if they do, do any of the houses work together on their PD courses?

Again, just curious.

But I never did claim that because I don’t approach it in those terms. I think you are confusing me with Bond.

I was using the royal "you," referring indirectly to those others who brought it up. Apologies for a lack of clarity there.

The reason I'm arguing with you about this, as opposed to the others, is this:

Psylent: "I don't think I've seen any serious discussion of Harry Potter as big L literature but I'd imagine that's because it obviously isn't Literature."

KatG: "Says you. There are quite a few people who think it is literature with a capital L, and she has won literary awards for the series."​

You go on to call Psylent's version of "literary" subjective in later posts, equatable to anyone else's version of "literary," prompting me to rant about what "literary" actually means within the Literary Community, and why Psylent's point is valid.

In other words, why "Says you" isn't a sufficient argument to equate Psylent's opinion with any other opinion. And I'm not going to simply invalidate myself by giving you another arguably-subjective opinion you can say "Says you" to. My argument is with your equivocation, and the reason why you're doing it, not with the literary-or-not status of the Whitbread.

I understand that your approach is that...

"...there are a lot of different people from different backgrounds, including academics sometimes, media critics and journalists, authors, publishers, and just plain old people who have differing views about what literary means, what books are literary, what awards are truly important – all of it."​

[emphasis mine]

...But I don't think that one can argue that "just plain old people" will typically have as much knowledge of the subject matter to validate their personal, subjective assessment of what "literary" means as equivalent to a professional in the Literary Community.

Yes, you're right -- the professionals in the community at large do not always agree. In fact, they typically disagree because that's the nature of the literary community. But, they do (generally speaking) start from a common platform, within a tradition of discourse, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies surrounding their various sub-specialities within the literary field (which cross over extensively). To validate the layperson's understanding of "literary" as equivalent with a professional/specialist's understanding of "literary" not only invalidates the term and the choice of specialization, but is a populist assertion.

It's tantamount to the difference between DIY home renovations and calling in a Contractor. Your argument that "literary" is broadly subjective, and beholden to the values placed upon it by anyone and everyone is essentially saying that the DIY renovator is the skill and subject-matter equal of the Contractor. (Not that all Contractors are fantastic, knowledgeable professionals by default. But, on average, the Contractor does what they do professionally, and so shows up the job with a higher level of knowledge of their profession and the various rules and/or methodologies relevant to it than is typically the case for your DIY home renovator.)

Or, in terms of the literary community, you may as well place vanity presses an equal level with professional publishing houses.

No, the literary community is not monolithic. And no, it is not packaged in a tiny box. But that doesn't mean that the professional in the literary community is equatable to the layperson.

Please stop attributing positions to me that I do not hold.

The position you hold has been stated as: "the more SFF fans we can get to drop the either/or scripts, the better." So I assume you want me, too, to drop the either/or. That it would be "better" to do so. You argue against the separation between the general populace and the elite. That's populism.

Except that I don't think it's "better." I think it would actually be more damaging to genre lit not to support the divide. Whether they agree or not, or if I agree with them or not, I think the professionals of the literary community represent an informed, qualified voice for the recognition of distinction in the field, moreso than fans or laypersons generally. Fans and laypersons, on the other hand, are the best representation of both grass-roots and marketed popularity in the field, which should inform the assessments of the professionals in the field. Both sides are prone to subjective preference and bias, but that does not make them equally valid or invalid. All of which has nothing to do, really, with Grossman's article, much like your assertion of what would be best.

I can probably agree to disagree. And I could do so because I think the pull toward inclusivity is equally as important as the push for exclusivity. I think that this constant back-and-forth struggle amongst and between professionals and laypersons indicates a healthy body of literature. But in order for that struggle to exist, the divide is necessary.

Where I take issue is the notion that inclusivity is better, especially where it's for the purposes of the annihilation of the divide.

Anyway... it's nothing personal. Just holding my pitchfork and taking part in the war.

 

[Randy M.]

Just a note to say this has been a fascinating discussion. In particular, Fung Koo, you've said a good deal that I would have liked to, but don't have sufficient academic background to state as well. You also pointed out several things I wouldn't have thought of and I found them interesting.

One thing I wondered about, is the shift toward greater attention to genre works in universities also due to generational shift? Certainly that seems to be the way in popular literature -- Michael Chabon, Jonathem Lethem, Stewart O'Nan and others seem to be aware of genre literature in ways previous literary generations either were not or were not willing to admit to. It reminds me a bit of how the Lost Generation of the 1920s gradually took over the university English departments and "suddenly" students were studying authors born after Henry James, contemporary and near-contemporary writers.

Randy M.

 

[KatG]

Yes. That's what I was saying to you about "scripts" in the first rant. That by labeling the war as imaginary and reliant on a scripted program, all you're doing is shifting the war up to a secondary war about the war (and the secondary war is apparently not imaginary?). And that in doing so, the question of "effectiveness" or "the better approach" becomes largely moot, as it's unclear what the goal is of shifting the discussion from the trenches to the boardroom.

Mostly I just ignore it, which works pretty well. But you can call me a cheerleader for the secondary war, if you like, instead of an active participant.

Your position has something to do with the effectiveness of the piece at promoting SF without relying on the same-old scripts and thus inadvertently supporting the imaginary either/or genre/literary divide, yeah?

Um, no. I think it’s no. I’m not really following this. Oh wait, maybe it’s yes.

Do any of the large publishing houses do internal professional development? And if they do, do any of the houses work together on their PD courses?

Hold on, another giggle fit....No, they don’t.

That I disagree with Psylent about the value of Rowling’s writing does not also mean that I think I am Right and Psylent is Wrong and that he should change his views to mine. What happened was this:

1) Bond stated that he believed there was a Literary Establishment including specifically media critics that was intent on knocking Rowling as not literary because she was a genre writer.

2) Psylent said that the Literary Establishment media critics, in his experience, knocked Rowling as not literary because she was a children’s writer, a bad writer in their opinions, or both, and not because she was genre.

3) Psylent then gave his opinion that Rowling’s work wasn’t Literature and he meant it as an opinion, but in my opinion, he didn’t phrase it like an opinion. He phrased it too much as a decree: “ it obviously isn't Literature." That’s why he got the “says you” from me, not because of what his opinion was but because I was pointing out that it’s an opinion – what he says.

4) As part of his declaration, Psylent indicated that the Literary Establishment media critics of the discussion all didn’t regard Rowling’s work as Literature. I disagreed, pointing out not only my own opinion, but that some media critics did regard Rowling as Literature and (not because of, but and,) she had won the Whitbread for children’s literature and some other awards.

5) Psylent then claimed that the Whitbread didn’t count as a literary award. He again phrased this as a decree, not an opinion. (He later qualified it as his opinion, which I appreciated.)

6) Werthead provided information and links that among others, several UK media critics – which so far in the discussion had been considered part of the Literary Establishment – considered the Whitbread to be a literary award.

7) Pyslent then said that those particular media critics didn’t count as part of the Literary Establishment so their opinions didn’t matter.

Basically, instead of stating that X defined group of media critics are part of what he considers the Literary Establishment and they think this about something, and that Y defined group of media critics are not what he considers part of the Literary Establishment and they think this about something, (which would be a proposed hierarchy that he and Bond could argue over until the moon turns blue,) he presented the idea that media critics are part of the Literary Establishment unless he says they are not. So I made a complaint that he doesn’t get takes backseys on his media critics. (However, if Pyslent feels I'm misinterpreting him anyplace here, my apologies.)

As for “just plain old people,” I showed a lack of clarity about what I meant. I meant plain old people as in those who are not in the previous categories listed but who believe they are part of a Literary Establishment and who may be treated as such by some others.

As for the rest of it, I believe we are talking at cross purposes, which is probably my fault. You have your system of elites and populace, inclusive and exclusive, valid and invalid, and equal and not equal, that you keep trying to slot me into. We are probably in sync on certain points, as we usually are, but I don’t think the other members are all that interested in hearing us hash it out (maybe if it was in Gary’s sub-forum.) And so I think instead that I will just ask you to elaborate on your views about Grossman’s article.

 

[Dawnstorm]

His argument was that it was time to move back to or include the Romantics, not the least because some writers were combining Romanticism and Realism, which he cast as a new thing for writers to do.

...funny, he doesn't use the term "Realism" even once.

And, his major point about the Modernists is not that they are Realists, but that their efforts were toward "Depicting life not as it actually happens, but as it's actually experienced" (paraphrased slightly). And that this results in a sort of circumnavigation of plot.

Sigh, fine, Romantics versus Modernists.

It's not so much about the Romantics, which would put expression of feeling over imitation of life. Actually, both the Victorian novelists Grossman talks about and the modernists would call themselves realists to an extent, which is why it's un-necessary to refer to "realism" as such. The victorian mode was confident: Austen could only use her irony, for example, because she was confident she knew what was going on. Modernists called into question that narratorial confidence and replaced it with the notion of reliability of witnesses. Thus: multiple points of view, etc. This is also the decline of authorial intrusion in favour of character point-of-view, by the way (which means the development of third limited as a writing technique, for starters, as well as the cutting down on editorialising in favour of experience - for both omni and first person). As a trend, Grossman has a point here, and to be more specific in so tiny a space is hard.

It's not so much a return to the romantic impulse, as it is a return to rennaisance literary theory - to Aristotelian mimesis and carthasis, which is what modernism has really challenged. (The romantic mode isn't mentioned at all, so I don't know what Grossman might mean by that.)

He's arguing, I suspect, that catharsis has kept better in genre stories than in modernist-influenced novels, which is true enough. But, and this is where Vandermeer jumps in, he's making a category error in the sense that genre isn't incompatible with modernism, and that there is quite a bit of modernist genre stuff.

Again, though, this isn't a vital flaw in Grossman's argument, as he wasn't ruling that out. He's not saying genre is about plot. He's saying plot thrived better in genre novels than in modernist novels, and so - now - we're saving the mainstream from suffocation by modernism by re-importing plot via a merger.

To genre readers, this is re-inventing the wheel - and often not properly understanding roundness. Google for reviews of Oryx and Crake, and you'll find genre reviews that tend to emphasise character as a strength, and mainstream reviews that tend to praise the stunning worldbuilding (which in turn elicits chuckles from a genre-savvy readership). [suggested keywords "Oryx and Crake", "neologisms"]

Grossman's article reminded me a bit of the photonegative of Bruce Sterling's original slipstream article, in which he basically said that SF was running dry but post modernism is picking up the cue. I didn't buy that either, back then.

And here's, then, another flaw of Grossman's article: he talks at length about modernism, and then skips straight to the genre mergers, completely ignoring what critics have called postmodernism, or what Sterling termed slipstream. This is especially puzzling in the light of this line:

In fact the true postmodern novel is here...

The true postmodern novel? As opposed to what?

Does Grossman think "postmodernism" is modernism in drag? Because it's still "difficult"? I think he might.

Which leads me to the most prominent quibble I have: difficulty is relative. For example, I never ever found Kafka hard to read. With Kafka, what you see is what you get. If you cling to your preconceptions of how the world's supposed to work, though...

So, basically, I think that Grossman demonstrates his competence with the pre-modernist and modernist modes of realism; it's a solid summary in that respect. In that little space you can't do a much better job. I might have approached it from a different angle, but that's fine. My major concern is that he might be viewing genre as a source of hard-to-find spare parts, such as plot. Plot may be the salient feature of mysteries, but he's writing fantasy, whose salient feature, I would say, is setting. My concern is that he may be barking up the wrong tree, missing the genre's strengths with that sort of focus. I'm not really disagreeing with much that he's saying; I just think he didn't have much to say about fantasy at all. Maybe he should have talked about adventure stories (which are quite common in fantasy, to be sure)?

 

[KatG]

My bad. Grossman never said specifically about Romantics. I was approaching it from an academic genre as romance fiction angle, but you're right, it isn't accurate (I was trying to summarize frameworks,) and not what Grossman was going for really, so drop the whole thing.

Again, though, this isn't a vital flaw in Grossman's argument, as he wasn't ruling that out. He's not saying genre is about plot. He's saying plot thrived better in genre novels than in modernist novels, and so - now - we're saving the mainstream from suffocation by modernism by re-importing plot via a merger.

To genre readers, this is re-inventing the wheel - and often not properly understanding roundness.

Yes, exactly, although somewhat endearing in a new fantasy writer who's enthusiastic. A little more annoying, however, in a critic. But very usual.

he talks at length about modernism, and then skips straight to the genre mergers, completely ignoring what critics have called postmodernism,

It was sort of a time period distillation, yes -- Victorian age, 1930's and then zip to present day.

Which leads me to the most prominent quibble I have: difficulty is relative.

Yep. But it will be argued that it is because you are brilliant and knowledgeable, you see. Therefore it is not difficult to you. But others, poor souls, find it difficult and run from it screaming into the arms of comfort, like, say, feminist 1970's SF that bears more than a passing resemblance to Atwood's current novel.

My major concern is that he might be viewing genre as a source of hard-to-find spare parts

Well, he's lumping a lot of things into genre, but not specifying what he means, includes in the term. We know it's probably the general categories -- mysteries, SFFH, romance, which are being treated as all the same. Other categories such as coming-of-age, historical fiction, etc., well it's hard to know if they count or some of their titles count and some don't, and so on. Nor is he bothering to deal with YA literature issues, even though he's throwing YA in there too. It's a small space, as you say, so everything into the kitchen sink and divided only in massive generalizations.

Maybe he should have talked about adventure stories (which are quite common in fantasy, to be sure)?

Adventure stories would be closer to an actual movement, like Modernism, certainly. But then what are you going to do with romance? He's got to stuff it all in.

 

[Fung Koo]

One thing I wondered about, is the shift toward greater attention to genre works in universities also due to generational shift?

I suppose that depends on what you mean when you say "generational shift." Are you meaning simply in the contemporaneity sense (that the literature that is "relevant" depends, contextually, on the body of contemporary, common knowledge of those in the literary establishment at the time)? Or, as in the "Gen X" type of generational shift?

If the latter, I could rant at you for hours and hours about how the Gen X, Gen Y, etc, concept is utter bunk.

If the former -- yes.

 

[Randy M.]

I suppose that depends on what you mean when you say "generational shift." Are you meaning simply in the contemporaneity sense (that the literature that is "relevant" depends, contextually, on the body of contemporary, common knowledge of those in the literary establishment at the time)? Or, as in the "Gen X" type of generational shift?

If the latter, I could rant at you for hours and hours about how the Gen X, Gen Y, etc, concept is utter bunk.

If the former -- yes.

No need to rant. This time.

It seems to me that the writers now being touted in newspapers and the general news magazines as 'literary,' and winning Pulitzers, National Book Awards, and the like seem more aware of and open to genre than writers at the same level of acclaim were when I was younger. (And this is part of what I think the head of the Nobel literature committee was criticizing.) From that I'm extrapolating that their contemporaries in academia may also be of like mind and those contemporaries should be gaining some clout by now. They're reaching that age when older profs are either retiring or dying or losing some of their grip on what is/isn't taught in the given college and the weight of the newer generation can turn the reading list in different directions.

Randy M.

 

[Fung Koo]

As for the rest of it, I believe we are talking at cross purposes, which is probably my fault.

Darn right it is!

You have your system of elites and populace, inclusive and exclusive, valid and invalid, and equal and not equal, that you keep trying to slot me into.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

And so I think instead that I will just ask you to elaborate on your views about Grossman’s article.

Fair enough.

Grossman seems painfully unaware of the full breadth of literature and the movements that existed in the arts that gave rise to and/or were concurrent with Modernist texts, and many of the other contemporary issues outside of literature. But, he's supposed to be a heavyweight in the lit crit community, so he might just be selecting his information for any number of reasons (hence the "seems"), so let's ignore the somewhat simplistic view of history and literature for the moment and examine his bigger mistake.

None of the texts he refers to can be regarded as non-narrative. Plot is an essential component of narrative. In the simplest sense, all you have to have to have plot is two or more causally related events. How those events find a causal relation to one another, however, is entirely up the imagination of the author. And, how that relationship is portrayed is likewise in the hands of the author.

Basically, his argument is that narrative fiction with more convoluted plots has been championed by the literary establishment (and has now been overdone, and so has become boring) but is the minority (aka: high-brow, or "literary" lit), while narrative fiction with less convoluted plots has been denigrated by the literary establishment (and is not as boring as it's made it out to be, and is in fact a guilty pleasure) but is the majority (aka: low-brow). In other words, he's comparing two different kinds of apples, both of which he finds partially satisfying for different reasons.

In the end, he's deciding on a third and favourite sort of apple that is a hybrid of the other two.

(That hybrid, it would seem he's implying, is the sort that his novel is. And it was made possible for his novel to see the light of day thanks to those few other examples of the hybrid type from prominent authors. Hence the nice little plug for his new novel at the end of the column...)

So, assuming that we're talking about different sorts of narrative fiction -- all replete with plot -- what do I think about a hybrid High-Brow/Low-Brow form of fiction?

Seems a bit obvious to me, Goldilocks.

The average reader is certainly more broadly literate than they were during the heyday of Modernism, and modernist-style texts that have for so long been championed as the Pinnacle of Literary Achievement have been done to death and so have fallen off the peak of the mountain due to natural boredom, anyway. Something else will, of course, take its place -- there's always some new fad based on some (supposedly) new style/approach/whatever. Should it be the mystical High-Brow/Low-Brow hybrid of great, imaginative writing that also manages to be straight forward and consumable by anyone and everyone?

Duh! That's the whole friggin' idea of the mythical Great <Insert.Country> Novel!

So, I think Grossman is just saying the same old BS that everyone has always been saying. That oh-so Bohemian ideal of Truth and Beauty packaged into something Truly Beautiful. Here we are, once again, in pursuit of the perfect text that manages to be popular, consumable, and low-brow enough to appeal to the masses, but literate and creative enough to be regarded with appreciation by the literary snobs....

Aka: The Constant Search for the next Shakespeare.

Yay...

Anyway, as a literary/genre argument, I wouldn't call this piece ineffective so much as I would call it irrelevant.

But really, the point is to promote his new novel, while making him seem intelligent and knowledgeable about literature... Wait, I think maybe that means he's trying to seem literary!

But the advertising has at least gotten me interested enough that I'll consider reading his book since I, like most people, really enjoy a well-written-enough-to-challenge-me yet not-too-challenging-to-follow and thoroughly-entertaining yarn.