That is just a great post, thank you for the effort. I’m going to put that in the whole mental cabinet and refer to it if this subject ever comes up! If I recall Gene Wolfe mentioned the “taste makers” as well. One of the things he pointed out was that the taste makers usually dug things like the Odyssey, but anything modern dasn’t contain fantastic elements lest it be considered garbage.
Anyhow I never come across folks who are jumping up and down to want to tell me all about this new novel concerning mundane folks self-loathing in their mundane world. I run across people exited about the fantastic new sci-fi/fantasy book they just discovered or rediscovered all the time. Maybe it’s the company I keep, but I reckon something more might be going on. I can live with either.
“Way past time to shut up. Your serve.”
I hope you like Pabst Blue Ribbon, selected as America’s Best in 1893.
Freegards
Not much effort involved, sir--I blather my opinions incessantly at the drop of the proverbial (or literal) hat!
One of the things he pointed out was that the taste makers usually dug things like the Odyssey, but anything modern dasn’t contain fantastic elements lest it be considered garbage.
.The Odyssey comes pre-approved, and is one of the world's certificate-bearing classics, so it's safe (in fact, obligatory) to praise it. It's the same for HG Wells and Jules Verne--they're school-approved must-read (literally: you must read them!) classics. As for the newer stuff, a lot of it hasn't been around long enough for enough of the Right People to consume them and excrete the orthodox opinion which will be assimilated unthinkingly by the goose-stepping grunts and promulgated as doctrine.
Anyhow I never come across folks who are jumping up and down to want to tell me all about this new novel concerning mundane folks self-loathing in their mundane world.
There is no joy in Mudville, which is where most of these self-orbiting scroonts stumble somnambulistically through what they like to imagine as their lives. There will be no joy in Mudville, if they have anything to do with it! I mentioned that, a couple or so years ago, British readers chose The Lord of the Rings as the novel of the twentieth century--encouraging to me, as if suggests that the British have not yet (and fatally) lost touch with Reality.
But the taste-makers and somber critics of Mudville would not have this! There wasn't much they could actually do about it, as the choice had been made, and stood--but they could lecture and complain about the choice. Apparently, the greatest weakness of the book was that so many people loved it! And in Mudville, the innate quality of a book is in inverse proportion to the number of people who like it--'cause, see, people (according to the Mudvillians) are mostly stupid cattle, and whatever lots of people like is automatically bad! They have not been given the gnosis--their tastes have not been made, but simply allowed to grow, as natural things will do until you take the hoe to 'em.
Other "more deserving" novels were suggested to the benighted British reading masses, and included the list of the usual suspects: James Joyce, Virginia Wolfe, Hemingway, et al., ad infinitum--anyone but the one they had chosen and loved. I suspect the taste-makers' reaction were based not so much on literary quality as on the same reason that the Chinese government has recently banned (yes, banned!) time-travel fiction on Chinese TV--because you shall not, even in your imagination, prefer a China different from or (how dare one even think it?) perhaps better than the one in which you are currently and gloriously living? There shall be no escape! There shall not be even the dreams of escape!
Well, like I said: blather on endlessly.
I hope you like Pabst Blue Ribbon, selected as America’s Best in 1893.
As a matter of fact, I am partial to Pabst Blue Ribbon, but haven't had a bottle in years! You've given me an idea . . .