Not at all, I didn't say Clifford Simak was a "shit writer" because I noted that All Flesh Is Grass fell apart at the end, you can say the same thing about Huckleberry Finn, many of the books by Thornton Wilder, to name but a few. Even great writers, even in some of their otherwise best work have not been able to end them well. And even great writers can write a bad book. When I read Katherine Anne Porter's essay about her friend, the very fine writer Eudora Welty and she pointedly excluded the book "The Ponder Heart" from those she endorsed as superior I agreed entirely, it is a bad book that doesn't come near her other work. I was astonished when I read it that she'd written it. I didn't say anything bad about Ursula Le Guin's books though to pretend the best of them come up to the top level of literature is just stupid. It would be as stupid as to pretend that H. G. Wells was as good a writer as Thomas Hardy, Isaac Asimov as good as James Baldwin.
The lazy habit of thought that divides the world, art, literature, into the super-stupendous-world-class-ultra-great and crap is ubiquitous, probably so because it's easier than to not be so lazy-ass stupid. Much professional, commercial criticism is based in such lazy-ass-stupid related to marketing.
While I have come to vehemently deny that books, literature, any object have rights as People and other living creatures do, they do share that feature with People, that they are a generally mixed bag at their best, the authors who write them as well. We are all fallible sinners. I doubt there are many authors who write even four great books, those being the very greatest authors. Then they might write a number of good but not great books, good books having more problems than great books do. And there are different levels of greatness and goodness. Then you come to the merely entertaining, the most popular level of literature which goes from, at times, very, very good down to crap. Some of the crap is some of the most popular, that happens in standard literature as well as sci-fi. And that's books on paper. When it's transferred to a movie treatment, generally, though not always, it's right into the gutter.
I'm hoping to get back to Hans Kung later today.
Read a lot of Asimov as a kid, thought he was a great writer. Read him again as an adult, decided he sucked. YMMV, but I'll read Hardy again, but never Asimov. He wasn't much of a thinker, either.
ReplyDeleteWas re-reading Yeats last night. He's not popular, but he's one of the greatest writers in English. There is a difference. Asimov was popular when he was alive. I don't see his work lasting, however.
I had that experience in reading Bertrand Russell. There were a few since fiction books I read when I was young but for some reason I've never really cared for fantasy fiction. I did like reading historical fiction but I thought people could tell the difference between fiction and reality, I think it's a lot more dangerous than I'd have believed when I was younger.
DeletePeople don't read poetry, apart from the facile form of it in pop song lyrics, it doesn't impinge on the lives of most allegedly educated Americans. I think most poetry is read by other poets. You can say the same thing about most current classical music.