"Edward L. Ferman - Best From F&SF, 23rd Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferman Edward L)

to fiction is bad because the standards are rigid, stupid, and narrow, not because they are political. For
an example of (to my mind) profound, searching, brilliant, political criticism, see Jean-Paul Sartre's Saint
Genet.
2. You don't prove what you say; you just assert it.
This statement is, I think, based on a cognitive error inculcated (probably) by American high school
education. The error is that all proofs must be of the "hard" kind, i.e., cut-and-dried and susceptible of
presentation in syllogistic form. An acquaintance with the modern philosophy of science would disabuse
people of this notion; even a surprising amount of scientific proof is not of this kind. As philosophers since
Plato have been pointing out, aesthetic and moral matters are usually not susceptible of such "hard" proof.
3. Then your opinion is purely subjective.
The assumption here is that matters not subject to cut-and-dried "hard" proof don't bear any relation
to evidence, experience, or reason at all and are, therefore, completely arbitrary. There is considerable
indirect evidence one can bring against this view. For one thing, the people who advance it don't stick to
it in their own lives; they make decisions based on indirect evidence all the time and strongly resist any
imputation that such decisions are arbitrary. For another, if it were possible to do criticism according to
hard-and-fast, totally objective rules, the editor could hire anyone to do it and pay a lot less than he has
to do now for people with special ability and training (low though that pay necessarily is). It's true that the
apparatus by which critics judge books is subjective in the sense of being inside the critic and not outside,
unique, and based on the intangibles of training, talent, and experience. But that doesn't per se make it
arbitrary. What can make it seem arbitrary is that the whole preliminary process of judgment, if you trace
it through all its stages, is coextensive with the critic's entire education. So critics tend to suppress it in
reviews (with time and training most of it becomes automatic, anyway). Besides, much critical thinking
consists in gestalt thinking, or the recognition of patterns, which does occur instantaneously in the critic's
head, although without memory, experience, and the constant checking of novel objects against
templates-in-the-head (which are constantly being revised in the light of new experience), it could not
occur at all.* [* I used to inform people of the endings of television plays (before the endings happened)
until my acquaintances gently but firmly informed me they would rather the endings came as a surprise.
When asked bow I knew what was coming, by friends who enjoyed such an odd talent (and some do), I
could explain only pan of the time. The cues people respond to hi fiction or drama are complex and
people are not always fully conscious of them.]
Hence angry readers can make the objection above, or add:
4. Everyone's entitled to his own opinion.
Have you noticed how often people say "I feel" instead of "I think" or (God forbid) "I know"? Kids
who discover "It's a free country!" at seven graduate to "Everyone's entitled to his own opinion" by
fourteen. The process of intimidation by which young people are made to feel humanly worthless if they
don't appreciate "great literature" (literature the teacher often doesn't understand or can't explain)! is one
of the ghastly facts of American education. Some defenses against this experience take the form of
asserting there's no such thing as great art; some, that whatever moves one intensely is great art. Both are
ways of asserting the primacy and authenticity of one's own experience, and that's fine. But whatever you
(or I) like intensely isn't, just because of that, great anything, and the literary canon, although incomplete
and biased, is not merely an insider's snobbish conspiracy to make outsiders feel rotten. (Although it is
certainly used that way far too often.)
The problem with literature and literary criticism is that there is no obvious craft involvedтАФso people
who wouldn't dream of challenging a dance critic's comments on an assoluta's line or a prima donna's
musicianship are conscious of no reason not to dismiss mine on J. R. R. Tolkien. We're all dealing with
language, after all, aren't we? But there is a very substantial craft involved here, although its material isn't
toes or larynxes. And some opinions are worth a good deal more than others.
5. I knew it, You're a snob.
Science fiction is a small country which for years has maintained a protective standards-tariff to
encourage native manufactures. Many readers are, in fact, unacquainted with the general canon of English