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

X, or that I expect its real, historical author to rewrite it to Byline's prescription, any more than my saying
that "my" copy of Bug Jack Ban-on tried to punch "me" in the nose means that such an event really
happened. Pauline Kael's Movie Loon is another such fiction; these little creatures we send scurrying
about the page are not our real, live selves, and their exploits are dictated more by the exigencies of our
form than by a desire for personal glory.
7. Never mind all that stuff. Just tell me what I'd enjoy reading.
Bless you, what makes you think I know? (See, there goes Byline.) Actually, critics can make
educated guesses from time to time about the tastes of some groups of readers. Editors must, such
judgments being their bread and butterтАФand look how often they fail. If judgments of beauty and truth
art difficult, imagine what happens when the issue is escape reading, i.e., something as idiosyncratic as
guided daydreams. Perhaps the popularity of series novels is due in part to readersтАЩ desire for a reliable,
easily reproducible pleasure. [Though Dune is, strictly speaking, science fiction. Wilson was talking about
tbe-gnat-kader syndrome, and the heroic atmosphere Dune shares with heroic fantasy.] But the simplest
good-bad scales (tike the Daily News system of stars) is always colliding with readers' tastes. Some
writers and publishers, in order to be sure of appealing to at least a stable fraction of the market,
standardize their product This can be done, but it tends to eliminate from fiction these idiosyncratic
qualities other readers find valuable, art being of an order of complexity nearer to that of human beings
(high) than that of facial tissues (low).
Now back to the topic of heroic fantasy, which occasioned the foregoing.
I know it's painful to be told that something in which one has invested intense emotion is not only bad
art but bad for you, not only bad for you but ridiculous. I didn't do it to be mean, honest Nor did I do it
because the promise held out by heroic fantasyтАФthe promise of escape into a wonderful Other
worldтАФis one I find temperamentally unappealing. On the contrary. It's because I understand the
intensity of the demand so well (having spent my twenties reading Eddison and Tolkien; I even adapted
The Hobbit for the stage) that I also understand the absolute impossibility of ever fulfilling that demand.
The current popularity of heroic fantasy scares me; I believe it to be a symptom of political and cultural
reaction due to economic depression. So does Robin Scott Wilson (who electrified a Modem Language
Association seminar by calling Dune a fascist book), and Michael Moorcock (see his jacket copy for
Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, a novel which vehemently denounces the genre in the same terms
Wilson does), and the writers of Bored of the Rings, the Lampoon parody, from which came
"Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt"
Briefly, to answer other statements in the letters: I apologize for implying that Tolkien's hobbits and
Ents (or his other bucolic-comic creations) are as empty-sublime as the Big People's heroics. But I agree
(see question 5) that Tolkien is a good, interesting, minor writer whose strong point is his paysages
moralists. Ditto C S. Lewis, in his Narnia books. As for other writers mentioned, only strong, selective
blindness could miss the Vancian cynicism or the massive Dunsanian irony (sometimes spilling over into
despair) which make their heroism far from simple or unquestioned-by-the-authors-them-selves. As for
the others, I find them ghastly when uncorrected by i comedy, or satire (Morris, sometimes), or (in
Beagle's case) the nostalgic wistfulness which belongs to fantasy per se rather than the publisher's
category (that, historically, is what it is) of heroic fantasy. I don't need to bad-mouth Pool Andersen,
James Blish having already adequately done so, calling him (in his heroic phase) "the Thane of
Minneapolis. . . . Anderson can write well, but this is seldom evident while he is in his Scand avatar,
when he seems invariably to be writing in his sleep." (The Issue at Hand, p. 72.) That our literary heritage
began with feudal epics and marchen is no reason to keep on writing them forever. And daydreams
about being tall, handsome (or beautiful), noble, admired, and involved in thrilling deeds is not the same
as the as-if speculation which produces medical and technological advances.
It isn't the realists who find life dreadful. It's the romancers. After all, which group is trying to escape
from life? Reality is horrible and wonderful, disappointing and ecstatic, beautiful and ugly. Reality is
everything. Reality is what there is. Only the hopelessly insensitive find reality so pleasant as to never
want to get away from it But pain-killers can be bad for the health, and even if they were not, I am