i keep saying i'll have more cogent things to say about this, but till then...

[fictional]

Check out deepad's post, I Didn't Dream of Dragons, a thoughtful, lucid, poignant essay on race and reading fantasy.

Excerpt from my comment:

But here is my problem, and that problem is love. Brought up on a steady diet of white fantasy and British boarding school novels, now, even when I can identify the alienation imposed by them -- these are stories by people who think of me as sub-human -- I still love them. They are still the fabric of my childhood, the patterns of my inner landscape. It's like Stockholm Syndrome.

And I still don't know what to do with that? How does one cope with the politics of desire?

Comments

[sykii.livejournal.com]

That was the textual equivalent of taking a crap in someone's living room. I hope it made you feel big and powerful.
Also, the statement that people who read literature also read genre fiction, but people who read genre fiction don't read literature actually makes no logical sense in any universe.
Concern troll for the lose.

No logical sense in any universe...

[gement.livejournal.com]

Say it with me, kids, "Literary fiction is a genre, with identifiable tropes, settings, and patterns of language." It is not some magical better-than-you form of writing. Refer to RM's comment for more details.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Oh, I absolutely agree with that.
My point was that even if one accepts the (false) premise that they are distinct categories, it defies logic to say (about any two behaviors) that people who do A almost always do B, but that people who do B almost never do A.
It's not just bad lit crit; it's bad common sense.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing* Oh, I love you. That is not very literary, but true nevertheless.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Sorry, sorry. I wasn't attempting to correct you, but to agree with you and expand on your thought.

It doesn't entirely defy logic to say "People who do A at least 80% of the time are less likely to spend the remaining 20% on B than vice versa," though. I just don't think it happens to be true in this case.

Mostly because I know a lot of lit fic readers who wouldn't touch a "genre" book with a ten foot pole and try to rationalize why books like The Eyre Affair aren't actually sci-fi so they can read them. Man, I hate those people.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

What you say is true, and it was perhaps disingenuous of me to nit-pick his words when the meaning could be inferred, but if he's going to harass other people about their choice of reading material (and in such a paternalistic fashion), he should at least be precise in stating his arguments.

Trying to rationalize why books like The Eyre Affair aren't actually sci-fi

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Or write them.*cough*

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Also, Rushdie? Rushdie does not prove the point.

*laughs* Haroun ftw.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Yes. Your point about magical realism was also ftw. I mean, really.

That lowbrow E. T. A. Hoffmann and his trashy genre fiction!

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

And it's STOOPID.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, there is that, too :)