{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/54",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 54,
    "subject": "Gene Wolfe flames and reviews",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1986-02-14T11:11:09+00:00",
    "last": "1986-02-14T11:11:09+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v11-33-8@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David desJardins",
        "address": "desj at brahms.berkeley.edu"
      },
      "date": "1986-02-14T11:11:09+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: Gene Wolfe flames and reviews",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "benn at sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (T Cox)\nwrites [in reply to my reply to a reply to a query about the Book of\nthe New Sun, in which I criticized the one who replied for insulting\nthose who didn't consider it the best SF novel ever written (best I\ncan do; if you missed the original posting just give up...)]:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Flame on."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "You total bozos.  I really cannot understand such gross stupidity\nin people who would otherwise strike me as bright: readers of\nSF/Fantasy stories.  You amaze me.\n      You can swallow spiders on Mars.  You can read the future\nhistory of the Earth a million hears hence without blinking.  You\ncan handle the twisting and writhing of every physical law of the\nuniverse.  And then, then you fall flat on your collective faces\nwhen someone uses strong rhetoric.  This is too much."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "   We are talking about two different things here.  One is\nsuspension of disbelief when reading fiction.  All of us clearly\naccept this or we would not read SF.  But this has nothing to do\nwith the case we are discussing.  The original poster noted that he\nhad not particularly enjoyed the first two volumes of BONS, and\nasked what other people saw in it.  The reply said nothing about\nwhat was good about the book, just that everyone should think that\nit is the best SF ever written and insulted those who didn't\n(clearly including the original poster, since he had already stated\nthat he didn't particularly appreciate the book)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "The original poster, whose article has long since vanished from my\nsite, said things like \"there never has been, nor ever could be, an\nauthor as gifted as this one.\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The actual quote which you are paraphrasing was:\nkrantz at csd2.UUCP (Michaelntz) writes:\n\"Gene Wolfe is, quite simply, the best novelist ever to write in the\nscience fiction genre.  His prose, his ideas - all of it.  The best.\nHands down.\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Do you think he was serious?  Of course not!  Great horned toads of\nJupiter!  This is called, now read slowly here, exaggeration.\nEveryone catch that?  He was overstating the case for dramatic\neffect.  Something any author can do through the mouth of a\ncharacter without surprising any one of you.  But let someone make\na sweeping generalization on the net, and everyone jumps down his\nthroat.  Stupid, stupid, stupid."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "   Your paraphrase is clearly an exaggeration.  The original quote\nis not.  It and the rest of the reply can all be taken as meaning\nexactly what they say: heaped praise on BONS and insults for those\nwho do not appreciate it.  Frankly, I consider it the responsibility\nof the poster to tell us if he doesn't mean what he says, or better\nyet not to post at all.  If for some reason you are not willing to\nsay what you mean, I think most people would prefer that you just\nkeep your mouth shut instead of making a fool of yourself."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Now we're going to have a little test here.  I am going to write\nsomething that will be an exaggeration.  I will do it for dramatic\neffect.  Ready?  Take your time.  Don't get excited; it's only\nexaggeration.  It's just a rhetorical device.  Now brace\nyourselves.\n      Not one of you is worthy of posting to sf-lovers, you\n      narrow-minded, gullible GITS!  How literal-minded and\n      dense can a human being be?!?  You are not worthy of\n      even READING this newsgroup!  I banish you all forth-\n      with to the purgatory of net.philosophy, net.religion.\n      christian, net.women, and net.cooks!  Begone!\nThere, that wasn't so bad, was it?  A little warm, but hardly\nthreatening to the discriminating reader."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "   The OED defines rhetoric as \"The art of using language to\npersuade or influence others....\"  The above does neither; it only\ninsults.  If you wrote the above in a context in which it could be\ntaken seriously I *would* take it seriously, which means that, as\nits author, I would cease to take *you* seriously."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Flame off.  May the elementals of fire be appeased."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Please, fellow readers, next time someone uses strong language the\nway the original poster did, to make an obviously silly sweeping\ngeneralization, remember that there are people in the world who use\nthat kind of phrasing all the time, in normal conversation.  Just\nbecause you don't, that doesn't mean others cannot.  And if it gets\nunder your skin, that is not the other guy's fault.  If the\noriginal poster had been a green-tentacled alien from, say, Planet\n10, you'd not have reacted that way.  Shame on you all."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "   I say what I mean.  Each person has the right, and the\nresponsibility, to say whatever he wants.  If he chooses to say\nsomething other than what he means, is it our responsibility to\ndecide what he \"really\" meant?\n   And, no matter how the original reply was meant (which I maintain\nit is not my responsibility to decipher), my objection remains.  To\nreply to a posting which says, \"I didn't like X much, but I would\nlike to hear why other people liked it,\" with statements insulting\nthose who dislike X instead of describing what you like about X (as\nothers have done in this case) is completely unacceptable to me.\n\nDavid desJardins"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}