# More Ghastliness *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 29 Jun 2001* > 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. --- ### Alice Turner *29 Jun 2001, 11:25* In the current (July/August, first ever double ish that I know of, not a good sign) Atlantic Monthy there is a long bracingly splenetic rant or manifesto about the current sorry state of American fiction by someone named B.R. Myers. I wouldn't bring this up on the list (though I loved it for its crankiness), as it is about mainstream fiction, except for an aside so odd, near the end, that I must quote: "...many of the adults who enjoy Harry Potter would be even happier with Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy (1946-1959) if only they knew about it." Huh? This struck such a jarring note that it threw all the preceding into doubt. Absolutely the only thing that the Rowling and Peake books have in common is that they are both fantasy, and one would have to have an ear of sheer tin to connect them. Since Myers does not appear to have a tin ear, I would guess that Peake is the only fantasy he has ever read, that he has only heard about Potter, and that no one on the editorial staff was familiar with both writers. Any other opinions? -alga --- ### Kevin J. Maroney *29 Jun 2001, 12:01 · follows Alice Turner* > At 11:25 AM 6/29/01 -0400, Alga wrote: > Huh? This struck such a jarring note that it threw all the preceding > into doubt. Absolutely the only thing that the Rowling and Peake books > have in common is that they are both fantasy, and one would have to have > an ear of sheer tin to connect them. Since Myers does not appear to have > a tin ear, I would guess that Peake is the only fantasy he has ever > read, that he has only heard about Potter, and that no one on the > editorial staff was familiar with both writers. Any other opinions? That sounds like a very probable guess. Throw in a dash of "anything must be better than Harry Potter" and you're probably 99% correct. ``` Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin J. Maroney kmaroney at ungames.com Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction http://www.nyrsf.com ``` ---