This Week in Google Alerts: Will No One Rid Me Of This Troublesome Writer?

Gwern Branwen · 10 May 2011, 03:30 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 23:30:54 -0400
Subject: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Will No One Rid Me Of This
	Troublesome Writer?
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=dQua4Hvxh0YtYxFsTq0EE3P=D3g at mail.gmail.com>

Just in time for Gene's birthday celebrations:
http://foreverness.createforumhosting.com/what-to-do-about-gene-wolfe-t337.html

> This is driving me nuts. I'm far beyond my limit of tolerance for cover-jacket blurbs declaring Gene Wolfe to be "... the greatest writer in the English language alive today." and "... there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning." That's Michael Swanwick's embarrassing fawning, which has apparently become required promotional jibber-jabber for every book Wolfe gets published. Other literary critics who don't know anything about science fiction take this at face value, and occasionally regurgitate it with their own variations, completely oblivious to Jack Vance's work. And, readers new to science fiction (or speculative fiction if you prefer) are being grossly misled. They're amazed by the pebble but aren't told about the mountain. Don't get me wrong; I don't dislike Gene Wolfe's writing. I pounce on every new chunk of fiction he comes up with. I'll go so far as to say that his "The Book of the New Sun" is required reading for anyone who believes that some sci-fi is serious literature equal to the best in mainstream fiction. But, Wolfe is derivative. He obviously used Vance as a starting point, whereas Vance developed his literary voice independently. Vance is authentic and original, and Wolfe is the brilliant student. It's true that Wolfe's most recent work seems to be moving in a direction that is more of Wolfe himself and less of Vance's style and technique. Hopefully, Wolfe's future works will be ships with a wind in their sails that flows from Wolfe's lungs alone. But we're still being pounded over the head with the uninformed blather of Swanwick, et al. What to do? Who will sound the trumpet for Vance? Who will illuminate Vance's status as the progenitor?

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

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