This Week in Google Alerts: R.A. Lafferty

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 17 Apr 2012, 18:27 · from 2012-April.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:27:40 -0700
Subject: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: R.A. Lafferty
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It is not that Wolfe's female characters fail to follow some template
-- rather that they _do_ follow a template, the Goddess-Virgin-Whore
cliche. His female characters do not seem to have independent (of male
characters) personalities and existence. (On the rare occasions you
get two females talking alone to each other it is more often than not
about the men.)

On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 11:21 AM, Antonin Scriabin
<kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would you care to elaborate?? I have always had a hard time swallowing this
> critique, regardless of the author.? It seems to imply that female
> characters in fiction should act according to some preexisting template, and
> that it is a failing on the part of the author to not follow that template.
> Fictional characters "can" act however the author wants or needs them to,
> correct?? If Wolfe (or any other author) chooses to have all his female
> characters be very similar to one another and display the same quirks or
> character flaws, that is just repetitive writing, which is a very different
> problem than "not knowing how to write women characters".? Put another way;
> perhaps we never hear of women authors who "can't write men" because it is
> less ingrained that male characters ought to act a certain way.
>
> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 2:11 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Sergei SOLOVIEV wrote:
>> > What are the "lows" of Wolfe, to your opinion?
>>
>> Well, one would be his female characters.
>>
>> --
>> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
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>
>
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-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

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