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This Week in Google Alerts: R.A. Lafferty

Antonin Scriabin · 17 Apr 2012, 18:34 · from 2012-April.txt.gz

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From: kierkegaurdian at gmail.com (Antonin Scriabin)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:34:31 -0400
Subject: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: R.A. Lafferty
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How would you classify Cassie and Holly Hollander?  Cassie is concerned
with men to an extent, but it isn't the most defining part of her
personality.  The latter is, in my opinion, one of the more unique of
Wolfe's first person narrators.

On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 2:27 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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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