Donn Gash wrote:
I like mustard.
Yellow? Dijon? Spicy Brown? Horseradish? Come on man, we need details!
I'm too stupid to read horror.
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 ahuber |
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Posts: 196 (06/02/08 17:27:01) |
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TMWright.gorezone |
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Posts: 171 (06/02/08 17:40:04) |
Dill.
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 NewmanJames |
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Posts: 3519 (06/02/08 17:49:04) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
Donn Gash wrote:
LOL! Fucker. J.N.
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nkalanta |
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Posts: 12524 (06/02/08 18:23:32) Queen of Horror World
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I prefer mayo
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ahuber |
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Posts: 198 (06/02/08 18:27:01) |
nkalanta wrote: Yeah, condiments are pretty fucking great.
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Shocklines |
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Posts: 28160 (06/02/08 18:51:49) Administrator |
marksamuels wrote:
Fair enough. I think I can find 100 titles that didn't fit the description you made, but yes, they weren't all brilliant. But tell me -- how easy do
you think it is to list hundreds of novels that you know for a fact fit the description YOU made? Hundreds is a lot. Was I exaggerating? Maybe, but no more
than you. Did you really read hundreds of novels from that time that fit your description?
Basically, what I'm saying is this -- when I go through that period of time of horror, I find a TON of horror that takes chances and tries new
things.Now, granted, a lot of those were PACKAGED generically. You might not know Michael Blumlein's XY is brilliant genre-breaking fiction from the
package. And The Jim-Jams LOOKS like silly stupid monster horror even though it's one of the best mixes of horror and humor I've read, and being one of
the only horror novels I've ever read to treat the elderly so...humanly. And of course, I'm sure if it wasn't so well known, most people would
look at THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and assume it's garbage from that cover.
And what I"m saying is that the TYPE of horror had nothing to do with which ones stuck around and which ones went out of print. I think you're
letting your feelings about one type of fiction that you don't like be the whipping boy for something that is actually much more complex.
Shocklines.com -- your one-stop shop for hell on earth
Last Edited By: Shocklines
06/02/08 18:54:58.
Edited 1 times.
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LeatherZebra |
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Posts: 563 (06/02/08 19:40:00) Veteran Shockliner |
Personally, I could deal with the anti-intellectual label. I'm not a critic, I'm a consumer, and we are (when it comes to buying books and thus
supporting the author) more important. I call a book good because I liked it. Because I thought it was good.
What I see here is a difference of opinion and people assuming that someone voicing the opinion is voicing fact. Do we really need to be absolutely explicit here and prelim everything with "In my opinion this was a good book?" or "I think it has merit because I liked it?" Isn't it the antithesis of an intellectual discussion to take everything completely literally? Or do intellectuals assume that in discussion one only speaks in completely back-up-able, absolute facts? When it comes to "good" and "not good" there are no facts. None. There are just opinions. Certainly many people think James Joyce was "good", heck, or even Tolkien is the classic example of "good" fantasy. But all that "good" in the world didn't help me get through either "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" or "The Hobbit" and think that either one was of any literary merit. If I have to suffer the label of an anti-intellectual because I think this way, well who cares? This isn't their life. They don't get enjoyment or frustration from what I read, I do. So why should care if someone on the internet thinks I'm intelligent or not? >>"Intelligence does not eliminate, it invites." I really like that. And yes, I too have run into people who use their schooling to make others feel insignificant. They can't do it if you summarily dismiss them as being insignificant to your life and outlook. |
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JerrodBalzer |
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Posts: 2008 (06/02/08 22:12:51) Keeper of Tootsie Pops |
Mustard totally kicks ass in potato salad.
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Sabledrake |
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Posts: 1040 (06/02/08 23:10:05) Master Shockliner |
njhorror wrote: Heck, half the time some of us don't even agree with ourselves on any kind of consistent basis. Also, I like trashy books. Trashy books and disaster movies. Bring it on! -- C. |
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AdamB |
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Posts: 81 (06/03/08 01:09:39) |
LeatherZebra wrote: |
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Karen Koehler |
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Posts: 1682 (06/03/08 01:35:25) Shocklineraholic |
nkalanta wrote: I always knew there was something wrong with Nanci.
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Michael Johnston |
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Posts: 85 (06/03/08 01:55:24) |
AdamB wrote: But it many cases it often is just that - personal opinion. While there are literary 'greats' which few would argue lack literary merit (although
some still do), there is a vast swathe of work that is not so easy to characterize. It is not merely a choice between "crap" or "Joycean"
on the merit 'scale'. Literary merit is notoriously difficult to define and all too often comes down to personal opinion (often based on or influenced
by what is currently fashionable in literary circles), although that does not mean we shouldn't attempt such definition. In the case of Joshi/Koontz; Joshi
is perfectly entitled to hold the opinion that Koontz lacks literary merit. However, Joan Kotker (Dean Koontz: A Critical
Companion) or Bill Munster (Sudden Fear: The Horror and Dark Suspense Fiction of Dean R. Koontz &
Discovering Dean Koontz) would, no doubt, argue differently. Similarly, while Joshi might argue that Lovecraft's
work possesses great literary merit, you wouldn't have to search too far to find a literary critic who would dismiss it as purple-prosed, pulpy, genre
crap.
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Steve Vernon Nova Scotia |
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Posts: 7200 (06/03/08 02:09:44) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
Ketchup, baby, ketchup. Pour it on.
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John Morrissey |
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Posts: 2873 (06/03/08 02:21:00) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
I'm too stupid to post!
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marksamuels |
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Posts: 880 (06/03/08 02:30:54) Master Shockliner |
Fair enough. I think I can find 100 titles that didn't fit the description you made, but yes, they weren't all brilliant. But tell me -- how easy do you think it is to list hundreds of novels that you know for a fact fit the description YOU made? Hundreds is a lot. Was I exaggerating? Maybe, but no more than you. Did you really read hundreds of novels from that time that fit your description? You see, I think we've been here before when it comes to this point. No, I haven't read hundreds of horror novels from the 1980s. But I've read enough of a representative sample to form an opinion and this, in conjunction with noting the well-informed judgement of those critics (for example Joshi and Robert Weinberg in his History of 20th Century Horror) who have read much more widely than me, is why I take the position I do. Now, of course, one could argue that I had better form my own judgement on the matter and read all the hundreds of horror novels turned out in the 1980s. But, you see, that's not my function; it's the function of a critic to do so since they are engaged in the creation of a standard upon which horror fiction can be judged in terms of its literary merit. There are other ways in which a reader can judge a work, and in which they can attribute merit (on the grounds of entertainment value, for example). But this is beside the point. Entertainment value is not the same as literary merit.
But we're talking about an analysis of a whole swathe of horror novels published in the 1980s. It's simply not the case that the publishers were slipping vast numbers of works of intrinsic literary merit into print under the umbrella of "horror". What they were doing was publishing vast numbers of works that were specifically written at that time in order to correspond with a publisher-driven demand for formulaic writing. Of course works from earlier periods were still in print, or reprinted during the 1980s and were meretorious in literary terms, and, of course, there were exceptions when it comes to people like Tryon when it comes to authors producing work in that period (doubtless a dozen others could be named). But the fact of the matter is that "horror" was primarily regarded as a commercial marketing tool in order to sell books, irrespective of their literary merit, and the majority of books issued at that time followed the trend. I'm not making a value judgement about this, in terms of saying "ha! if you read that type of horror and enjoy it, then you're selling yourself short", rather I am calling (and so are many others here, I feel) for a distinction to be made between intrinsic literary merit and entertainment value. Of course, it's entirely possible for these two aspects to overlap, but again it's entirely possible from them to become separated. In the case of what happened during the horror boom of the 1980s, I contend that the emphasis swung much more towards entertainment value and away from literary merit. How was this different from other decades? The difference lies, not in the fact that the same volume of horror novels were turned out in the 1960s or 1970s, because they weren't, but rather that the 1980s saw an interest that resulted in a mad scramble to bring out as many horror titles as possible, and as a consequence, these were published irrespective of literary merit. Again I'm not claiming that these books weren't entertaining. What I am saying is that in the end they underestimated the reading public's intelligence by assuming that horror writing was primarily a kind of magic commercial formula that could be repeated again and again, with the same profits. It didn't work. Mark S. |
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Michael Johnston |
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Posts: 86 (06/03/08 03:19:00) |
BTW, if the horror community seeks to encourage writers of real literary merit, rather than hacks like Koontz and Laymon, they should stop making said hacks
HWA President and giving them Stokers and stuff. You know it only encourages them.
 
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Laymon fan |
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Posts: 456 (06/03/08 04:48:55) |
Jack, thank you for taking the time to respond so extensively to my post. Still, if it distracted you from unnecessarily criticising a piece
of fiction that was written purely for entertainment purposes then it wasn't a complete waste of time was it? It's a shame you missed the humour in my post but, given your explanation of "Jackula", clearly your sense of humour is on an entirely different level to mine. While I now realise that I misunderstood the term "anti-intellectual" (though your labelling me as such indicates a misunderstanding of my post) the terminology used was never at issue, at least on my part. The point, again, is that you obviously intended it as an insult to me, and you only posted it directed specifically at me elsewhere rather than on the board where you would reasonably expect me see it. I say you mis-labelled me because, despite your quoting of my post in the Joshi on Koontz thread, I was not saying I have anything against
literary criticism in general. The opinion I was attempting to express, in that specific post, was that *to me* it seems like a pointless exercise which takes
the fun (and I use that word deliberately) out of reading. If other people want to spend their time in that way that's their choice. I'm sorry if you
felt the words "elitist" and "anal" were intended as pejoratives.
I beg to differ. Here from one of your own posts at TODP. "Yeah, that's the part that most students, but few good writers, have trouble
getting their head around: that the author is not the final authority on his/her own work. An author may well have included themes and ideas (and prejudices)
he or she is unaware of."
The original point I was making in the Joshi thread - which is why I posted there in the first place, despite some people's assertion that I had no business to - is that Mr Joshi seems to have a general dislike of "popular" horror fiction, presumably because he feels it doesn't meet his own literary standards. (Before you ask, no, I haven't got/can't be bothered to find any quotes to back this up. Let's just say this is the impression I have of him from reading extensively within the horror genre for the past 25 years. Given your association with him, Jack, I'd be happy to admit I'm wrong if you can demonstrate otherwise.) Given this apparent dislike, what is the point of him repeating his disparaging opinion other than, as some have suggested, to draw attention to himself when he wants some publicity, and, of course, to attempt to belittle the author and those readers who do enjoy the author's work. Also, as someone else commented in the Joshi thread, if some authors write in a given style that has proven popular but not necessarily "literary", what is the point of analysing their work looking for criteria which most likely won't be there. I'm sure Mr Joshi's time, and subsequently those of his readers, would be better spent critiquing work they might actually find rewarding, in their terms. Jason |
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Shocklines |
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Posts: 28165 (06/03/08 05:56:29) Administrator |
marksamuels wrote: I simply don't agree. They may have been publishing work to correspond with a demand for horror fiction, but I don't see any evidence that any
publisher said "we must publish formulaic writing." I don't think those other books I mentioned were "slipped in" either. They were
published under the umbrella of horror because they ARE horror, AND they have intrinsic literary merit. I don't think they were trying to put one over on
anyone -- I think they were publishing horror fiction they thought would sell. In some cases they thought it would sell to a crowd looking for fast-moving,
fun, twisted fiction that doesn't linger long after it's done. In other cases, they thought it would play to a more literary crowd, garner strong
reviews, and become a sleeper hit. And some fall way in between, but were undoubtedly published because someone thought it was a great book. Sometimes it
works, sometimes it doesn't.
Shocklines.com -- your one-stop shop for hell on earth
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michellependergrass |
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Posts: 57 (06/03/08 06:00:22) Supershockliner Goddess
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LeatherZebra wrote: That's the key to a nice, relaxing, content life isn't it? 
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Sabledrake |
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Posts: 1042 (06/03/08 06:08:19) Master Shockliner |
I am, however, too stupid to use condiments. Mustard, mayo, ketchup, salad dressing, relish, salsa, whatever ... nope, not me, nuh-unh, no thanks. You folks
can divvy up my share.
-- C. |
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