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Re: CHAT: JRRT

From:J Y S Czhang <czhang23@...>
Date:Saturday, March 6, 2004, 11:19
In a message dated 2004:03:05 05:40:11 PM, jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM writes:

>Andreas Johansson scripsit: > >> The phrases "genre fiction" and "genre writing" are used as pejoratives >in English language literary criticism. > >Sheer snobbery and nothing but, I fear.
Yepyep, some of the bestest fiction in my opinion are Hard Boiled detective/_litterature noir_ and sci-fi. What I learned in _Genre Studies_ about Hard Boiled detective/_litterature noir_ and sci-fi: One genre examines the past from our divided present (i.e. Dashiell Hammett), the other imagines extrapolations of our shared present (i.e. William Gibson)... Both are capable of sharp, critical socio-cultural insights hidden just below the surface-text's tropes, motifs, clichés, etc. down in the "sub-text." And also there is a recent "anti-genre" called "Slipstream" that defies traditional genre labels and descriptions (thus making life hard for literary crititics and publishing peeps {Goody!}). IMHO nothing really new there, just another needed (re)fresh(in') New Wave in literature/_litterature_ ;) OBCONLANG OPINION: As one of the chief mangalangers here, I prefer James Joyce's _Finnegans Wake_ slightly more than Tolkien - purely from a highly aesthetic and subjective viewpoint, mind you. But I like brother Thomas Merton's underrated culture-epic poems, _Cables to the Ace_ and _Geography of Lograire_ even more - and even go as far to heres(a)y that ol' papa Ezra Pound's _Cantos_ are positively pale (and rather "looney tune") in comparison. And oh yeah I can't completely forgive Pound's errors in transliterating Chinese poetry willy-nilly to suit _his_ pet theory of poetics. I wonder if Ursula Le Guin read(s) Merton... sure seems likely... --- *DiDJiBuNgA!!* Hang Binary,baby...--- Hanuman "Stitch" Zhang, ManglaLanger (mangle + manga + lang) <A HREF="http://www.boheme-magazine.net">=> boheme-magazine.net</A> Language[s] change[s]: vowels shift, phonologies crash-&-burn, grammars leak, morpho-syntactics implode, lexico-semantics mutate, lexicons explode, orthographies reform, typographies blip-&-beep, slang flashes, stylistics warp... linguistic (R)evolutions mark each-&-every quantum leap... ...languages are "naturally evolved wild systems... So language does not impose order on a chaotic universe, but reflects its own wildness back." - Gary Snyder "Some Languages Are Crushed to Powder but Rise Again as New Ones" - a chapter on pidgins & creoles, John McWhorter, _The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language_ = ¡ gw'araa legooset caacaa ! ¡ reez'arvaa. saalvaa. reecue. scoopaa-goomee en reezijcloo ! = [Fight Linguistic Waste! Save, Salvage, Recover, Scavenge and Recycle!]