Black Gate

Most sf/f criticism can be sorted into three four heaps (as far as I’m concerned): book reviews, literary history, snark, and stuff that doesn’t interest me. The first two categories are obviously useful, I expect; I wish those last two categories overlapped more. One wastes a lot of time in the snarkosphere.

Every now and then, though, I read something that goes elsewhere. I wouldn’t call it a heap–there aren’t enough things there to qualify as a heap. More like a stack. These are pieces of sf/f criticism that help me think about reading and writing–that enrich my experience.

Like I say: there’s not much there. But sf/f isn’t unique in that respect: much (not all) literary criticism strikes me as stuff by people who can’t read who are telling other people how to read. I generally find it unreadable and, what with one thing and another, I have to read a lot of it.

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Bill Ward recently posted two articles on “hyperspeed reading,” the first a reaction to columnist Sarah Weinman’s claim of reading 462 books in a year, and the second taking a deeper look into reading speed.

I’m not a slouch when it comes to the amount of books I read in a year. I finished eighty-one in 2008, but that makes me look positively lazy and incompetent compared to Weinman’s mid-four centuries claim.

However, here’s my confession. I actually am a speed-reader. I taught speed-reading and reading comprehension courses for two years as part of a private reading school that sent me around the country teaching through various University programs. Now I am coming forward to talk about my own experience with what “speed-reading” encompasses and discuss what happens in your brain when you step on the gas and blast through pages like Wally West. (Or Barry Allen. Or Jay Garrick. Or….)

There exists no single speed-reading method. A number of different schools teach varying techniques. Some of these I do not consider “reading” at all, but a form of skimming. The method that I taught uses a broad approach that combines several techniques, but still requires that students read every word. Nevertheless, I offer this disclaimer about what follows: this is only one of the ways of teaching what schools classify as “speed-reading.”

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As a recovering English major, I sometimes just like to read for the hell of it, enjoy the story and not worry too much about literary merit or what any of the stuff might symbolize.  Moby Dick, after all, is a great yarn about high seas adventures.  But, then again, you’re missing something if you don’t also ponder what it is has to to say about God and the existence of evil (which is nothing particularly uplifting; Melville will never make the Oprah book club).

When I write reviews, I have to wear my English major hat, and frequently I realize that I missed something that I might not otherwise have considered if I were just reading for amusement and didn’t have to think about it in an attempt to say something semi-interesting that might actually be helpful to someone who may not have read the work in question, or read it the same way I did.

I actually like reading some literary criticism, but what I can’t stand are critics who suffer from “what I’m saying is more important than what the text is actually saying” syndrome.  And, sometimes, I just don’t feel like working that hard.  Case in point is this post at the blog for Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association. I think I understand Niall Harrison’s responses more than I understand the points taken from Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory though, not having read the book (nor do I intend to) that’s probably my shortcoming, not his.
 

 

 

 

I have it on good authority (Laurene Landon herself) that Hundra 2 is filming in Portugal this summer, with the same director as the original.  He’s in Sintra/Cintra now.  I’m hoping it’s another good-looking widescreen production rather than a direct-to-video cheapie.

So Hundra is once again keeping the embers alive, this time of Sword and Sorcery movies . . .

The Grauniad is listing “1000 novels everyone must read” and lately the sf/f novels on the list have been bouncing around the genresphere. It was almost instantly memed. You were supposed to italicize the ones you’d read, strikethrough the ones that induced an existential crisis, and smear butterscotch pudding on the rest. (Finally, a use for butterscotch pudding!) Or something like that.

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I am one of the few who saw Conan the Barbarian on its first release. The theater was the now-demolished but then-infamous theater in downtown Philadelphia that one commentator referred to as the Budco Take-Your-Life-In-Your-Hands Goldman theater. Our Conan experience at the Goldman was not life-threatening, if you don’t count my feelings as I watched Schwarzenegger, too ‘roided-up to hold a sword with both hands–although my now-spouse did find a large knife under his seat, which he handed over to the management. We were the lone viewers except for one other man who, whenever Sandahl Bergman brandished her sword, began to exclaim, “She’s hot, oh, man, oh, baby, she’s hot!”

This space has seen several posts over the last few weeks on the topic of fantasy and realism. Today I’d like to gnaw on another bone, and that is fantasy and verisimilitude. Swordsmanship is a good enough place to start. Now, a confession. I am no master of the sword and know basically nothing about European styles, and I have not touched a bokken since arriving in Dubai. I do, however, have a basic understanding of Japanese sword work, and have done tens of thousands of sword cuts in my life, a few even with a genuine medieval samurai sword. I have learned from experience why the Japanese invented shiatsu. So, all that swinging and whirling swordsmen do before they actually have at it? Imagine your life is threatened and what you have to defend yourself with is a cast-iron frying pan. Are you going to play like a majorette with a baton? Or conserve your strength, block if you need to, and watch for a chance to hit your attacker with it very hard? Swordswomen are another topic that makes me cranky. I’ve been a martial artist for nigh on 30 years, and I have no doubt of the the capacity of women to be effective fighters, but most women will never have the upper body strength that men can develop, and unlike men can’t substitute power for good technique. See: frying pan analogy.

What is the obligation of a fantasy writer to supply verisimilitude? None, really; a writer’s job is to tell a story. Is it bad for adventure fantasy to be thinly disguised wish fulfillment? I mean, we all need some in our lives. …

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