Search Results for: John Crowley

Adventure On the Page: Genre Fiction vs. Joyce Carol Oates

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The more I write, the more opprobrium I feel for categorical definitions of fiction, notably “genre fiction” and “literary fiction.” I like to think I practice both, and that most readers read both. Crazier still –– lunacy, truly –– I suffer the apparent delusion that often the two categories cannot be separated, except by book vendors aiming to simplify or streamline the shopping experience. Not long ago, I delved back into Joyce Carol Oates’s introduction to a delicious anthology, Tales…

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The Tales of Gemen the Antiques Dealer: From Idea to Publication

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As of Sunday, August fourth, the last installment of my Gemen trilogy is up and published right here on the Black Gate site. It’s a curious feeling to have these three closely linked tales “on display” at last. I wrote the first entirely on a whim back in 2004, but the storyline itself had actually evolved decades before, in 1986. How Gemen got to where he is today — that is to say, fictionalized, and available for public scrutiny —…

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Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Assignments and Other Artificial Emergencies

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“Finishing one Henry James novel a week is like trying to chug a pint of Bailey’s Irish Cream a day,” a favorite professor declared when I mentioned the reading pace of another professor’s class. “You can’t absorb it, you certainly can’t enjoy it, you’ll never want to look at it again, and there’s just no need to do that to yourself.” He regarded it as a violence against the books and their author, too, to demand that a class read…

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New Treasures: American Gothic Tales

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I’ve had my eye on this collection for a while, but it was Matthew David Surridge’s fascinating four-part series on Joyce Carol Oates’s Gothic Quintet that finally nudged me over the edge. I ordered it last week, and have been enjoying it ever since. To be honest, while I was prepared for a survey of American horror, my brief perusal of the contents before I laid down my money led me to believe it was slanted towards modern writers such as…

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This Week’s Bargain SF & Fantasy Books at Amazon.com

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You. You’ve got some kind of high octane karma going. Not feeling it? Check this out: two days ago the World Fantasy Convention announced Christopher Buehlman’s debut novel, Those Across the River, had been nominated for a World Fantasy Award. And guess what’s recently been remaindered at Amazon.com for just $9.98 in hardcover. See what I mean? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. How about a copy of He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson, edited by Christopher…

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Convention Report: Ad Astra 2012

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Last weekend I went to Toronto to attend the Ad Astra science fiction and fantasy convention. It was the third convention I’ve been to in my life. I learned a fair bit. To start with, I learned a bit about the thriving Toronto sf scene. Toronto’s a huge city, both geographically and in terms of population; over six million people live in the Greater Toronto Area, and over eight and a half in the ‘golden horseshoe’ region around the western…

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Gill Alderman and The Memory Palace

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Sometimes, you need to grow as a reader to be able to appreciate a certain book. In 1996, I bought a paperback fantasy novel called The Memory Palace, by Gill Alderman. It was a whim, I suppose; maybe something about the cover appealed to me, or more likely something in the synopsis on the back, promising a story about a fantasy writer who gets lost in his fictions and confronts an archmage of his own making. Whatever the reason, I…

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Traditions and Criticisms

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Literary traditions are useful things. They’re constructions of literary critics, sure, but useful constructions. A well-articulated tradition can show how different writers deal with the same idea or theme, demonstrating different approaches to a given problem or artistic ideal. It can show affinities between writers, sometimes bringing out resemblences between different figures in such a way as to cast new light on everyone involved. At the grandest level, the whole history of writing in a given language or from a…

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Temeraire, Harry Potter, and Some Thoughts on Ambiguity

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I’ve been in unwilling low-content mode for the past couple of weeks (question: what’s worse than getting the flu at Christmas? Answer: getting the flu along with a sinus infection). That’s meant I’ve had some time to read, which is good for a number of reasons. As it happens, though, one of the things I picked up to read left me wondering something I’ve wondered several times before: why do certain books pull me along, and compel me to read…

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Romanticism and Fantasy: A Prelude

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I’ve been thinking over the past few days about last week’s post on William Blake and fantasy. I’ve come to realise that post is actually just the start of a much larger project. I mentioned last week that I agreed with John Clute’s argument that the mid-eighteenth century was the era when fantastika — sf, fantasy, and horror — came into being. I’ll go further. I think the era that followed, the Romantic era of English literature, represented the dawn…

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