Le Guin tells it like it is
Katharine Kerr July 17th, 2007
By all means check this out:
“On Serious Literature”
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Note-ChabonAndGenre.html
Much laughter,
Kit
Katharine Kerr July 17th, 2007
By all means check this out:
“On Serious Literature”
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Note-ChabonAndGenre.html
Much laughter,
Kit
aargh! The horror, the horror!
This has been roaming the internet for a week or so, but Jon Carroll put it in his column this morning with the notation: “Now there’s writing, folks.”
Amen.
It’s even better read aloud.
[...] Reminder from Katharine Kerr. [...]
Mwahahahahahaha!
When I read this to the household 17-year-old she asked, “What’s Granta?” When I explained she shook her head. “Why would you want to publish there.” Ah, yout’.
Oh no, he committed genre? How… vulgar.
*shudders delicately*
It was the Jon Carrol column that made me aware of the Le Guin piece’s existence. I figured others who don’t get the Chronicle might miss it, too.
It was also in the latest Ansible, but yes, folks might miss it there, too, so spread the word!
(And I like Granta, but that line had me spitting coffee all over the keyboard.)
I’ve been — spreading it around.
Last week during my residency at Stonecoast, I got to read outloud Ursula Le Guin’s response. It was fantastic~!
There was much laughter!
Placing Granta, which has published Christopher Priest and Lawrence Norfolk (among others) in its Best British Novelist issues as the peak of the evil empire is revelatory, all right–but it speaks rather poorer of LeGuin than it does the magazine.
(I realise this is the minority opinion in the genre, and that I will be duly and appropriately pilloried for it. I can live with that. Apparently Saint Ursula, who regularly appears in The New Yorker, Playboy, and other high-paying markets has decided to make a late career move into being bitter.
Ken, I didn’t read it as bitter. I read it as having fun.
Yes, hardly bitter, I’d say, especially since she puts a disclaimer at the bottom.
In this month’s edition of “The Atlantic,” there is a terrific article on MFA programs. It covers all of the general MFA information you’d expect to see and it mentions the emergence of MFAs in popular fiction.
The mention is less then a few lines in a several page feature, but it’s there! I think this is a very positive indication that genre fiction is beginning to get the attention that it so richly deserves in the field of “serious literature.”
The two universities mentioned as opening the door for YA and popular fiction (in the realm of graduate studies) are Stonecoast’s low-residency MFA program and Seton Hill’s low-residency MA program. As a current student at Stonecoast, I am overwhelmed by the high quality of the program, the excellent instructors, and the talent of my fellow students.
I look forward to seeing how popular/genre fiction continues to prosper in the field of “serious literature”. I think Ursula was right, they didn’t bury the corpse nearly deep enough!