Hi Candice - how wonderful to see you back!
Frederick, a belated response, for which I apologise.
> Alison, I have the impression that science fiction is more respected, and
> more integrated into the literary mainstream, in Australia than in the US.
> Certainly Australia has produced some first-rate SF writers: George Turner,
> Jack Dann, John Baxter. There is no American equivalent to Peter Carey's
> The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (one of my all-time favorite novels). Nor
> can there be, because it's about NOT being America.
I wonder if that's true? Certainly Harold Bloom has conniptions abouty
Stephen King being admired as a writer. (I've read very little King,
only some of his Dark Tower SFF series, and for my part I was
impressed and think Bloom misses the point by a cubic mile). But I am
immediately thinking of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, an extremely
impressive book which has had a lot of attention. It's certainly
speculative fiction, but maybe they don't _call_ it "SFF" for fear of
literary nose-pulling. Certainly among genre types there's a lot of
discussion of this so-called literary SFF, which gets put on the
literary shelves rather than with Conan the Barbarian. I confess, I
don't have much interest in those kinds of categorisations: but things
like "The Time Traveller's Wife" or "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell"
or even Mieville's sprawling urban fantasies are marketed as
absolutely mainstream fiction, in the US as well as the UK, although
they are certainly genre books.
Chris, isn't all that rather related to Kinsella's musings on the
pastoral? He's written at length about all this. I've finally finished
my own essay on this question, including that famous "split", which is
I think a misleading way of mapping Australian poetry. I'll probably
put it in the next Masthead (due midyear at this stage, I have this
novel to finish first). No, I don't think anybody is talking about
rural idylls; it seems to me much more interesting and complex than
that.
all the best
A
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
|