Things that are amusing me this morning.

[truepenny]

melymbrosia has an funny and non-spoilery review in dialogue of Underworld.

Neil Gaiman thinks Harold Bloom is a twerp.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden has found Biscuit-Henge.

matociquala is taking a stand against postmodernism: As a tool in the toolbox, it doesn't offend me. I just have a violent allergy to its widespread application akin to the fear of large dogs that one might expect in a child who was mauled by a Samoyed at a tender age.

And this CNN sidebar: 6 million people will drink 5.5 liters of beer at the Munich Oktoberfest. What does that work out at, two atoms of beer per person?

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I can't get to the Bloom review because I am not an initiated insider of the L.A. Times. Bloom is following the strategy of trying to get top-level f/sf into the canon, not by denying that it's f/sf, but by drawing a line within the field, just as there is one in mimetic fiction. He believes John Crowley belongs with the big names, for instance. It's an approach I can respect.

Or perhaps his problems stem from being fictional on his grandfather Leopold's side.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I can't get to the actual Bloom review, either. I'm mostly just amused that Neil Gaiman's opinion of Harold Bloom matches mine. One of Bloom's books on Shakespeare irritated me profoundly, although I can no longer remember why, and his generally patronizing air of Educating The Unwashed Masses gets straight up my nose.

But it's true that having a fictional grandfather is a heavy burden to bear.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

He obviously lives in the universe of a dream, which I've been unsuccessfully trying to make into a story on and off (but which is lacking anything of plot nature), in which insignificant but real people disappear from history in retrospect to be replaced by significant but fictional people. In the dream, Mike Ford had come to be descended from Stephen Maturin -- indeed, he had just inherited some land in Catalonia from him, on which he was planning to build a spaceport.

Having a fictional ancestor was regared as an honour, and people would pretend to have them. People were also afraid that they would later disappear and wanted to make themselves historically significant or be enshrined in the fiction of their friends so that they'd be fictionalised as themselves. Also, Mary Renault had had problems with a stalker who wanted to be Tuckerised into an ancient Greek novel so that she could go there.

(If Gene Wolfe were the son of Nero Wolfe and Virginia Woolf, everything would be much tidier...)

So good for Bloom and his grandfather, I'd say, even if it doesn't prevent him from being a nitwit.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I tried some Steven King in junior high and was just appalled in every way possible. Everyone uses the "But you didn't read the right Steven King books!" argument on me, but that is not a particularly convincing strategy as far as I'm concerned.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Then I shall not attempt to apply that argument.

But I will say, in Stephen King's defense, that he has fantastic books and terrible books. My list of fantastic books includes The Dead Zone, IT, Misery, and, yes, "The Body." Also, I think, The Shining.

Carrie is adequate. Salem's Lot is dreadful. I love about two-thirds of Christine and loathe the rest. Hate Pet Semetary, Cujo, The Tommyknockers, and most everything he's written after The Waste Lands.

But my agreement about Harold Bloom's twerpdom has nothing to do with Stephen King.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

One of these days I'll have to give him a try again, just because he's such a big part of late 20th-century pop culture. Writers with really erratic quality just drive me nuts, though.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Harold Bloom *is* a twerp. I first heard him on public radio, discussing his new book on Shakespeare and this idiotic travesty that had just come out called "Shakespeare in Love", which he certainly had no intention of seeing.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Someone on the copy-editing list passed along thisdefense (http://www.pressherald.com/viewpoints/grape/030921grape.shtml) of King. Who says a prophet is without honor in his own land?

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Late but: thank you! I'm glad you were amused.