Notes from the Labyrinth

[truepenny]

I've been thinking ...

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I want to be able to claim "Celtic Fringe" as a movement in genre, so that if I ever get published I can count myself in with Iain Banks, Ken MacLeod, Ian McDonald and papersky.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Where are we supposed to comment?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Not to mention Charlie Stross.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Here will do nicely.

I'll need to be a lot braver before I turn comments on over there.

The work is what matters...

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, yes. The work is what matters. I'm so glad you said that.

Are you saying, to extract bits of your argument and change the emphasis, that a literary movement is something you are conscious of being a part of (if there are people reading who are pained by final prepositions, would they please mentally edit: this one is beyond me...), because it's the stuff that you and your peers and pals have been discussing? And that a literary paradigm is what we discover it was all about, when we come to look at a body of work, from a vantage point of twenty years on (or more...)? I'll buy that.

I'll buy it because it makes sense; it also chimes with stuff I've been thinking about the futility of literary definitions - the short version of which is that they are (whether we like it or not) descriptive not prescriptive. They don't, or they shouldn't, shape what you write, they are simply labels which can be applied to the writing, AFTER it's written. The work comes first -

Jean
jean@shadowgallery.co.uk

[larryhammer]

As a member of the Well-Versed Skiffy movement, I probably don't get to say much....

---L.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

The Charlie Stross that was born in Leeds? ;-)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Come now, that's about as relevant as the fact that he got married in Amsterdam. The man lives in Edinburgh, therefore he is Celtic.

Hmm, Jane Yolen also lives in Scotland, and Diane Duane and Anne McCaffrey in Ireland. What you do is claim everyone born there plus everyone who moved there.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I used to say jokingly that my ex-first reader and I were starting a literary movement. Then one day I said it to PNH and he just nodded. Since then I've never felt the slightest urge to even joke about this stuff.

I think there are movements in the same sense as modernism within SF -- the New Wave was one and Cyberpunk was one -- but I don't think you get them by wanting them or by waving your hand about claiming to be part of a new one.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

Oh, duh, of course! Movement versus paradigm! I had always been kind of confused as to how purposeful in-group fads and big sweeping changes could both be called movements.

Er. I am so glad I know you. I'm 20% smarter just by association.