You forgot Defense Option #4: Laugh all the way to the bank.
and #5: Smile politely and remember that the works of neither Austen nor Dickens were considered particularly respectable in their day.
Neither of these attitudes helps if one is in an academic setting of the wrong sort, of course, but fortunately we have
#6: start listing SFF works that have academic street cred. 1984 is always a good one to start with. You will of course get the song-and-and dance of why those are exceptions, at which point you start asking the snob to clarify their standards. how do they define sffh? Why, if something has literary merit, is it automatically not sffh? This option can segue into your #3, where you start to bring up contemporary works and suggest that before rushing to judgement, the snob ought to try reading what he's judging.
I like option #6 the best, but that's because I'm mean. :-)
Oh, well-done review. And now I'm tempted to read the book even if academic prose makes my eyeballs glaze over and "supernaturally meme-absorbent Stanley Kurtz" does sound a bit like a European paper towel dropped on the damp dirt floor of Africa. :)
Beswoggled by the prose. Also, even in the shorter duree, It's Not All About World War I - remember having conversation in rather slow lunch-queue at a symposium during which conclusion was reached that the number of late C19th/early C20th horror-writers who were Anglo-Irish Ascendancy by background was Not A Coincidence. (Okay, I'm not sure how far this would hold up to really searching analysis.)
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2007-01-08 06:10 pm (UTC)and #5: Smile politely and remember that the works of neither Austen nor Dickens were considered particularly respectable in their day.
Neither of these attitudes helps if one is in an academic setting of the wrong sort, of course, but fortunately we have
#6: start listing SFF works that have academic street cred. 1984 is always a good one to start with. You will of course get the song-and-and dance of why those are exceptions, at which point you start asking the snob to clarify their standards. how do they define sffh? Why, if something has literary merit, is it automatically not sffh? This option can segue into your #3, where you start to bring up contemporary works and suggest that before rushing to judgement, the snob ought to try reading what he's judging.
I like option #6 the best, but that's because I'm mean. :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 08:49 pm (UTC)Also, even in the shorter duree, It's Not All About World War I - remember having conversation in rather slow lunch-queue at a symposium during which conclusion was reached that the number of late C19th/early C20th horror-writers who were Anglo-Irish Ascendancy by background was Not A Coincidence. (Okay, I'm not sure how far this would hold up to really searching analysis.)
no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 11:00 pm (UTC)His, I hope, rather than mine. :)