From: nick@iagu.itd.adelaide.edu.au (Nick Falkner)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.piers-anthony
Subject: Re: Piers Anthony and Morality
Keywords: moral, teenage, emotionally retarded
Date: 3 Sep 92 04:22:32 GMT
Reply-To: nick@iagu.itd.adelaide.edu.au (Nick Falkner)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation

In article <1992Sep1.143728.1801@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>, davis@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Barbara Davis) writes:
|>nick@iagu.itd.adelaide.edu.au (Nick Falkner) writes:

[Some of my twaddle deleted]

|>>had in this newsgroup)  I don't feel that you can adequately defend these 
|>>images with the excuse that 'it's only a kid's book' - I think it  is MORE
|>>unhealthy because of that fact.
|>
|>When was the designation "children's books" applied to the Xanth series!!!???
|>They are definitely adult literature.  However, they are not for the humor
|>impaired.  His references to panties are meant to be satire.  Only an adult
|>(who is not humor impaired) would appreciate the satire in the Xanth series.
|>Only an adult (who is not humor impaired) would understand an enjoy the
|>majority of the puns that riddle the Xanth series.

Sorry - I expressed myself badly on that point.  What I meant was that they LOOK
like children's books.  They have cutesy names and pretty covers and are
lumped (at least in Australia) with every other fantasy novel.  There are a lot
of kids reading fantasy these days.  I'm not saying PA is specifically writing
Xanth for that market.  I just believe that, due to the packaging of the final
product, they APPEAR to be the kind of book that you can give a child for them
to 'grow' into.  I know that it happened for me with a beautiful hardback
edition of 'The Hobbit'.  

I also think that you can push a satirical point too far.

Incidentally, are you calling me 'humour-impaired'?  I understand the puns and
while I find them amusing I still feel that there are many other forms of humour
around.  I am not criticizing the puns.  I am making a concerted attack on this
apparent obsession with women's underwear and immature female stereotypes.

|>After reading A Spell for Cameleon, I tried to read/tell the story to a
|>group of gifted 5th graders.  While they were able to enjoy the story, they
|>totally missed the best of the puns and the satire.

But they still have the rest of the book.  Again - I am not attacking the puns.

|>Are you saying here that any book that features children as main characters
|>is a children's book?  I admit to being quite puzzled as to your criteria
|>for adult literature as opposed to children's literature. 

No.  I say that packaging a book will define its market.  While it is fairly 
obvious that a book called 'The Rats' with a picture of evil rats on the cover is
either teenpulp or adult pulp I think that a book called 'Ogre Ogre' with a 
picture of a friendly Ogre bending down to have a nice chat to a little friend
might possibly risk looking a lot like a children's book.

Maybe it's just Australia.  There is more that separates our two nations than a
body of water.

|>And yes, I admit to being a rabid Xanth fan and not a rabid Piers Anthony
|>fan.  I hated Bio of a Space Tyrant.

I didn't get past 'Refugee'.  I threw my copy across the room everytime someone
got raped or eaten.  I got sick of having to go across the room all the time to
pick the damn thing back up.

To summarise : Iam not questioning the quality of the PUNS in Xanth (or really 
attacking Xanth in particular).  I just feel that a lot of PA's work has an
unpleasant leaning to destructive stereotyping and obsessive behaviour.

Again I place my head on the chopping block.

Nick.
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This is THE Nick Falkner          E-Mail:  nick@iagu.itd.adelaide.edu.au
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                                 Deal with it.
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