From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Re: awful Delaney
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 16:28:35 GMT

In article <1992Aug13.002812.12728@highlite.uucp> yarvin@highlite.uucp (Curtis Yarvin) writes:

>>Indeed, given how little information your claims are based on, you really
>>ought to say a good deal less.  "Intellectual dishonesty" is the nicest
>>thing I can think of to say about your wild-assed claims with little or no
>>factual basis.

>But what epithet would I find for errors such as yours?  For he who
>thinks the great questions of cultural mores can be settled by some
>piddling straw poll?  

Eh?  Who thinks a piddling straw poll can settle great questions of cultural 
morals?  Or even that a great big straw poll can settle piddling questions of
etc.?  Not I, I assure you.  The most that any poll ever settles is what the
sampled group thinks, which may have some significant relation to mores (as
opposed to morals, which are not so thoroughly relative[*]) but are hardly
homologous thereunto.

{[*]:  Note to the politically correct and other howler monkey impressionists --
I'm not saying that morals aren't relative at all -- though some are, e.g., 
raping children and poisoning the water supply are immoral, period, end of 
statement -- but that they are *less* so than mores.}


>For he who would diagnose the kaleidoscopic
>symptoms of a sick society with his nose in the air and his ear
>to the telephone company?

My ear isn't to TPC, it's my wallet.  I work here.  So?


>There are two judges only of Delany's
>merits: the vulgar ballot of the cash register, and the mass raving of
>critical consensus.  Of courtesy I will refrain from pressing you on
>the first

That's not courtesy, it's further ignorance; DHALGREN alone has sold over a 
million copies to date.  Vulgar enough for you?


>defend the second, or admit as proven your depraved taste
>in fiction.  

"Hey!  I'm depraved on accounta I'm deprived!" -- Sorry, I just watched WEST
SIDE STORY last night.

As for defending the "mass raving of critical consensus," I fear I must demur.
I haven't the foggiest notion what mass of critics have consensually raved, 
either pro or con, Delany.  You seem to have this pathetic idea that if 
something is a little harder to read than Piers Anthony or Little Golden Books,
it must be high-brow literary crap and anyone who reads it is a snob.

Sorry.  No can do.  Delany has been more or less equally praised and damned by
critics and reviewers (and ignored by far more) since he first attracted notice
at all.  Ex. grat.:  one of the more noted "literary" critics of SF, William
Atheling, Jr. (a/k/a James Blish), was so moved when Delany won his second novel
nebula (for THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION) that "I went into the kitchen and quietly
bit the cat."

So you've essentially got it bass-ackwards (as usual):  Delany's books sell, 
but they have a mixed critical reception.


>Which exceeds only your low character & lower morals, etc, etc, and
>tamp it down with insinuations of caprine parentage.  Ad hominem, 
>ad astra.

I know, I know.  But honestly, you love it and you know it.  (Otherwise why
do you invite it so?)  And I must admit I rather enjoy the occasional debate 
with one who deserves no better\r\e\t\t\e\b\ \o\n\ \s\e\v\r\e\s\e\d can go in
for the verbal equivalent of all-in wrestling without losing his temper.

		My baby is a Martian,
		What can I do?
		I'm in love with a giant insect,
		I got them Exoskeletal Blues
			-- Visual Purple

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written