From: davis@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Barbara Davis)
Subject: Re: Piers Anthony and Morality
Keywords: moral, teenage, emotionally retarded
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 16:37:45 GMT

nick@iagu.itd.adelaide.edu.au (Nick Falkner) writes:

>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'.  

Even my second graders understood and *LOVED* The Hobbit".  And yes, I see
your point about packaging.

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

I think even Piers would agree with this.  My definite feeling from reading
his authors notes and from hearing him speak is that he got tired of the
Xanth books and would not have contined past the first 3 or 4 if not
pressured by fans, publisher and money.  His boredom with the series showed
up in beating a joke to death and in less clever story lines IMO.

>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.

Yes, I'm afraid I was.  Your further explanations of what you meant has
convinced me that you are not humor impaired at all.  I will send the burn
ointment winging your way right now. 

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

I understood that you were not attacking the puns.  I just meant that as the
kids didn't get the puns and a lot of the satire, I didn't believe the Xanth
series was written for children.

>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.

A very true statement!  I remember serving as interpreter for an Austrailian
couple in Japan.  The Japanese were having a really rough time with the
Aussie slang and the accent.  Once the couple realized that by slowing down
their speech and avoiding slang the Japanese could understand them very
easily, I stepped out of the picture.  Before I interceeded on their behalf,
they were having a miserable time and were ready to cut their vacation short.

Incidently, I often had to ask the Austrailian couple to translate their slang
for me before I could translate for the Japanese.  English isn't english isn't
english when you get a Britisher, an Austrialian, and an American together.

>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.

My problem exactly!  The second time I threw the book I didn't pick it up
right away and my puppy played with it into small shreds.  Seemed a very
appropriate fate for an ugly book.

>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.

I know you are not alone in seeing this sort of thing in his books.  I wonder
if I have gotten so desensitized to sexism and stereotyping that they don't
ring alarm bells anymore.  What an awful thought!

>Again I place my head on the chopping block.

Oh surely not!  Please keep it on your shoulders so we can have more good,
thoughtful discussions like this.

Barb
-- 
Barbara G. Davis                       Internet:  davis@ucsu.colorado.edu
University of Colorado, Boulder 

                   If I don't ask, you can't say, "Yes!".
Newsgroups: alt.fan.piers-anthony