From: mweinste@pearl.tufts.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Piers Anthony
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:07:26 GMT
Organization: Tufts University - Medford, MA

In article <1992Sep14.180157.5758@pbhyc.PacBell.COM>, djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) writes:
> 1.  Well, first, there is language abuse.  I don't mean puns; if puns were good
> enough for Homer, Shakespeare, and James Joyce, I guess they're good enough for 
> anyone without a stick up his ass.  I don't even mean calling series of ten
> or more books "trilogies."
> 
> I mean clumsy prose that means what it doesn't mean to mean; I mean agrammatical
> hodgepodges; I mean a complete lack of any sense of the way words sound.  Try 
> reading a few paragraphs of Anthony aloud some time and see how clumsily they 
> stumble off the tongue.  
> 
Basically like the above paragraph.  Actually, many of Anthony's works, such as
Firefly, are very smoothly written.  There are times that sections of his works
sound more like poetry than prose.

> Then try reading some of his fiction with a dictionary near to hand -- look up 
> some of the less-familiar words he uses and see if they make any sense in the 
> context he uses them in.  Oh, I grant that some and maybe even most will:  but 
> there's enough that don't that it's clear that he's using words _he_ doesn't 
> understand, and propagating his misunderstandings to minds that, precisely 
> _because_ they're engaged in the purely passive activity of enjoying a "read," 
> have their critical filters down.
> 
I don't know which words you're referring to, but perhaps Anthony is more
literate than you, and therefore knows more about the connotations of the words
than a dictionary can give.  In fact, I rarely, if ever, come across words I
don't recognize in his books.

> 
> 2.  There is a thing I call "overexplaining."  This is hard to explain without 
> an example, and I don't exactly keep Piers Anthony's books close to hand in my 
> office, so I'm going to have to keep it in the abstract.  
> 
> Essentially, this particular "literary crime" consists of telling the reader, 
> often over and over, what she already knows.  For example, a character says 
> something, and the writer explains what motivated her to say that.  Which would 
> be fine, except that the "explanation" is a summary of what happened three 
> chapters back.  
> 
Can you give an example of this?  I don't recall this problem, and I'm usually
very sensitive to repetition.

> The only plausible reason for this, is that the writer thinks his readers are 
> all morons who can't remember what _happened_ three chapters back.  Very 
> insulting indeed.
> 
> 
> 3.  Anthony habitually uses what James Blish liked to call the "idiot plot," 
> which is a plot which only takes place because the protagonist (and often 
> everyone in the tale) is an idiot.  
> 
> The classic example of this is the film ALIEN, whose plot can be summed up as 
> follows:  "There's a really deadly monster, of unknown but vast killing power 
> and no known vulnerability, lurking somewhere on the ship.   Let's split up and 
> wander through the darkest corridors."  
> 
> This isn't completely fair to ALIEN, but it *does* explain what an idiot plot 
> is.  
> 
> Anthony's characters rarely show more common sense than this, and when they *do*
> come to a sudden realization of something the reader had figured out half a 
> novel ago, Anthony presents it as a brilliant insight on his character's part.  
> 
Anthony doesn't present all of his characters as idiots, but frequently as
normal people.  Unlike some authors, who develop charcters which are perfect
and all-knowing except for one or two specific flaws, Anthony's characters are
believable.  Sometimes they just have to use their best judgement in a
situation, and that judgement may or may not be sufficient.

He also uses Dramatic Irony... maybe you've heard of it.  This technique allows
the reader to know what's going on while the characters are oblivious.  This is
a common and effective style of writing that is used by Shakespeare, Hugo,
Updike, Tolkein, and hundreds of other authors.

> The reader can react to this in one of two ways:  either by shallow self-
> congratulation on having been so smart as to realize this incredible thing for 
> him/herself (which I think is the reaction Anthony depends on:  a form of false 
> flattery, which is one of the worst insults of all), or to throw the book at the
> wall in disgust at the sheer idiocy of it all.
>                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^
They say "sweets to the sweets."  No further comment needed.