From: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Kasprzak/Mann replies; was: IN DEFENSE OF VONNEGUT
Date: 15 Oct 92 12:51:58 GMT
Reply-To: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com

In article <1992Oct15.052738.9975@csus.edu> gharlane@nextnet.csus.edu  
(Gharlane of Eddore) writes:
> Jim Kasprzak said:
> 
>  If book sales or critical
> > reviews are anything to go by, Vonnegut's style is a very  
successful one.
> 
>    Successful compared to what?   P.G. Wodehouse?     Leslie  
Charteris?
>   Robert Heinlein?   C.S. Forester?   E.E. Smith, PhD?  (EES's work  
and 
>   derivatives thereof have sold several times as many copies as  
Vonnegut's
>   have, over their publication lifespan, but far be it from me to  
assert 
>   that EES is more "successful" than Vonnegut; after all,  
librarians 
>   know who Vonnegut is, and everyone knows what an incredibly good  
movie
>   "SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE" was, and public opinion is hardly divided  
on the 
>   masterful anime version of "THE LENSMEN.")

How about giving figures and sources here. My guess is that
Vonnegut's most popular books outsell the whole Lensman series
put together, even if you count the entire publication lifetime
of the Smith books.  Also, Vonnegut's books are just about
continuously in print, and continue to sell all the time.  
He's had books that have been available continuously since the 
60s.  The Lensman books are out of print more often than they
are in print.

> 
>    If you want to see the reaction of competent SF writers to  
Vonnegut,
>   re-read "INFERNO" by Pournelle & Niven.   Vonnegut's in there,  
but 
>   not Farmer.   There's a reason for this.

Yes.  It's part of the "the mainstream stinks and we're really
better than they are" sour grapes attitude that's present in parts of 
the  SF community.  As for competent SF writers: go read James
Blish's essay on the Sirens of Titan. Blish, probably the best
critic SF has ever produced (and a better writer than Niven and
Pournelle to boot) thought the Sirens of Titan was one of the best
SF novels of the 1950s.

> 
>    Ask yourself why the most seminal collection of the sixties, 
>   "DANGEROUS VISIONS," contains a Hugo-award story by Philip Jose 
>   Farmer, "RIDERS OF THE PURPLE WAGE," and Kurt Vonnegut, whom 
>   Ellison worshipped from afar, only appeared in the second DV  
after
>   Ellison let him use the word "fuck" in the story's title.

I see. Writers who appeared in the first Dangerous Visions are
better than the ones who appeared in Again, Dangerous Visions.
By the way, since you seem to have read Harlan's intro
to Vonnegut, you know that your statement about the SF
community's contempt for Vonnegut (one paragraph earlier) is
wrong.

>    Note that the intro to the Vonnegut story in the second DV  
contains
>   these lines, excerpted from the 24 January 1971 "New York Times:"
>  
>    "After 'SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE,' Vonnegut began work on a novel  
called
>     'BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS,' about a world in which everyone but a 
>     single man, the narrator, is a robot.  He gave it up, however,  
and 
>     it remains unfinished.  I asked him why, and he said  'Because  
it
>     was a piece of ____.'"
> 
>   Far be it from me to contest Mr. Vonnegut's evaluation of his own  
work.

But the novel Vonnegut described in that quote is NOT what
Breakfast of Champions became. He wrote a different book, one
which he obviously like. (As a side note, Breakfast of Champions
is probably my least favorite Vonnegut novel, so I won't spend
much time defending it.)

>   Alas, this article also reported Vonnegut's intention to stop  
writing,
>   which Vonnegut seems later to have forgotten.
> 
> > How many
> > authors can you think of who are popular with the critics, the  
mainstream
> > readers, _and_ the science fiction readers? And if none of these  
opinions
> 
>   Speak for yourself.   While I've read your comments and entries  
with
>   great respect over the years I've been lurking here, it's long  
been 
>   obvious that the Great Unwashed Literati Conspiracy strapped you  
to 
>   the table in the Clockwork Orange Room and force-fed you French 
>   "art" films and Fritos until your critical faculties became  
somewhat
>   more than ordinarily warped, even for an SF phan.

What does all this mean?  Are you trying to say there is some
literary plot among mainstream writers and critics to make
Vonnegut popular?  (His books sell well with all sorts of people,
by the way, not just literary critics.)  But doesn't this
contradict the other common conspiracty theory that literary 
critics like complex styles and have conspired to make
Thomas Pynchon and John Barth popular?

> > |>    Come the sixties, Farmer had managed to get his career  
restarted,
> > |>  and was making about as much as Vonnegut, despite all of  
Vonnegut's
> > |>  mainstream best-sellers, sheerly on quantity... and on  
occasionally
> > |>  pyrotechnic displays of raw talent, the like of which  
Vonnegut never
> > |>  achieved on his best day.
> >  
> >  Again, what's your measure of "raw talent"?  Critical reviews?
> > Vonnegut wins.
> 
>    You actually let critics determine your opinions?  Interesting.

He didn't say that. Reread the sentence.  What he said more was more
like the critics agreed with him, not that he based his opinion
on the critics.
> 
> > Sales of any given book?  Vonnegut wins again.
> 
>    Don't be too sure about that.  The "best-seller" designation is 
>    a bit suspicious, and certainly has no provable correlation with
>    talent or quality.  Vide Jackie Collins, Erich Segal, L. R.  
Hubbard.

But one good way to be pretty sure that a book is a good
one is if it both is a bestseller AND gets widespread critical 
acclaim. This says that the book is liked by people who
read critically (and not just to pass the time on the subways)
and by the larger, book-buying audience.  I tend to use this
as a criteria for trying books by authors I haven't read yet:
if several critics I respect like the author, I'll usually
give it a try. If the book is on the best seller list and has
gotten good reviews, I'll give it a try. I've found
some of my favorite writers (such and Ann Tyler and Jack
McMurtry) this way.

> 
> > Your own opinion?   Then why don't you just say so?
> 
>   How about awards and publications within the field?   

Why is this a better judge of things than either critical acclaim
or being on the best seller lists?  The Nebulas are an award 
of peers, and (especially in their early days) were very much an
award that signified critical acceptance. The Hugos are a popularity
contest, much like a best seller list.

>Vonnegut lost the
>   novel Hugo to Simak in '64.  (Simak got "Best Novel" with "WAY  
STATION,"
>   competing with Vonnegut's "CAT'S CRADLE."   And "WAY STATION" is  
a 
>   vastly better-conceived and executed novel.)
> 
>   Farmer's "RIDERS OF THE PURPLE WAGE" tied with McCaffrey's "WEYR  
SEARCH"
>   for "Best Novella" in 1968.
> 
>   Does this sound like the voters dug Vonnegut?
>   Or does it sound like they might appreciate Farmer, just a bit ?

That's silly.  First of all, you're not even comparing apples
and oranges.  A work that wins a Hugo one year might 
only come in third or fourth in another year. Some years are stronger
than others.  Second, while you argue that Vonnegut, in a sense,
pulled one over on the mainstream (using ideas that SF had
used, and better (or so you claim) for years), Farmer simply
pulled the reverse in "Riders of the Purple Wage."  The headline
technique (which was the most innovative thing about the
story, and which impressed a lot of people) is a direct copy
of the Cave of the Winds chapter of Joyce's Ulysses.  Most SF
fans didn't realize this and thought Farmer was being very
innovative. (By the way, I think it was a good story. Farmer did
a good job adapting Joyce's technique to SF. But it was hardly
original.)

> > Now compare to Farmer's Riverworld or World of Tiers series.
> 
>    Why?   Farmer was writing a pulp-series heroic fantasy quest.
>    And damned well, too.
> 

Farmer (at least in the case of the Riverworld books) started out
by doing "damned well."  By the end, though, it was awful.
Gods of the Riverwold is the only book by a major writer that
I found to be worse than I Will Fear No Evil.


> .....and then Jim Mann added:
>   
> > Oh, well, I'd spent 20 minutes debating the crap he wrote about
> > Vonnegut, and I really don't feel like retyping it.  I'll pay
> > more attention to "followup to" lines in the future.
> 
>   either that or take advantage of the existence of the ".article" 
>   file in your personal root directory, or pull a copy back from  
your 
>   outgoing spooler; neither should take any real effort, only 
>   a few seconds, hardly any trouble at all compared to twenty 
>   minutes of lifespan invested in blitzing someone you feel 
>   deserves it!

Maybe on your newsreader. Mine doesn't seem to do that. 
> 
> > > |>  I am delighted that Farmer's outlived Vonnegut by so many
> > > |>  years, and been able to have such a good time doing it. 
> > >   
> > >  If Vonnegut's been dead for so many years, who wrote  
> > _Hocus-Pocus_?
> > 
> > I think he was talking about their works. He's wrong there,
> > too, of course. Vonnegut's works are almost all in print. All
> > but a couple of Farmer's works are out of print. 
> > --
> 
>   Actually, most of Farmer's best stuff is findable; but 
>   Vonnegut's are hardly "almost all in print."
> 

What do you mean by that?  If I walk into almost any bookstore
(including Walden's in a local mall), I can find a dozen or
more books by Vonnegut on the shelves. If I go to a bigger
bookstore, I can find anything by him. If I look in Books
in Print, all of his books are listed.  Compare this to Farmer,
who perhaps has half a dozen books in print at any one time.


--
Jim Mann            
Stratus Computer   jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com  
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written