--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Juri Nummelin"
<juri.nummelin@...> wrote:
>
>
> I've been pissed at Sturgeon's Law for some time
now. Okay, Sturgeon
> meant it as a joke (he was drunk, as Richard pointed
out) and we
> should treat it as such and not take it as a truth.
It's become sort
> of a lame excuse. Someone says: "Hey, crime novels
are crap, didn't
> you know that, read literary novels instead." And we
say back,
> smirking: "Hey, didn't you know that 90 % of
literary novels is
> crap?" And that's the end of discussion.
I take Sturgeon's dictum as a call to healthy skepticism, not
as a law of any sort. Think of rediscoveries and
reevaluations. Twenty years ago, Gil Brewer's work was
considered merely interesting trash -- but today, he is
ranked a lot higher than that. Why do we now rate Willeford
so highly, whereas some decades ago he was part of a vast
shapeless pile of "popular literature"? And, most notably,
pulp literature was considered trash for many decades, not
worthy of study or discussion as literature. That's not the
case today. The same happened with B-noir films, cheap horror
films, the Corman crowd, etc.
Best,
mrt
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