Hm, while it's an interesting point, I don't agree with the premise as to why academics don't do their wanky exercise in delving for hidden meaning in most SF. I think it's because they simply don't care. SF (mainly) isn't marketed as "literary" (with perhaps the exception of your Atwoods - and I don't think she's a great SF writer), so academics don't think it's worth their time.
If quality SF was subjected to an in-depth analysis, I'm sure that there would be enough metaphor and whatever to keep even the wankiest academic happy. I would say, however, that SF is a little light on allusion. I think world-building can remove some of the reliance on direct cultural resonance in "literary" fiction. But I think that world-building could be worthy of academic study in its own right.
Finally, SF can be very functional in its prose - and that's nothing to do with the settings or anything like that. It's to do with mass-market authors chunking out as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. I do wish there were more SF authors with, say, Ursula Le Guin's command of language. But then again, fine prose isn't necessarily a requirement for "literary" works. Does anyone honestly believe that Wuthering Heights has fantastic writing?
Regarding how a piece of fiction is marketed and how that influences its perceived artistic merit, I think it's very similar to how visual art is marketed. If someone has a "name (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Hirst)", or went to the right art college, or had the right mentors, and they can write pseudo-intellectual wank about the "relevance" of their work, it will sell, and be appraised by the important critics. Much more beautiful (of course, that's relative), well-crafted and interesting works will be disregarded because the creator doesn't play the right games. So too with "literary" and genre fiction, IMO.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2007-05-14 09:06 am (UTC)If quality SF was subjected to an in-depth analysis, I'm sure that there would be enough metaphor and whatever to keep even the wankiest academic happy. I would say, however, that SF is a little light on allusion. I think world-building can remove some of the reliance on direct cultural resonance in "literary" fiction. But I think that world-building could be worthy of academic study in its own right.
Finally, SF can be very functional in its prose - and that's nothing to do with the settings or anything like that. It's to do with mass-market authors chunking out as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. I do wish there were more SF authors with, say, Ursula Le Guin's command of language. But then again, fine prose isn't necessarily a requirement for "literary" works. Does anyone honestly believe that Wuthering Heights has fantastic writing?
Regarding how a piece of fiction is marketed and how that influences its perceived artistic merit, I think it's very similar to how visual art is marketed. If someone has a "name (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Hirst)", or went to the right art college, or had the right mentors, and they can write pseudo-intellectual wank about the "relevance" of their work, it will sell, and be appraised by the important critics. Much more beautiful (of course, that's relative), well-crafted and interesting works will be disregarded because the creator doesn't play the right games. So too with "literary" and genre fiction, IMO.