You know, I may be coming to this discussion much too late, and I may be offering up my throat to some very friendly wolves, but I can actually kind of understand what Goodkind's saying. Not that he isn't a pretentious ass, but it sounds to me like he's having an argument with someone who isn't actually there.
Take a conversation I had this weekend, which boiled down to the other person repeatedly saying, "But why does all this made-up stuff MATTER to you?" My eventual response was, "Fantasy doesn't matter to me. Fiction that moves me does. Good stories do. I happen to get those things out of fantasy - but I also get them other places, like mainstream fiction with its imaginary worlds and lives, just for example. Fantasy does some things really, really well, and I appreciate it for what it does. It's also not the be-all and end-all of my existence just because I enjoy it. Neither are mysteries, and I read those too."
Now, I read fantasy and I enjoy it and I'm not embarassed to read it (ok, I'm a little embarassed to admit I still reread some of the bad fantasy from my childhood, but I don't think that counts). But this person seemed to be under the impression that I had some kind of obsessive interest in magic powers and fantastic beings, and that the story-as-story didn't matter at all. Unlike my experience with other genres, I've met a number of people who seem to think that because you read fantasy, a) you believe it's real, b) you're intellectually unable to engage with other kinds of culture, or c) you're completely uncritical and unable to be critical about your literature. This really gets me annoyed.
So maybe - and this might be being overly charitable - Goodkind is just arguing with someone that, in his head, all the time, and that's where a lot of his obnoxious comments come from.
On the other hand, he could just be a pretentious jerk.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yati
no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 01:02 pm (UTC)Take a conversation I had this weekend, which boiled down to the other person repeatedly saying, "But why does all this made-up stuff MATTER to you?" My eventual response was, "Fantasy doesn't matter to me. Fiction that moves me does. Good stories do. I happen to get those things out of fantasy - but I also get them other places, like mainstream fiction with its imaginary worlds and lives, just for example. Fantasy does some things really, really well, and I appreciate it for what it does. It's also not the be-all and end-all of my existence just because I enjoy it. Neither are mysteries, and I read those too."
Now, I read fantasy and I enjoy it and I'm not embarassed to read it (ok, I'm a little embarassed to admit I still reread some of the bad fantasy from my childhood, but I don't think that counts). But this person seemed to be under the impression that I had some kind of obsessive interest in magic powers and fantastic beings, and that the story-as-story didn't matter at all. Unlike my experience with other genres, I've met a number of people who seem to think that because you read fantasy, a) you believe it's real, b) you're intellectually unable to engage with other kinds of culture, or c) you're completely uncritical and unable to be critical about your literature. This really gets me annoyed.
So maybe - and this might be being overly charitable - Goodkind is just arguing with someone that, in his head, all the time, and that's where a lot of his obnoxious comments come from.
On the other hand, he could just be a pretentious jerk.