SLPAD 4

[Mark Kohut]

I have lost the thread of whatever TSR is.

TRP wrote 'attitude toward death" which means a vision of the meaning of
being human and
therefore the meaning of life. .....

I agree and cannot read lightweight fiction (as I perceive it.
Milages vary). Fantasy as a genre is
arguably one genre....where the fuck is it grounded? Since death is a
fucking ground of being.

Go on, take me on. I haven't read enough to argue back much.

On Sat, Feb 18, 2023 at 4:10 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The idea of rendering accents in fiction -
> Thomas Wolfe did this extensively, I seem to remember. Or excessively,
> though it was digable.
>
> Here it says it’s a regrettable plot point in TSR, but only regrettable
> because wrong.
>
> Mostly I think accents are kind of fun, maybe a little bit informative (if
> gotten correct) and part of the practice in mental gymnastics one tends to
> rely on fiction for providing. They deepen the illusion if they’re
> familiar; if unfamiliar, they pleasantly reify the enjoyable strangeness of
> fiction and get tucked away to gleefully subvocalize in odd moments, and/or
> test against real speech in the event of an actual encounter with speakers
> of that accent.
>
> Like in AtD - I can’t tell you how many times I’ve subvocalized Plug
> Loafsley’s “r to hv” shift when the Chums go to NYC. “…some koindt of a
> sailboat pitchuhv on it!”
>
> It does accord with the way a girl who’d moved from (I know not which part
> of) New York & attended “my” high school in Michigan spoke, for awhile.
> Memorable lo these many years.
>
>
>
> The next mistake cited is in “attitude towards death.”
>
> “When we speak of “seriousness” in fiction ultimately we are talking about
> an attitude toward death—“
>
> There’s an interesting proposition.
>
> I wonder what he’s going to say about that in the rest of the sentence.
>
>
> When you read that, do you open a little file of possible counter-examples,
> other salient descriptors of serious fiction?
>
> - describing & decrying injustice
> - championing morality
> - avoidance of impossibilities & logical contradiction
> - treatment of ideas
>
> Etc etc.
>
>  I have my doubts about serious fiction having to deal with death. Seems
> like simply omitting it from the tale would work, or devising a containment
> method so that it’s dealt with in logical ways without being a main, or
> even a major, theme.
>
> But I’m not dogmatic about it (woof!)
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>