Denna diskussion är för närvarande "vilande"—det sista inlägget är mer än 90 dagar gammalt. Du kan återstarta det genom att svara på inlägget.
1michaelreynolds
Full disclosure: I could not be more biased on this subject, as I work for Steve's publisher, Europa Editions. But I also feel very passionate about this book, which ranks among those I'm most pleased to have been a part of publishing at Europa. I just posted the following thoughts on the Europa Editions challenge blog before realizing it originated here.
The poet T.S. Eliot once remarked that meaning in a poem was like the piece of meat a burglar throws to a guard dog to keep it occupied while he steals the silverware.
Searching for meaning is a habit that readers can hardly be expected to abandon, hyper-cerebral things that we are. But providing meaning is not the work of the poet. It is, if anything, the consequence of the relationship created between poet and reader. It is yielded rather than conveyed or received.
Now, Erickson is not a poet and his work has changed somewhat from those early books, yet getting it still seems to be beside the point. Rather than being got, Erickson's books exist to be experienced, and I think if one is open to that experience then the possible meanings are myriad, more varied and richer than those offered by a great many of his more gettable contemporaries.
I may be a little sensitive to this issue because unfortunately, almost 20 years after Burgess's silly review, critical coverage of Erickson's work is still suffering from a lack of rigor, on one hand, and a sort of timidity on the other, a fear of letting oneself go, intellectually and aesthetically, of abandoning familiar shores. These defects feed preconceptions about his work. Even more seriously, they suggest to writers (and publishers, and agents, and young critics and reviewers) that no matter how talented you are, no matter how prodigious your imagination, it doesn't behoove you to write things that do not fit into the one-size-fits-all paradigms of contemporary american fiction.
These Dreams of You, for my money, is a minor masterpiece about family, fatherhood, race, recent american history, and the nature of aspiration, thwarted and met. Those are all messy, amorphous, complicated things and every simplification is a betrayal. Steve seeks to betray as little as possible.
I'll get off my soap box now and get back to work.
thanks as always
michael
The poet T.S. Eliot once remarked that meaning in a poem was like the piece of meat a burglar throws to a guard dog to keep it occupied while he steals the silverware.
Searching for meaning is a habit that readers can hardly be expected to abandon, hyper-cerebral things that we are. But providing meaning is not the work of the poet. It is, if anything, the consequence of the relationship created between poet and reader. It is yielded rather than conveyed or received.
Now, Erickson is not a poet and his work has changed somewhat from those early books, yet getting it still seems to be beside the point. Rather than being got, Erickson's books exist to be experienced, and I think if one is open to that experience then the possible meanings are myriad, more varied and richer than those offered by a great many of his more gettable contemporaries.
I may be a little sensitive to this issue because unfortunately, almost 20 years after Burgess's silly review, critical coverage of Erickson's work is still suffering from a lack of rigor, on one hand, and a sort of timidity on the other, a fear of letting oneself go, intellectually and aesthetically, of abandoning familiar shores. These defects feed preconceptions about his work. Even more seriously, they suggest to writers (and publishers, and agents, and young critics and reviewers) that no matter how talented you are, no matter how prodigious your imagination, it doesn't behoove you to write things that do not fit into the one-size-fits-all paradigms of contemporary american fiction.
These Dreams of You, for my money, is a minor masterpiece about family, fatherhood, race, recent american history, and the nature of aspiration, thwarted and met. Those are all messy, amorphous, complicated things and every simplification is a betrayal. Steve seeks to betray as little as possible.
I'll get off my soap box now and get back to work.
thanks as always
michael
2absurdeist
Well said. All of it. I'm hoping this forum will help obliterate those preconceptions and attract more readers to a major talent.
3Jesse_wiedinmyer
Now, Erickson is not a poet and his work has changed somewhat from those early books, yet getting it still seems to be beside the point. Rather than being got, Erickson's books exist to be experienced, and I think if one is open to that experience then the possible meanings are myriad, more varied and richer than those offered by a great many of his more gettable contemporaries.
Very well put.
Very well put.
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