Tuesday, May 08, 2007
THANKS A MIL, NY TIMES
While it's all good and well that the New York Times has seen fit to pronounce Phil Dick an established mainstream writer and no longer a pulp hack, I find it a little annoying the way the gatekeepers of Literature occasionally select someone who's been popular in cult circles for years and decide that the poor overlooked soul has at last arrived, so masses, take note. They do this to Lovecraft with a regularity that makes me cringe (often around Halloween). I imagine that at some point even the sci-fi porn novels of Andrew Offutt will be raised to worthy belle lettres status, because Chip McGrath or whoever says so. Noble arbiters of textual quality, do not soil the hems of your gleaming white robes whilst you go slumming for diamonds in the rough.
While it's all good and well that the New York Times has seen fit to pronounce Phil Dick an established mainstream writer and no longer a pulp hack, I find it a little annoying the way the gatekeepers of Literature occasionally select someone who's been popular in cult circles for years and decide that the poor overlooked soul has at last arrived, so masses, take note. They do this to Lovecraft with a regularity that makes me cringe (often around Halloween). I imagine that at some point even the sci-fi porn novels of Andrew Offutt will be raised to worthy belle lettres status, because Chip McGrath or whoever says so. Noble arbiters of textual quality, do not soil the hems of your gleaming white robes whilst you go slumming for diamonds in the rough.
# posted by toner_low @ 10:35 PM 
