Thursday, March 19, 2015

Jessica Amanda Salmonson Once Wrote Me a Letter

 Jessica Amanda Salmonson, discussing transcendent fantasy in a 1994 letter to the blogger:

"Many other writers 'in the field' look pretty damned good compared to the field as a whole. But it's like comparing a healthy compost to fresh shit. All too often, the most highly prized of 'genre' fantasy pales alongside work that is transcendent. It seems no one really wants to make their intended goal anything as extraordinary as Gogol's "The Overcoat" or Fuentes' "Aura" or Vernon Lee's "Legend of Saint Julian" or Yorucenar's legend of "Our Lady of Swallows" or Cynthia Ozick's "The Shawl", and such like tales and authors. Who can deny that it is unfair to contrast f/sf's "best" writers to the world's actual works of genius? 'Not as good as The Overcoat' would indeed be unfair; for all owe our existence as short story writers to "The Overcoat" and are embraced in its fabric. Yet too many critics, having decided to overlook true greatness, go one step farther and begin to find greatness where mere goodness barely exists."

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