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From: Don <g@crcomp.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: (Nebula) Nebula Finalists 1975
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:04:53 -0000 (UTC)
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James Nicoll wrote:
> Which 1975 Nebula Finalist Novels Have You Read?
>
> The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin
> Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

_Flow_ was read by me. As you can personally attest, PKD isn't for
everyone. Yet he seems to mostly work for me. Presumably PKD's
partially New Wave, given the appearance of "Faith of Our Fathers"
in _Dangerous Visions_?
    Speaking of ambiguous utopia, yesterday a different New Wave
novel was jettisoned by me half way through for failure to follow a
plot, or plotlessness. A leading Lafferty scholar (how many authors
can claim their own personal scholar?) warns as much in his Intro to
Lafferty [1]:

    If the [short] stories break many of the "rules" of writing-
    and they do, departing sharply at times from conventions of
    characterization, pacing, and plot-then they do so at a
    manageable length. The novels tend to sprawl, binding
    together episodes less through elegant plot mechanics than
    via other logics that are not always immediately evident.

Lafferty's toilet humor was the sprawl's last straw. It served to stop
the stool show:

    "Fox-firk, I cast better lumps in the stool than the pack of
    you can say in a night's talk," Thomas said angrily, "and I'm
    called to do it now. Begging your pardons but I must go to
    the henry. Or is it called the charles in this realm,
    Emperor?"

    "Call it what you wish, Thomas," the young Emperor said. And
    then he winked at Evita a wink that was like lightning between
    them, and Thomas caught it.

    "What is the levity here?" he demanded still more angrily.
    "Cannot an honest man go to the henry without being mocked?"

    "It is only that there is a citizen of Goslar with an unusual
    means of livelihood," the Emperor said. "It is a trade that
    has been passed down from father to son. We will be listening
    for the lilt of your voice, good Thomas." ...

    And then came the high angry lilt of the voice of Thomas from
    the little henry out back of the royal shack. All the
    frustration of the ages was in that furious denunciation that
    Thomas was loosening on someone.

    Evita and the Emperor Charles and the green-robe and the man
    who had lost his wife except her bones all went into spasms
    of laughter.

Anyhow, PKD seems like a good alternative for my mp3 player.

Note.

[1] <https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1571-reintroducing-r-a-lafferty-a-8220master8221-for-the-past-present-and-future/>

Danke,

-- 
Don.......My cat's  )\._.,--....,'``.     https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.    Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'    Make 1984 fiction again.