Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 15:20:59 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: What I can't read
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

>
>Michael walsh write:
>There are authors who are ever so popular that I just can't read,  I =
>suspect just mentioning one of them here would cause gasps of disbelief =
=
>amongst some of the folks on this list.
>
>Now there's an interesting topic!
>
>I despise Stephen Donaldson. I only read the first book of his "Thomas"
>series, but any writer who will steal that much content wholesale, fail =
to
>provide an allegedly intelligent protagonist with the sense and deductive
>ability the Lady gave to opossums (and I apologize to opossums), and end =
the
>book with the ultimate cop-out (It was all a dream!) doesn't deserve to =
be
>published by a vanity press.

Never finished it.
Boring.

Never finished Sword of Shanana after discovering I had already read it =
years before as a book called The Lord of the Rings.  Dick Lupoff reviewed =
it for Algol eons ago and said something like "I understand Mr Brooks is a =
lawyer.  He should know what plagiarism is."

>
>On a less livid note, I've tried in vain to read Gene Wolfe; I think I'm
>missing a critical lit'ry allele. I also can't read anything longer than =
a
>short story in present tense; it irritates me.

Keith Roberts did - I think - two  stories in the second person.  Rather =
present tense . . .

mjw

>The only use I can see for
>present tense would be a stiry in which the protagonist has no memory and
>therefore no concept of past and future, or as a device to avoid letting =
the
>reader know that the viewpoint character dies at the end.
>
>Erica
>