Yeah, Nine mentioned above why I haven't read this book. It became obvious about halfway through the panel in question that if one asked Grossman why he had focused on Narnia as his major textual influence he would say something about how he sees Lewis as his literary father and consequently has to totally destroy him before moving on to the next thing, or some such load of malarkey. He literally could not understand the idea of an influence-as-positive-inheritance model, or of a non-destructive literary mentorship. We'd say the words and watch them bounce off. I have not met anyone else this millennium who sounds so much like a straight-up no-deviations Freudian, with the caveat that marrying his mother has fallen way, way, way down his priorities list.
I don't usually hold with judging a text by the personality of its author, but it was like meeting the ghost of John Updike. It was so obvious that any text which came out of his theories would not be to my taste that I have never bothered.
Sadly, the ghost of John Updike thing is probably why he has had such gigantic mainstream and crossover success. I was initially hoping he'd do middling well and get told by critics to go do his homework in reading his genre, but he's done so well he doesn't have to pay attention to that sort of thing.
Ah well. His is the sort of value system I tend to hope people grow out of because it is so obviously making them miserable, but not growing out of it is its own punishment.
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Date: 2014-09-12 11:25 pm (UTC)I don't usually hold with judging a text by the personality of its author, but it was like meeting the ghost of John Updike. It was so obvious that any text which came out of his theories would not be to my taste that I have never bothered.
Sadly, the ghost of John Updike thing is probably why he has had such gigantic mainstream and crossover success. I was initially hoping he'd do middling well and get told by critics to go do his homework in reading his genre, but he's done so well he doesn't have to pay attention to that sort of thing.
Ah well. His is the sort of value system I tend to hope people grow out of because it is so obviously making them miserable, but not growing out of it is its own punishment.