Of Sex and Faerie: Further Essays on Genre Fiction

John Lennard

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Sujets

• Sexualité
• sexualité
• Sexualité
• European
• Literary criticism

Informations

• Publié par: Humanities eBooks
• Date de parution: 11 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781847601711
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

HumàNITIeS-EBOOKS GeNRe FICTION MONOgRàPhS

Of Sex and Faerie

JOhN LeNNàRD

further essays on Genre Fiction

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Of Sex and Faerie FuRTheR eSSàyS ON GeNRe FICTION

JOhN LeNNàRD

HEB ☼ Humanities-Ebooks

Copyright

Text © 2010 John Lennard

The Author has asserted his right to be identiîed as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

FIRST PuBlISheD ByHumanities-Ebooks LLP, Tirril Hall, Tirril, Penrith CA10 2JE.

The PDF ebook (with the facility of word and phrase search) is available fromhTTP://www. humàNITIeS-eBOOKS.CO.uKàND MyILIBRàRy.COm.

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The author and publisher have used their best efforts to ensure that external URLs given in this book are accurate and current. They are not, however, responsible for any of these websites, and can offer no guarantee that the sites remain live or the content appropriate.

ISBN 9781847601711 pdf (fixed page format) ISBN 9781847601728 ePub (Reflowable format) ISBN 9781847601735 paperback

For my brother David Lennard

now a hospitable Madrileño, once a source of classic SF, and still a partner in crime, with love and thanks for everything.

Contents

List of Illustrations

aCKNOwleDgemeNTS

FORewORD

1. Of Policemen and Poussin Bill James’s Dance to the Muzak of Crime

2. Of Mean Streets and Mortgaged Castles Walter Mosley, Easy Rawlins, and the G. I. Bill

3. Of Marriage and Mutations Lois McMaster Bujold and the Several Lives of Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

4. Of Sex and Faerie Meredith Gentry’s Improbable Code of Orgasm and other Paranormal Romance

5. Of Voyages and Volumes The Many Successors of C. S. Forester and Horatio Hornblower

6. Of the Western Shore Ursula K. Le Guin’s Late Distillation of Fable

7. Of Criticism and Continuities A Personal Account of Serial Reading in the Age of the Web

Bibliography

a nOTe ON The auThOR

7

8

9

10

47

70

112

165

223

246

309

441

List of Illustrations

Further Essays in Genre Fiction

7

Cover. Sophie Gengembre Anderson (1823–1903),Take the Fair Face of Woman, and Gently Suspending, with Butterlies, Jewels, and Flowers Attending, Thus Your Fairy is Made of Most Beautiful Things(private collection).

1. Nicolas Poussin,The Dance to the Music of Time(c.1634–6)

2. The îlm-poster forDevil in a Blue Dress(1995) …

3. JOhàNN HeINRICh FüSSlI,Die Elfenkönigin Titania(1793–4, detail)

4. JOhàNN HeINRICh FüSSlI,Prinz Arthur und die Feenkönigin(c.1788)

5. Graphs of the human sexual response cycle …

6. Three of the ‘Aids That Every Woman Appreciates’ …

7. J. M. W. Turner,The Battle of Trafalgar(1822)

8. Alfred Kroeber and ‘Ishi’, 1912.

8

Of Sex and Faerie

Acknowledgements

MàNy PeOPle hàVe CONTRIBuTeD OVeR The yeàRS TO ThIS VOlume, àND IN màNy wàyS. FOR my reading habits I am indebted îrst and foremost, naturally and nurturally, to my late father, Michael Lennard, and I have had the pleasure over decades of sharing his legacy with my sisters, Rosemary and Sarah-Jill, my brothers-in-law Andrew Daley and Mark Kilroy, and my elder brother David, my dedicatee, whose youthful paperback library, abandoned in our parents’ garage, I once spent much formative time exploring. Down the years my nephews and nieces, Mick Lennard, Josie Brugato, Matthew & Claire Kilroy, and Joe & Tom Daley, have been drawn into the ongoing family discussion, as their own reading habits developed; so too have hapless dinner-guests in Britain, Spain, the USA, and Jamaica, with other innocents too numerous to mention. More proxi- mately and culpably, James Robertson, of the History & Archaeology department at UWI–Mona, repeatedly took the time to read essays in draft, making scores of valuable suggestions, and gladly participated in exchanges of novels that kept us both from doing too much marking on time. Jacqui Ingledew happily let me raid her horror library, and talked some uncommon good sense. David Palfrey, David Williams, Charles Moseley, Francis Ingledew, Treena Balds, and Corin Throsby also read one or more pieces, and helped to reîne particular issues; Francis also did me a great favour, discussed in the last essay. Sharon Lee & Steve Miller took the time to read what I had to say about par- anormal romance and them, and didn’t object; James Tucker read the essay on his work as ‘Bill James’, making several valuable points and saving me from various errors; and Lois McMaster Bujold was kind enough to read the essay on her work and those on Hornblower’s successors and fanîc that mention her, offering that most pleasing of all critical balms, an author’s approval (as well as pointing out some corrigenda). In online discussions of fanîc in its many varieties LiveJournal-users ‘Philomytha’, ‘Rymenhild’, ‘Zahri_Melitor’, ‘Tel’, ‘LightGetsIn’, ‘Beatrice_Otter’, ‘Grondîc’, ‘Magglenaggal’, ‘Professor’, and ‘Omnivorously’ were very generous and helpful, as were others who posted only in passing; Bracketyjack’s thanks to you all. In the same matter, Alex Lind- say very kindly researched for me a list of Sterniana from the 1760s–80s, informing one of my more densely learned footnotes; and honed my thinking in conversation. William St Clair îrst pointed me to Corin Throsby’s fascinating D.Phil. thesis on Byron and early fandom. All errors, though, traditionally and rightly, are mine alone.

Foreword

Further Essays in Genre Fiction

9

As its subtitle implies, this volume extends an earlier collection,Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction(2007), in which I sought to bring professional criti- Càl àTTeNTION TO BeàR ON BOTh PàRTICulàR geNRe àuThORS àND TROPeS, àND The PheNOmeNON of ‘serial reading’—engagement, over successive years and volumes, with a series cast, locale, and protagonist/s. That phenomenon is also central to this collection, for all the essays are concerned with individual or grouped series, with most of which I have lived for years, even decades, and the last with the praxis of serial reading (and writing) in the age of the Web. What (if anything) authors considered here have in common besides serial com- position of genre îctions and my extended attention is moot, but I have found myself RePeàTeDly CONCeRNeD wITh RelàTIONS BeTweeN SeRIeS, àND BeTweeN SuB-geNReS, CROSS- connections that insist on a far greater intergeneric fertility that either marketing or criticism commonly allow genre work. Contemporary and recent history is also a con- cern uniting crime, science îction, and romance, sometimes blossoming (as in David Weber’s Honor Harrington series) into full-blown engagement with military history, or (as in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Meredith Gentry series) with our post-Darwinist sexual self-understanding in a time of AIDS and Rohypnol. The passage and manipulation of TIme IN àND BeTweeN SeRIeS NOVelS àlSO ReCuRS àCROSS The geNReS. aND àll The eSSàyS àRe arguments, implicit and explicit, for the qualities and relevance of recent genre writing àND ITS RelàTIONS wITh OlDeR lITeRàTuRe. GIVeN àll The SeRIeS DISCuSSeD my BIBlIOgRàPhy ISverydeliberate full- lengthy—a ness, for many genre authors do not have available bibliographies of academic stand- ard (though the e-retailer fantasticîction.com has done wonders). To provide complete entries for all authors would have been extremely arduous—but readers who wish to pursue any of the genre writers I mention, for pleasure or study, will înd more than ade- quate means of doing so. Additionally, my insistent provision, in main text and footnote of authorial and publication dates, even at the cost of cluttering sentences, and in the bibliography of data about awards, represents a deliberate historicisation in detail—a gROuNDINg àS eSSeNTIàl TO wORThwhIle geNRe STuDIeS àS TO àll OTheR lITeRàRy CRITICISm. JOhN LeNNàRD Cambridge, UK, 1 April 2010

1. Of Policemen and Poussin

Bill James’s Dance to the Muzak of Crime

llan James Tucker (b. 1929) has for îve decades been a remarkably proliîc, a entertaining, and interesting writer. Besides two works of non-îction and îve novels published since 1960in propria personaàS JàmeS tuCKeR, TheRe IS à làRge BODy of pseudonymous work—19 novels by ‘David Craig’, two by ‘Judith Jones’, and no less than 36 novels and a collection of short stories by ‘Bill James’. This Jamesian output includes (to date) 26 novels in the ‘Harpur & Iles’ series, chronicles of surpris- INg POlICemeN àND màNNeReD CRImINàlS IN àN àRCheTyPàl ENglISh PORT-CITy ThàT JàmeS began in 1985 withYou’d Better Believe Itand has ever since (despite switching pub- lishers mid-stream) unfailingly extended at a volume per year, with a double-tap in 1991 forClubàNDAstride a Grave. Such regular extent is relatively uncommon, and the series is also marked by an extraordinary stylistic air that has earned James rap- turous plaudits from many reviewers, as well as some curious literary comparisons. Chief among these is a persistent linkage toA Dance to the Music of Time(1951–75, televised 1997), a great if notably patrician 12-volumeroman euveaNThONy By 1 Powell (1905–2000) —on which massive social chronicle of the well-heeled British twentieth century James Tucker once published the îrst full-length critical study,The Novels of Anthony Powell(1976). This link is sometimes made explicit by higher-brow commentators—John A. Gould of the Phillips Academy in Andover noticedThe Girl with the Long Back(2003) in 2 TheBoston Globeunder the title ‘Harpur, Iles, and the shadow of Anthony Powell’ — but sinuous implication is commoner, and perfectly caught (at least for now) on the

1A Question of Upbringing(1951),A Buyer’s Market(1952),The Acceptance World(1955),At Lady Molly’s (1957),Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant (1960),The Kindly Ones (1962),The Valley of Bones (1964),The Soldier’s Art (1966),The Military Philosophers (1968),Books Do Furnish a Room(1971),Temporary Kings(1973), &Hearing Secret Harmonies(1975). 2 John A. Gould, ‘Harpur, Iles, and the shadow of Anthony Powell’, inThe Boston Globe, 4 July 2004, and at: http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2004/07/04/harpur_iles_and_the_shadow_of_ anthony_powell/