Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 9
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Credibility of Whom?
[Read the article: "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Prisoner of Azkaban is the only one of the four previous films that stands on its own as a movie. It was the event that turned the Harry Potter films into something other than a franchise perpetuation machine. Best of all, it was the exorcism of Chris Columbus.
And I love your dismissive phrasing: "I'm glad that someone was wise enough to send Cuarón back to directing art house films, where he belongs and where I can avoid his dreck." Because of course that's how it works, isn't it?
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Counterculture does not equal baby boomers
[Read the article: Art movies: R.I.P.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You need to separate out "baby boomers" from the "counterculture." If you were born after about 1953, you were never really a part of the true counterculture. The anti-countercultural rage of punk was an invention of boomers -- mostly born in the 1950s -- reacting against a counterculture narcissism that was felt quite palpably by babies of the mid-'50s.
I mean, come on. Half of the Pixies were baby boomers (that is, born between 1946 and 1964).
I don't really care if rock is dead. As long as Sonic Youth and Radiohead get to keep on making records, it will seem alive to this old man.
Also, if you really hunger for art films, you're a fool for concentrating on feature-length films. Here's a recommendation, CP: go watch "Street of Crocodiles."
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She doesn't have a problem...
[Read the article: I'm cheating on my husband and loving it. Is that a problem?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... her husband does. He's married to a petri dish.
The only reason to care about this situation is that someone might very well be devastated when the truth finally comes out. Though I suppose some here will argue that that's a good enough reason never to tell him.
You know, if the serial cheaters just stuck to their own kind, they wouldn't need to feel guilty or be called cheaters or risk being tagged with personality disorders. The problem comes when they get involved with those poor, deluded, monogomous mundanes who actually fall for their lies.
Then it's a huge problem.
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this is not a proper way to write???
[Read the article: Dumbledore? Gay. J.K. Rowling? Chatty.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The principal challenge of writing is knowing what to cut. Rowling is exercising the privilege of cutting something and then putting it back -- sort of -- and this is not a proper way to write.
What a bunch of crap. Backstory in any rigorously designed fantasy world will be extensive and most of it is not designed to be in the final story, but to provide that feeling of a thorough and richly imagined world.
Editorial decisions about what to include or leave out of a novel itself have nothing to do with what an author later reveals in conversations about backstory. Writing science fiction and fantasy is all about world-building. Astute and enthusiastic readers have always known that the greatest examples of this are based on imagined worlds and backstories that contain enormous detail. Those readers may become fascinated by the details that went in to an author's world-building. It's a totally legitimate interest in sf and fantasy.
And Harry Potter is a fantasy, right? I mean, a lot of you may like to pretend it isn't genre fiction because... well... because YOU read it. But it is. And we like to peak behind the curtain. The books are really only travel brouchures for the world that exists -- in all its rich detail -- only in the author's mind. We can do whatever we want with it afterwards: reimagine it ourselves, as fan fiction writers do, or try to find out more about what the author had in mind. Both totally legitimate and acceptable.
Sorry if it doesn't make for 'proper writing' (whatever that's supposed to be).
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Dear AfterThat
[Read the article: This plane's not big enough for you to have sex in]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay. I'll bite. Just when are you too old to have sex, anyway?
My guess is that you have no idea whatsoever.
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too familiar
[Read the article: I'm an existential artist. People just don't get me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]LW,
Speaking as someone twice your alleged age, I have to admit that your letter reminded me of me at that age. And yes, whenever I sat down to write about my lot in life, I sounded like a snotty, clueless brat. But in fact, I was shy, relatively polite, and I kept my disdain for the mundanes of the world down to a whisper. Truth is, I was afraid I wasn't very original after all, that the work I was producing would never be original. And I was afraid that everybody knew it.
What I've learned in the years since then is that it's very easy for a child to feel special, and for an artist in his or her adolescence to feel as though their specialness, their originality, is so misunderstood as to be potentially tragic. Unfortunately, that has a lot more to do with being an adolescent than being an artist. You're now at the age where all of that is being put to the test. Maybe you are a barrista, or maybe you're the lowest rung in the Design Dept. at some publisher. If you're 26 and not making money off the qualities that makes you so original, well then... maybe you're not. But that isn't necessarily the indicator.
On the other hand, an original artist produces original work. Their appearance and especially their attire is completely beside the point. Also, I know plenty of people in their 40s and 50s -- some living off their creative endeavors, others not -- who have maintained their unconventional tastes and original personality traits in spite of the responsibilities of adult life. And they do it without marginalizing themselves or condescending to people... simply because they are civil, decent people. And because their love of art and ideas was genuine enough that it actually survived all the travails of growing up and living among people with different tastes and values.
And finally, get over the idea that art can only be great if it is "original." J. S. Bach did very little to transform or break free from tried-and-true Baroque forms, but he wrote more great music than just about anybody who ever lived. Ever.
Oh, and yes to Radiohead.