skewer - Profile (original) (raw)
on 22 January 2002 (#446934)
Reading While Using One's Brain!
[Note: I am a bad, bad moderator and have not nurtured this community. I will work to rectify this soon. 7/7/03]
Originally, this was designed as a restricted forum for the panning of dull, insipid, uninspired and clumsy writing, a place to shred or skewer works of little merit, published despite their excreble natures.
Given a lack of activity, though, I am refocusing this community towards intelligent literary commentary. In other words, I hope to make this a place where criticism and reactions to books/poems/articles go beyond the banal "Like, I liked it and stuff," or the ever-horrifying, "Omigod, I just loved character X! SHE IS ME!" There's a shitload of book discussion communities, where the posts rarely go beyond like/dislike, plot summaries, or identification with the protagonist/love object/villain (though the word "protagonist" generally fails to appear). Oh, and, of course, the "I love books by so-and-so! I've read such-and-such! What are her other titles?!??"
What you don't tend to see is analysis: What are some of the arguments and commentaries (social, political, moral, theological, or philosophical) that the author seems to be making? How do plot, character and style contribute to this sense? Is there an obvious intertextual relationship between this work and an earlier one? Is the piece simple and transparent in its aims and particulars, or is it a multi-layered tapestry of ideas, motifs, and allusions? Is it too complicated, drowning in its own excesses, or streamlined to near-perfect balance?
This was a closed community, because I feared those who would wish to gush about their favorite authors, babble happily about how they're just like so-and-so, and otherwise avoid real thoughts about books and meaning would join it. Thankfully, they haven't so far.
I'd rather be a snob and invite people who actually have intelligence, wit, judgment and sense to guide them (yes, someone's been reading her Pope, Johnson and Austen), as well as demanding of them the critical analyses I hope to see here.
On a final note, this community still welcomes the panning of works. Skewering bad writing never loses its fun.
aldous huxley, alternate history, andre norton, arthur c. clarke, barbara hambly, c.j. cherryh, celtic fantasy, charles de lint, charles delint, china mieville, cyberpunk, dark fantasy, david brin, elizabeth haydon, epic fantasy, fantasy, garth nix, gene wolfe, george orwell, guy gavriel kay, h.p. lovecraft, hard sf, historical fantasy, horror fantasy, intelligent genre fiction, isaac asimov, j. gregory keyes, j.r.r. tolkien, kate elliot, katharine kerr, katherine kurtz, lois mcmaster bujold, lord of the rings, madeleine l'engle, martha wells, martin amis, mervyn peake, mystery plots, neal stephenson, neil gaiman, nina kiriki hoffman, octavia butler, out of print editions, p.c. hodgell, patricia mckillip, peter s. beagle, philip k. dick, philip pullman, ray bradbury, robin mckinley, samuel r. delany, sci-fi, science fiction, sean russell, sf, sheri s. tepper, space operas, speculative fiction, stanislaw lem, steampunk, stephen r. delany, steven brust, storm constantine, sword and sorcery, tad williams, tanith lee, urban fantasy, ursula k. le guin, used bookstores, william gibson