Daniel Abraham: A Private Letter from Genre to Literature

SF Signal just posted Daniel Abraham's letter from genre to literature.

Here's an excerpt:

I saw you tonight. You were walking with your cabal from the university to the little bar across the street where the professors and graduate students fraternize. You were in the dark, plain clothes that you think of as elegant. I have always thought they made you look pale. I was at the newsstand. I think that you saw me, but pretended not to. I want to say it didn't sting.

Please, please, darling let us stop this. This artificial separation between us is painful, it is undignified, and it fools no one. In company, we sneer at each other and make those cold, cutting remarks. And why? You laugh at me for telling the same stories again and again. I call you boring and joyless. Is it wrong, my dear, that I hope the cruel things I say of you cut as deeply as the ones you say of me?


[...]

I forgive you. I weep and I resent and I say how little I care what your opinions are. And, let me be honest, dear, I take comfort in the fact that I make more money than you. That my audience is larger. Outside the narrow halls of the academy, my star is brighter. I go to the movies, and I am on every marquee. A television is practically my mirror. My house is larger and warmer, and the people there laugh and weep more loudly. Not all of them are sophisticates. Many of them find comfort and solace in things you consider beneath you. But they are my people, and I love them as they love me.

[...]

I read through the collections of your most honored short stories, and what do I see? Fantasy, mystery, ghost stories, romance. How often you refresh yourself at my springs. I wonder whether your contempt might hide something deeper. Fear perhaps, that you might be less without me as I am less without you. Are you vulnerable, love? You can be. I will not turn you away.

Follow this link to read the entire letter.

3 commentaires:

Anonymous said...

Dramatic enough? I think not...
...

-paran

Myshkin said...

Seriously this genre whining about the perceived slights of the amorphous idea of capital L literature is starting to grate. It says more about the insecurities of genre writers then it says about the supposed aloofness of this fictional literary cabal. I like Abraham, I like his novels, and I love his prose, but it's time for genre writers to make arguments FOR genre rather than AGAINST "literature".

Booksnhorses said...

Very Sandman.