--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "foxbrick"
<foxbrick@...> wrote:
> That's pretty much what Sturgeon meant--from the
ridiculously
awful to
> the utterly humdrum mediocrity.
Todd,
it would be really nice to know why mediocre is crap. I think
someone like Brett Halliday or Edward S. Aarons is mediocre,
but they are not crap in any sense of the word. Or maybe
someone like G.W. Ford, from the more recent writers. Or Sue
Grafton (okay, I haven't read that much by her, but I
wouldn't say she's great nor would I say she's crap).
Mediocre can be very entertaining, while crap is almost never
entertaining. (Unless it's something like THE MESA OF LOST
WOMEN.)
I've been pissed at Sturgeon's Law for some time now. Okay,
Sturgeon meant it as a joke (he was drunk, as Richard pointed
out) and we should treat it as such and not take it as a
truth. It's become sort of a lame excuse. Someone says: "Hey,
crime novels are crap, didn't you know that, read literary
novels instead." And we say back, smirking: "Hey, didn't you
know that 90 % of literary novels is crap?" And that's the
end of discussion.
Juri
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