The thing about novels that require a certain literary context, unlike novels that require knowledge of a social/cultural context, is that while I can fairly easily go off and assimilate background knowledge of other historical periods, cultures and religions from a quick trawl of the interweb (and frequently do - as a reader I am never far from works of reference, figuratively speaking at least, and always want to find outjust where the overlap between reality and fiction comes) it's far more difficult to assimilate a literary tradition without reading all, or at least a fair selection, of the works contained within the tradition. An example that comes to mind is Jasper Fforde; I have a literary background, and while I didn't pick up every reference in The Eyre Affair, I picked up enough to enjoy it, while it left Niall cold and probably would have done even if he liked funny books.
Perhaps this is why, having stopped reading sf in about 1991 and come back to it a couple of years ago, I frequently find it leaves me cold?
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Date: 2005-12-28 03:22 pm (UTC)Perhaps this is why, having stopped reading sf in about 1991 and come back to it a couple of years ago, I frequently find it leaves me cold?