Nicholas ([info]nwhyte) wrote,
@ 2007-11-09 08:32:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:writer: zelazny

Interesting essay
Mary A. Turzillo on Roger Zelazny. (hat-tip.)


(Post a new comment)


[info]jensdreams
2007-11-09 09:13 am UTC (link)
you're welcome :)

you probably didn't understand what i wrote there, but it was all good :P i love zelazny and your blog gave me a few good links.

(this is my lj account which i don't actually use)

Jen at Mostly-Harmless

(Reply to this)

A bit one-sided
(Anonymous)
2007-11-09 10:27 am UTC (link)
Zelazny was a hell of a nice guy; everyone who knew him agrees on that.

But his writing, while wonderful, was kind of... narrow. Turzillo goes on about how many of his heroes fit the Byronic paradigm; what she doesn't say is how pretty much all of them did.

The fangirls chasing Zelazny is particularly interesting, given that Z. never did write a strong, convincing female character. Pretty much all of his women are either (1) appurtenances to the male characters (2) victims or (3) villains. (Some are more than one.)

He also had a pretty good case of the the Sexually Aggressive Woman = Bad! thing. One recalls Dara from the Amber books, who seduces Corwin... and then _turns into a demon and disappears!_ Bwahahaaa!!

(IMS he had exactly one female protagonist in his entire corpus. And that was in a short story, and he killed her off at the end of it.)

The ur-Zelazny narrative is a male coming-of-age story, starting with an appealing but flawed-or-incomplete male protagonist, and ending with his acceptance of adult responsibility -- usually by either actually or symbolically becoming a father. There's nothing wrong with that, and goodness knows Zelazny found a lot of different ways to ring changes on it, but... well, I have trouble putting him in the same category as, say, Gene Wolfe. (Who has his own tics, but that's another story.)

In short, that article was a bit on the gush side for me. I'd love to read a thoughtful review and deconstruction of Zelazny, written by someone who wasn't heavily invested in Roger-the-man-himself, but AFAIK it hasn't been done yet.


Doug M.

(Reply to this)

In other news
(Anonymous)
2007-11-09 12:48 pm UTC (link)
apparently I'm Luke/Rinaldo.


Doug M.

(Reply to this)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…