{"id":523,"date":"2006-10-28T22:41:25","date_gmt":"2006-10-29T03:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=523"},"modified":"2006-10-28T22:42:31","modified_gmt":"2006-10-29T03:42:31","slug":"academics-and-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=523","title":{"rendered":"Academics and Writers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have to admit it: I am a bit perturbed, or shaken, when I encounter Charles Stross<\/a>, one of the more interesting SF writers<\/a> at work today, writing the following<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We have literary academics studying<\/em> us (and as a jobbing writer, I can tell you there are few things as terrifying as discovering that some poor bastard’s dissertation depends on a misinterpretation of one of your books).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, fortunately I am far past the dissertation stage; but as a “literary academic” who studies SF, and who writes about it both here and in my more formal acaemic writing, I am eternally worried about precisely this, even though (or more to the point, precisely because) when I write about books I admire, or books that make me feel something or understand something I didn’t feel or understand before, — and I usually do only write about books I like, letting the ones I don’t be passed over in silence — I make no pretense of describing them accurately, as they are — but rather use them (or appropriate them) to come to some understanding for myself, which means that the author might just as well be upset by my (admitted) misinterpretation, as he\/she might be pleased by the fact that I liked their book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have to admit it: I am a bit perturbed, or shaken, when I encounter Charles Stross, one of the more interesting SF writers at work today, writing the following:<\/p>\n

We have literary academics studying us (and as a jobbing writer, I can tell you there are few things as terrifying as discovering that some poor bastard’s dissertation depends on a misinterpretation of one of your books).<\/p>\n

Now, fortunately I am far past the dissertation stage; but as a “literary academic” who studies SF, and who writes about it both here and in my more formal acaemic writing, I am eternally worried about precisely this, even though (or more to the point, precisely because) when I write about books I admire, or books that make me feel something or understand something I didn’t feel or understand before, — and I usually do only write about books I like, letting the ones I don’t be passed over in silence — I make no pretense of describing them accurately, as they are — but rather use them (or appropriate them) to come to some understanding for myself, which means that the author might just as well be upset by my (admitted) misinterpretation, as he\/she might be pleased by the fact that I liked their book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}