Jack Vance

[GrayMouser]

Good article in the New York Times abut one of the greats, Jack Vance.

Dan Simmons, the best-selling writer of horror and fantasy, described discovering Vance as “a revelation for me, like coming to Proust or Henry James. Suddenly you’re in the deep end of the pool. He gives you glimpses of entire worlds with just perfectly turned language. If he’d been born south of the border, he’d be up for a Nobel Prize.” Michael Chabon, whose distinguished literary reputation allows him to employ popular formulas without being labeled a genre writer, told me: “Jack Vance is the most painful case of all the writers I love who I feel don’t get the credit they deserve. If ‘The Last Castle’ or ‘The Dragon Masters’ had the name Italo Calvino on it, or just a foreign name, it would be received as a profound meditation, but because he’s Jack Vance and published in Amazing Whatever, there’s this insurmountable barrier.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/ma...er=rss&emc=rss


Lyonesse, Alastor, the Dying Earth....

[Earniel]

The site asks for a login if you want to see the article.

I've read a few of the books of Vance, but I can't say I'm that much of a fan. Sure, his worlds are interesting, but they don't strike me as more imaginiative as other authors' works. And his characters are 9 time out of 10 completely cardboard.

I suppose I may be doing him injustice, as I'm looking at him from the wrong temporal window, the guy had after all been writing already for decades before I was even born.