Quote:
Originally Posted by recluse
I think Margaret Atwood is a fine writer.
It's the term 'Literary' that bothers me.
It's like a warning sticker: "This book is a pretentious, trendy waste of paper"
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She's a wonderful writer.
But there are other factors involved. Margaret is Canadian. The Canadian market isn't large enough to support someone writing fiction just from local sales. So the Canadian government offers grants to support indigenous writers. If you're a Canadian writer, your goal is to qualify for the highest level of grant you can, which can influence what you write and how you present it.
Atwood is one of the exceptions that has been picked up and become popular outside of Canada, but she still comes from and writes within the Canadian system. I'd have to do research to confirm it, but I suspect her "What I write isn't SF" claims have more to do with how the Canadian grants system classifies things than her own feelings about the genre.
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Dennis