Quote:
Originally Posted by teh603
I know, I read several of those old authors myself and that's what I grew up on.
So did our literary standards change that much, or were they changed for us?
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I think it was literary snobbery. Writers who felt they were "better" because they used bigger word, better, more flowery description, and more subtle shadings of meaning. That's great, except they forgot story telling while they were at it.
They, of course, would say that story telling is for simpletons and people with no taste. Not for the superior people
they were writing for. Read some of the prefaces by Cabell for his works. And no reader wanted to admit they were just "common people"...
But in the long term, people
read H.P Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Raymond Chandler, and the early Fantasy/Science Fiction of the late 30's and 40's. Very few people read, Hal Sinclair, Joseph Hergesheimer, Burton Rascoe, Ellen Glasglow, or even Cabell (although a few people, like me, read Cabell).
Just embedded snobbery...