Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
[...] Well, now you've lost me.  I personally find fan-fiction to be a dismissive term and use it as such myself (most recently for Margaret Atwood's The Testaments. I think my phrase was "YA fan-fiction" at that.) My own perspective is that if people want to write fan-fiction, that's fine, but I certainly don't want to read it. So in the context of a serious recommendation of a book that's been widely lauded, I take it as "fightin' words," or at least the opening lob in what is likely to be a contentious discussion. Nothing wrong with that. |
Now you are getting down to knowing the person you are talking to. Some people use "literary" in derogatory terms; YA, as you mention, is another common one. Oh, and indie
. But these terms may be used as simply descriptive by some, casual generalisation, as mildly dismissive by others, while your comments on this thread suggest a stronger revulsion - although, as you explain, part of that was being defensive of a book you respect.
At various times I've used all those terms in both descriptive and dismissive senses ... sometimes, I suspect, in the same paragraph, if not the same sentence. And yet I have greatly enjoyed books from all these categories.
I agree that Deskisamess seemed to be using "fan-fiction" in at least a mildly dismissive sense, but the phrasing didn't strike me as implying the level of revulsion that you would have meant if you had used that term. I've seen people say "I don't read romance", or perhaps more aptly, "I don't read indie" with about the same level of casually dismissive generalisation.