Lev Grossman On 'A Game Of Thrones,' 'The Magaicians' And Why Fantasy Isn't Just For Kids

WSJ:

I've seen it happen, all too often. I'm at a dinner party, and the person next to me asks me what I do, and I say I'm a novelist, and a little light of hopeful interest kindles in their eyes.

Read the whole story: WSJ

Comments

[Gary Dorrington]

08:02 PM on 07/26/2011

Perhaps you should just go to less dinner parties then Lev, then you could perhaps write a more informed article.
If all you did was go to tea parties, would you write an article about America hating gay people?

[rockyoumonkeys]

01:11 PM on 07/25/2011

Sounds like someone's grown a little defensive! Who are you trying to convince, Lev?

[blacksmithn]

11:42 AM on 07/25/2011

Ehh, what?

Sorry, I was having a fantasy myself, looking at that tube-top!

Oh, wrong kind of fantasy...

[Paul Baack]

11:27 AM on 07/25/2011

The Fantasy genre jumped off the tracks for a while in the late 70s and early 80s, as publishers came to realize that J.R.R. Tolkien and/or Robert E. Howard knockoffs (ripoffs) could be extremely profitable. Even more so when you could combine one of the other with a Star Wars knockoff. And even more so when you could take that product and stretch it out into a multivolume series.

Writers like John Farley were still doing good work in the field, but my gut feeling is that the genre began to right itself with the arrival of Neal Gaiman and his "Sandman" series of comic books, followed by the publication of his novel "Neverwhere." When Clive Barker published "Weaveworld" (and later "Imagica"), the table was set for true Fantasy for adults -- and the adult-minded -- to return as a respectable form of literature.

Kudos to all the hard-working writers out there who've labored so long to bring back the luster to our mythic gold, after having been spun into straw for so long by so many hacks.

[moflard]

01:39 PM on 07/25/2011

I´m not sure if the genre jumped the track or just the novel focused publishing industry as good fantasy could still be found in short-story format.