To quote Barack Obama — let me be clear. I don’t care about Brandon Sanderson. I don’t care about Jason Kehe. I don’t care about Wired. I don’t care about fantasy fiction. I definitely don’t care about fantasy fiction fans (at least in the sense of their interest in fantasy fiction — I’m sure I often care about them otherwise).
Head over to my substack where I deconstruct this piece in an article entitled In Defense of Some Guy's Writing About Some Guy's Writing About Some Guy's Writing
I think Kehe makes some very high-brow-school-teacher-ish assumptions about writing, as if the only way to write well is to write the way they write at Wired, without discussing enough the fact that Sanderson writes well for his genre. When he says Sanderson's sentences "are no great gift to English prose", I wondered why that is the relevant criteria. Are Kehe's? There's therefore something mildly meretricious about the piece because it relies very heavily on those assumptions and doesn't especially explain Sanderson. The descriptions of people as fleshy etc probably come across worse in this context. Talking about people "graduating" to Tolkein is pretty high and mighty for someone making body-odour quips.
The whole article came across like someone desperate to identify with something important. In this case, I really believe Kehe is a sci-fi fan, but the kind that takes it very seriously and has always bristled at the nerdy reputation it has always had. As long as it is made up of "pale, fleshy" fans, then it ruins it for 'authentic' sci-fi fans like him. He thinks people are laughing at him the way he laughs at stupid and naive fans.
It clearly drives him nuts that the current golden boy of sci-fi/fantasy is someone he doesn't feel deserves all the adulation he's getting. I wish he'd shared who he DOES feel is worthy of 40 million dollar Kickstarters and personal conventions and adoring fans. You see this all the time with music, obviously, with rock journalists doing their best to destroy the popularity of unworthy artists.
If you read Kehe's article closely, you'll see that he's not actually insulting Sanderson's fans directly. He's giving them an invitation. "I understand that you love this writer, but I'm here to explain to you that your adulation is childish and embarrassing. If you choose to continue to be a fan of his, then I'll have no choice but to acknowledge how lame you are. Come with me and grow up and realize you should like better things than Sanderson." He's really trying to be helpful.
The reality is, Sanderson's writing ISN'T beautifully-written prose. No quotes from his books will (probably) ever be carved on someone's tombstone. But his writing is perfectly serviceable. Sanderson's stories excel at being fantastically-told stories. I think it's an artform that has gotten lost with all the art/rock/book/movie criticism in the world. Sure, deep, meaningful, cutting-edge, unique art is incredible. But at the end of the day, I want a book that tells a great story, or a song that makes happy, a painting that just looks nice, or a movie that's just pure entertainment, like Top Gun Maverick. it takes incredible skill to create something that appeals to huge swaths of the world. They've tapped into something that people crave. Kehe can't handle that. For him, it's not enough that people like the specific sci-fi that he likes. They have to hate what he hates.
I'd love to read his Coldplay rant I'm sure he has somewhere on his computer.
The overall impression I get is that Kehe is trying to write an edgelordy version of gonzo journalism--and failing badly at it. He left a number of potentially engaging subjects off the table--a deeper examination of why there are so many prominent Mormon SFF writers, the mechanics behind Sanderson's highly effective Kickstarter, the degree to which the people around Sanderson enable him to be this productive, and the degree to which Sanderson has been helpful to newer writers in the genre, amongst other potential topics, some of which have the potential to become quite edgy. Instead, he takes six months to produce these rambling, disjointed 4000 words? Sigh.
If Kehe was trying to channel the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson, he failed quite dramatically at it, especially since he's also a senior editor at WIRED. Certainly a senior editor should be able to produce something better, or so I would think.
Note: I'm not a Sanderson fan. That particular corner of SFF is not my yum. However, I'm also not a fan of the sneering swipe by allegedly pretentious literary sorts toward popular genres and writers. Romance and SFF are often subjected to this sort of analysis, and that includes the sainted Tolkien, who was targeted by much better writers than Kehe. Just as Kehe is no Hunter S. Thompson, he's also no Edmund Wilson (Oo, Those Awful Orcs).
I think you're taking some of the mean spirited things Kehe says out of context or ignoring how many mean spirited things there were. It reads as a bullying piece, and there is a distinction between saying one slightly mean spirited comment and bullying. It thought it was the later, which is why it shocks me so much to read.
You and I know there is nothing wrong with salting food, how it's thrown in to a long string of derision changes it from a purely logical statement to something else- I don't think Kehe's intent was innocent.
Not to mention Sanderson asks him not to include part about feeling less pain and Kehe refuses, saying he must include it, essentially.
Pale and fleshy was not all Kehe wrote about Sanderson fans, it was a complaint about body odor.
And I think calling the article "a little mean" is a vast understatement. It's old fashioned bullying plain and simple, and I think wired and Kehe owe Sanderson an apology.
Again, if it was a single sentence about salting food, I would say no big deal. I get the intent of your article. I worry it's getting close in a small way to gaslighting even though I don't think you mean that- Kehe's article was pretty over the top in my mind. It almost sounds like you're saying- stop being so sensitive to Kehe's comments, I don't think that quite applies to his article IMO.
I also don't get what you mean about Sanderson fans feeling like someone is gate crashing. I don't think that's the case at all. I think people are reading Kehe's article for it's merits and observing it to be mean-spirited bullying; heck, the governor of Utah tweeted about it. You can't write an article like that and complain that the fans are canceling you, and they should stop being such fan-boys. Like you said- you don't care about Sanderson or his fans. I don't care about Kehe, I don't care if someone criticizes Sanderson's writing, but I do care about decency and when I spot a bully, I am not afraid to call it out, and neither should anyone else, fan or not.
I think I would've sympathized with Kehe more if he wrote better—but he wrote like shit. His essay was disorganized and his prose weak. To quote him:
"If it’s worldbuilding, it’s only worldbuilding one thing: the worldbuilder’s world.
Three days later, I pull up to Sanderson’s built world: his home(s) in a gated community of American Fork, Utah."
"Built world." Scintillating. I haven't even mentioned how many sentences he starts with "and."
The article calls Sanderson's writing horrible—and to be fair, it is juvenile considering Sanderson's swamped writing schedule—and yet, it itself is mediocre, especially considering it took several months for its author to shit it out his metrosexual ran-through SF ass. It reads like a teenager resentful that the football stars and the bad boys fuck virgins while he can't get a scrap of snatch. It's ressentiment made manifest.
He has a right to his opinion; can he back it up with his own work?
Head over to my substack where I deconstruct this piece in an article entitled In Defense of Some Guy's Writing About Some Guy's Writing About Some Guy's Writing
I think Kehe makes some very high-brow-school-teacher-ish assumptions about writing, as if the only way to write well is to write the way they write at Wired, without discussing enough the fact that Sanderson writes well for his genre. When he says Sanderson's sentences "are no great gift to English prose", I wondered why that is the relevant criteria. Are Kehe's? There's therefore something mildly meretricious about the piece because it relies very heavily on those assumptions and doesn't especially explain Sanderson. The descriptions of people as fleshy etc probably come across worse in this context. Talking about people "graduating" to Tolkein is pretty high and mighty for someone making body-odour quips.
The whole article came across like someone desperate to identify with something important. In this case, I really believe Kehe is a sci-fi fan, but the kind that takes it very seriously and has always bristled at the nerdy reputation it has always had. As long as it is made up of "pale, fleshy" fans, then it ruins it for 'authentic' sci-fi fans like him. He thinks people are laughing at him the way he laughs at stupid and naive fans.
It clearly drives him nuts that the current golden boy of sci-fi/fantasy is someone he doesn't feel deserves all the adulation he's getting. I wish he'd shared who he DOES feel is worthy of 40 million dollar Kickstarters and personal conventions and adoring fans. You see this all the time with music, obviously, with rock journalists doing their best to destroy the popularity of unworthy artists.
If you read Kehe's article closely, you'll see that he's not actually insulting Sanderson's fans directly. He's giving them an invitation. "I understand that you love this writer, but I'm here to explain to you that your adulation is childish and embarrassing. If you choose to continue to be a fan of his, then I'll have no choice but to acknowledge how lame you are. Come with me and grow up and realize you should like better things than Sanderson." He's really trying to be helpful.
The reality is, Sanderson's writing ISN'T beautifully-written prose. No quotes from his books will (probably) ever be carved on someone's tombstone. But his writing is perfectly serviceable. Sanderson's stories excel at being fantastically-told stories. I think it's an artform that has gotten lost with all the art/rock/book/movie criticism in the world. Sure, deep, meaningful, cutting-edge, unique art is incredible. But at the end of the day, I want a book that tells a great story, or a song that makes happy, a painting that just looks nice, or a movie that's just pure entertainment, like Top Gun Maverick. it takes incredible skill to create something that appeals to huge swaths of the world. They've tapped into something that people crave. Kehe can't handle that. For him, it's not enough that people like the specific sci-fi that he likes. They have to hate what he hates.
I'd love to read his Coldplay rant I'm sure he has somewhere on his computer.
The overall impression I get is that Kehe is trying to write an edgelordy version of gonzo journalism--and failing badly at it. He left a number of potentially engaging subjects off the table--a deeper examination of why there are so many prominent Mormon SFF writers, the mechanics behind Sanderson's highly effective Kickstarter, the degree to which the people around Sanderson enable him to be this productive, and the degree to which Sanderson has been helpful to newer writers in the genre, amongst other potential topics, some of which have the potential to become quite edgy. Instead, he takes six months to produce these rambling, disjointed 4000 words? Sigh.
If Kehe was trying to channel the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson, he failed quite dramatically at it, especially since he's also a senior editor at WIRED. Certainly a senior editor should be able to produce something better, or so I would think.
Note: I'm not a Sanderson fan. That particular corner of SFF is not my yum. However, I'm also not a fan of the sneering swipe by allegedly pretentious literary sorts toward popular genres and writers. Romance and SFF are often subjected to this sort of analysis, and that includes the sainted Tolkien, who was targeted by much better writers than Kehe. Just as Kehe is no Hunter S. Thompson, he's also no Edmund Wilson (Oo, Those Awful Orcs).
This whole scene is crying out for a new Isaac Bashevis Singer.
I think you're taking some of the mean spirited things Kehe says out of context or ignoring how many mean spirited things there were. It reads as a bullying piece, and there is a distinction between saying one slightly mean spirited comment and bullying. It thought it was the later, which is why it shocks me so much to read.
You and I know there is nothing wrong with salting food, how it's thrown in to a long string of derision changes it from a purely logical statement to something else- I don't think Kehe's intent was innocent.
Not to mention Sanderson asks him not to include part about feeling less pain and Kehe refuses, saying he must include it, essentially.
Pale and fleshy was not all Kehe wrote about Sanderson fans, it was a complaint about body odor.
And I think calling the article "a little mean" is a vast understatement. It's old fashioned bullying plain and simple, and I think wired and Kehe owe Sanderson an apology.
Again, if it was a single sentence about salting food, I would say no big deal. I get the intent of your article. I worry it's getting close in a small way to gaslighting even though I don't think you mean that- Kehe's article was pretty over the top in my mind. It almost sounds like you're saying- stop being so sensitive to Kehe's comments, I don't think that quite applies to his article IMO.
I also don't get what you mean about Sanderson fans feeling like someone is gate crashing. I don't think that's the case at all. I think people are reading Kehe's article for it's merits and observing it to be mean-spirited bullying; heck, the governor of Utah tweeted about it. You can't write an article like that and complain that the fans are canceling you, and they should stop being such fan-boys. Like you said- you don't care about Sanderson or his fans. I don't care about Kehe, I don't care if someone criticizes Sanderson's writing, but I do care about decency and when I spot a bully, I am not afraid to call it out, and neither should anyone else, fan or not.
I think I would've sympathized with Kehe more if he wrote better—but he wrote like shit. His essay was disorganized and his prose weak. To quote him:
"If it’s worldbuilding, it’s only worldbuilding one thing: the worldbuilder’s world.
Three days later, I pull up to Sanderson’s built world: his home(s) in a gated community of American Fork, Utah."
"Built world." Scintillating. I haven't even mentioned how many sentences he starts with "and."
The article calls Sanderson's writing horrible—and to be fair, it is juvenile considering Sanderson's swamped writing schedule—and yet, it itself is mediocre, especially considering it took several months for its author to shit it out his metrosexual ran-through SF ass. It reads like a teenager resentful that the football stars and the bad boys fuck virgins while he can't get a scrap of snatch. It's ressentiment made manifest.
He has a right to his opinion; can he back it up with his own work?