Letter columns in these magazines were often a means for fans to build their reputations as armchair critics and build an audience for when and if they became successful pro authors. (Chad Oliver would become one of those.)
"I’d rather be panned than ignored." <---Leigh Brackett nailed it. One of the worst insults or pain in life is to be ignored. Try to treat feedback as constructive. Smart lady.
Wow, it's like reading scathing comments from adults to adults who know how to take it. Nowadays you get twitter trolls leaving incoherent screeds. :-D
As much damage as John Dewey and others did to the educational system before then, people were still taught how to THINK, and to deal with ideas, back then. Now? Not so much. It's all feelings and sociopathic manipulation.
I was aware of the widespread attitude to the work of Ray Cummings, but there seems to have been a little humor in the following quote:
“Whether she could take the sour with the sweet like CUMMINGS (Answer to all small letters) does is something else.”
The joke is to use all capitals to write Ray Cummings’s name, because of the well-known and deliberate typographical eccentricities of the 20th century poet e e cummings (who actually wrote his name using capital letters conventionally most of the time). The pulp hack notorious for lack of invention has his name in all caps, in contrast to the avant-garde poet who sometimes used lower case.
I confess, I thought about explaining that, but then assumed that it was so obvious (to readers, at least, and people who read these stories are obviously readers) that it needed no explanation.
Letter columns in these magazines were often a means for fans to build their reputations as armchair critics and build an audience for when and if they became successful pro authors. (Chad Oliver would become one of those.)
Note: I did not title this post. And DAMN do I wish I had.
"I’d rather be panned than ignored." <---Leigh Brackett nailed it. One of the worst insults or pain in life is to be ignored. Try to treat feedback as constructive. Smart lady.
Brackett was great, both as a writer, and apparently as a person.
Wow, it's like reading scathing comments from adults to adults who know how to take it. Nowadays you get twitter trolls leaving incoherent screeds. :-D
As much damage as John Dewey and others did to the educational system before then, people were still taught how to THINK, and to deal with ideas, back then. Now? Not so much. It's all feelings and sociopathic manipulation.
I was aware of the widespread attitude to the work of Ray Cummings, but there seems to have been a little humor in the following quote:
“Whether she could take the sour with the sweet like CUMMINGS (Answer to all small letters) does is something else.”
The joke is to use all capitals to write Ray Cummings’s name, because of the well-known and deliberate typographical eccentricities of the 20th century poet e e cummings (who actually wrote his name using capital letters conventionally most of the time). The pulp hack notorious for lack of invention has his name in all caps, in contrast to the avant-garde poet who sometimes used lower case.
I confess, I thought about explaining that, but then assumed that it was so obvious (to readers, at least, and people who read these stories are obviously readers) that it needed no explanation.