My young-YA/middle-grade fantasy Fireboy, already a finalist for Best Young Adult Novel in this year’s Aurora Awards and finalist for a 2027 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award in the Northern Lights Division, has just been …
Had a great time being part of the cast of Regina Lyric Musical Theatre‘s production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I played Fogg (the insane asylum keeper) and also sang in …
My young-YA/middle-grade fantasy Fireboy, a nominee for Best Young Adult Novel in this year’s Aurora Awards, is also a finalist for the 2027 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award in the Northern Lights Division. This is …
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m up for two Aurora Awards this year! Fireboy is on the ballot for Best Young Adult Novel, and The Worldshapers is once again on the ballot for Best Fan …
I spent a good chunk of today at Wordbridge, the annual writers’ conference in Lethbridge, Alberta. My main reason for coming was to launch a Shadowpaw Press title (Broken Realm by Jenna Greene, a Lethbridge …
This is Easter weekend; last weekend, I sang in the Easter concert of First Baptist Church here in Regina as a guest soloist and chorister. The whole concert is worth listening to, but if you’d …
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Barbarians at the gate!
“‘He is a man who writes what used to be called penny dreadfuls’…That they could believe that there is any literary value there or any aesthetic accomplishment or signs of an inventive human intelligence is simply a testimony to their own idiocy.'” Harold Bloom, self-appointed arbiter of what does and does not have literary value, commenting on the fact that the National Book Awards is planning to give its annual medal for distinguished contribution to American letters to Stephen King. No sign of an inventive human intelligence in Stephen King? I submit there are more signs of an inventive human intelligence in the average King story than in many whole books of so-called literary fiction. After all, what inventiveness is required to recount in tortured prose the deadly dull details of a middle-aged man’s mid-life crisis, particularly if you are a middle-aged man undergoing a mid-life crisis? If Mr. Bloom’s mind were closed any tighter, it would implode.
Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2003/09/barbarians-at-the-gate/
