Some Words

These top 20 science fiction books of the decade list, part of the general rush of end of the year/decades list from last month, is proof that people don’t even bother to try anymore when they’re going to get their hate on about this or that popular thing. Just to sound old for a moment, when I was a teen, you thought up an almost unrelated reason to hate something, be it pop music or whatever. We took pride in our contrary notions. We crafted them carefully. If you disliked something, even if it was for made up reasons, you came up with better reasons. You didn’t just declare something poorly written or poorly composed. You claimed that it was crassly mercantile or that it was selling out. I suppose it’s impossible to sell out in the realm of writing, so people just say that something is poorly written these days, even if it’s just their taste. I may not like a book, but just because I was ambivalent about Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel (I wasn’t. I quite liked it.) I didn’t say that it was because it was poorly written. In my day you had the “decency” to claim that it is an act of veiled racism or something. Where has this disingenuous and more comically awkward disdain gone? Why has it been replaced by people actually seeming to believe (instead of just claiming) they are tastemakers? Has our self delusion completed that delicate shift from knowing self delusion into actual self delusion? Or is it just too late at night, and I should acknowledge that school is starting again soon, and I should readjust my sleep schedule?