Posted on 05/03/2010 1:16:39 PM PDT by Borges
Barack Obama’s grandfather (his namesake) was. Wonder why Obama never changed his name to his Kenyan grandfather’s Catholic birthname.
That’s an example of the fingers and the brain not agreeing, the brain said “write” the fingers wrote “right”. The fingers are almost always wrong, but they always get the last word.
Moslem, although it seems clear he’s a practical if not declared atheist. However, it would be interesting to look at the place of fantasy in Islamic culture vs. Jewish.
LOL! I was just thinking politically. I’m sure there are some “Jewish right” fantasies, too.
But as for literary fantasy, of the type we’re discussing, what would you give as examples?
I don’t know about literary because I’ve never really found a useful definition for when it’s literary, I found this list:
http://www.adherents.com/lit/sf_other.html
And some of the Jews listed have fantasy credits.
“Literary” as in fiction books, in this case. Jane Yolen is definitely a fantasy, rather than science fiction, writer, and I recognized a few others. I think Ursula LeGuin is (was?) Jewish, too.
What do you think of the Wheel of Time?
if Christianity is a fantasy religion, then Judaism is a science fiction religion”
Citing Asimov and Roddenberry sort of proves the author’s point, no?
I actually think this is a brilliant article.
I have to ponder the inclusion of one of my favorite authors, Mark Helprin. He’s Jewish. But...is he a Jewish author?
I’m not entirely sure you could say that. He’s very cosmopolitan, and there are magical elements in Winter’s Tale. But his other works, though imaginative and memorable, they really are much more this worldly....so....maybe he is a Jewish author, after all.
In any event, he is certainly an aesthete, and a soldier, a lover of language, and a teller of stories.
He’s also a conservative, and I admire him as much as any human being who is alive right now....
Also, I have it on good authority that Wolverine would have been Jewish, but his foreskin kept growing back.
Joel Rosenberg was the first name to pop into my head. Wrote the Guardians of the Flame series . . . very talented fantasy writer. . . as well as Sci-fi and now mysteries.
I guess as long as this is just opinion, I think nobody has the slightest business reading this “sci-fi”,, fantasy, “rings” silliness,,,UNTIL they have read every written word of Mark Twain, Anton Chekhov, and Winston Churchill.
By the way,, ever notice. All the Superheros in the comics were Americans?
"Tolkien especially grapples in his novels more seriously than many supposedly more sophisticated modern literary works with the evils of the twentieth century."What a total crock of XXXX. Tolkein repeatedly attacked these attempts to impute meaning into his work . . . especially this old canard.
“I immediately started thinking of Jewish sf writers, too ... Harlan Ellison, Avram Davidson ... but the author of this article makes a firm, if not inarguable, distinction between fantasy and science fiction.”
Doesn’t Joel Rosenberg write fantasy as well as SF? I am pretty sure he is Jewish.
Through the first four books it was excellent, but it should have ended five books ago. Some innovation, some memorable characters, but not well written. It won't become a classic, partly due to its sheer size. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" is a lot better, though it won't become a classic, either, due to its relentless violence and nihilistic world view.
I'm actually done with fantasy and only read science fiction these days. But I find the takeover of free inquiry in SciFi by the "Green Mafia" to be a disturbing trend. Many very talented authors (Kim Stanley Robinson comes to mind) have succumbed to it.
An aside, but thinking of Batman (a Goel Hadam if there ever was one), made me recall missles I saw in Israel.
“Goel Hadam” was written on their sides. I couldn’t tell if they were “special weapons” but I have never seen them before or after.
I guess the entire realm of Marvel Comics -— largely created by Stan Lee doesn’t count as “fantasy.””
Fascinating question.
I’m not sure it does, however.
Yes, Lee (a genius, in my opinion, by the way...politics aside) borrows heavily from Norse mythology.
But his characters are all very much rooted in this world, and this is in fact what makes them interesting...they are “superheroes” in this world. Cursed or gifted, or whatnot...in any event, their predicament, individually and collectively, makes for great reading.
And isn’t that exactly like the Jewish people? Chosen by God, there is a long line of Jewish thought that sort of wonders out loud why God would be so mean as to choose them.
And..the fact that the heroes are so rooted in this world, rather than in a different world like Middleearth, that is what makes something fantasy. Fantasy is a different world often, but Marvel is very much this one. That strikes me as very Jewish. And I think the author to this article would agree. Not sure what Stan Lee would say, but now that you’ve raised the question, I would have to say that Marvel comics strieks me as very Jewish (in the way the author of the article describes).
Again, excellent quesiton, though....
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