Rachel Starr Thomson has a good interview with Jeffrey Overstreet in connection with a blog tour on his book, Raven’s Ladder. Here’s a portion:
Rachel: You’ve pointed out before that there are some amazing writers working in fantasy, some real depth and artistic merit. Why does the genre still get such a bad rap?
Jeffrey: Well, trashy book covers don’t help. And in a consumer-driven society, people will exploit their audiences by fashioning their work to appeal to our baser appetites. Thus, most fantasy takes from Tolkien the violence, the epic battles, the grotesque monsters, but they don’t carry on the grand and glorious ideals that stand in such stark contrast to the darkness.
Our imaginations are more easily dazzled by perversion, by what is lurid and twisted and shocking, than by what is true and beautiful. Beauty requires us to do some work to comprehend it. In our busy culture, where so much is competing for our attention, whatever is loud and shocking will win out. So a lot of fantasy writers and illustrators, as in any genre, exaggerate whatever will grab people’s attention.
But I also think that as people get older, they feel threatened by the mystery of fairy tales. They grow to prefer portrayals of a world that they can understand and control. So they write off fairy tales as childish, because their ego has a desire to feel very grown up, sophisticated, and in control. Not me. I like Madeleine L’Engle’s perspective: I’m 39, but I’m also 5, and 7, and 14, and 21.
Read the interview in part one, part two, and part three.
Links to the many reviews are here. And the same blog tour has coordinated other reviews of books I’m interested in. Andrew Peterson’s book North or Be Eaten! was reviewed by the blogger squad here. Athol Dickson’s book Lost Mission was reviewed here.