Extollager
Well-Known Member
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- Aug 21, 2010
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As far as I have found it was in its Dec. 1974 issue that Esquire asked two noted authors their response to a big question, whose formulation I don’t remember, regarding (let’s say) “life.” However it was put, Eugene Ionesco said “No,” and Isaac Bashevis Singer said “yes.” (One of my professors passed around the Singer article in an American literature course I was taking.)
Anyway, it might be interesting to list authors whose works suggest that they are primarily yea-sayers or nay-sayers, and to discuss things that come up accordingly. (It will be seen that these temperaments, if that’s the word, may both be found among the religious, the irreligious, and the anti-religious.)
A nay-sayer writes works that might be “depressing” or might not be, but that suggest a final absence, or withholding, of grace or goodness from the order of things. A nay-sayer may “enjoy life” but you get the sense that he or she thinks it might have been better if nothing had come to be. A nay-sayer’s implied narrator might affect a stance of detachment, and a nay-sayer is likely to write works pervaded by irony. A nay-sayer might, as a rule, convey scorn or disdain for human beings, or might convey pity or compassion for them. A yea-sayer may suspect that nay-sayers often haven’t really earned their angst.
Works by a yea-sayer gravitate towards affirmation of things even if passion, crime, foolishness, etc. are in the foreground. A yea-sayer may have been disillusioned at some point, but if so, has passed through the experience to affirmation. A yea-sayer’s works probably suggest that the order of things justifies love. A nay-sayer may feel that the yea-sayer “doesn’t get it.”
In short: some authors suggest that the answer is No, other that it is Yes.
Request: in the first dozen or more postings on this topic, could you all offer authors whom you do feel are one or the other, and could we hold off a little on discussion of cases where you yourself feel it’s kind of hard to say? I have a well-known sf author in mind as being really debatable, but I’m holding off on naming him. Likewise could we hold off at first on agreeing or disagreeing with others’ nominations? THANK YOU.
Naturally the focus will probably be on genre authors, but it’s fine to mention non-genre authors also.
Here’s a list I’ve roughed out that seems to me to fit the dichotomy I’ve suggested just now.
Yea-Sayers
Asimov
Ray Bradbury
Chesterton
Arthur C. Clarke
Dickens
Dostoevsky
Ursula Le Guin
Simak
Tolkien
Colin Wilson
Wordsworth
Nay-Sayers
Borges
Dunsany
Harlan Ellison
Hardy
Robert E. Howard
Stephen King
David Lindsay
Lovecraft
Melville
Clark Ashton Smith
Swift
Tolstoy
Jack Vance
Evelyn Waugh
Anyway, it might be interesting to list authors whose works suggest that they are primarily yea-sayers or nay-sayers, and to discuss things that come up accordingly. (It will be seen that these temperaments, if that’s the word, may both be found among the religious, the irreligious, and the anti-religious.)
A nay-sayer writes works that might be “depressing” or might not be, but that suggest a final absence, or withholding, of grace or goodness from the order of things. A nay-sayer may “enjoy life” but you get the sense that he or she thinks it might have been better if nothing had come to be. A nay-sayer’s implied narrator might affect a stance of detachment, and a nay-sayer is likely to write works pervaded by irony. A nay-sayer might, as a rule, convey scorn or disdain for human beings, or might convey pity or compassion for them. A yea-sayer may suspect that nay-sayers often haven’t really earned their angst.
Works by a yea-sayer gravitate towards affirmation of things even if passion, crime, foolishness, etc. are in the foreground. A yea-sayer may have been disillusioned at some point, but if so, has passed through the experience to affirmation. A yea-sayer’s works probably suggest that the order of things justifies love. A nay-sayer may feel that the yea-sayer “doesn’t get it.”
In short: some authors suggest that the answer is No, other that it is Yes.
Request: in the first dozen or more postings on this topic, could you all offer authors whom you do feel are one or the other, and could we hold off a little on discussion of cases where you yourself feel it’s kind of hard to say? I have a well-known sf author in mind as being really debatable, but I’m holding off on naming him. Likewise could we hold off at first on agreeing or disagreeing with others’ nominations? THANK YOU.
Naturally the focus will probably be on genre authors, but it’s fine to mention non-genre authors also.
Here’s a list I’ve roughed out that seems to me to fit the dichotomy I’ve suggested just now.
Yea-Sayers
Asimov
Ray Bradbury
Chesterton
Arthur C. Clarke
Dickens
Dostoevsky
Ursula Le Guin
Simak
Tolkien
Colin Wilson
Wordsworth
Nay-Sayers
Borges
Dunsany
Harlan Ellison
Hardy
Robert E. Howard
Stephen King
David Lindsay
Lovecraft
Melville
Clark Ashton Smith
Swift
Tolstoy
Jack Vance
Evelyn Waugh