I just posted this on my Facebook wall. Who knows, maybe it may get you a few extra readers. But I mean every word.
A WORK OF GENIUS
In my last post, I have linked you to a video about the depths of human idiocy. Now I want to do something like the opposite.
The man who signs himself Inverarity is not only the greatest fanfic writer alive, he has to be the greatest writer in any field in the world today. At least, if anyone had produced anything as great anywhere else that was not fanfic but professional writing, we'd not only be hearing it across the media, we'd probably be talking about a coming Nobel Prize. But then, perhaps, only in the unpaid field of fanfic, rewarded only by the unprompted admiration of your readers - many of whom will themselves be writers - is it possible to write with as much greatness as Inverarity manages to put in his work. Professional publishers and editors would have treated him as they did Jack Kirby, a man of similar immensity and singularity of mind. That, if you please, was fifty years ago. Since then, the steady advance of corporate power and sterility across the landscape has reduced the arts to an even worse state.
Instead, having fallen in love with the Harry Potter novels - like so many of us - as an adult, and, like a few of us, set out on his own heptad, imitating JK Rowling's form: seven novels, cast over seven years, about the schooling and adventures of an American witch called Alexandra Quick, in the same world as Harry Potter. But, with all due respect for a writer I love (and a woman of heroic temper and unbreakable courage), Rowling is at best the Boccherini or the Haydn to Inverarity's Beethoven.
I may be exaggerating, but not by choice. That was really my reaction this afternoon, when I made my way through the just-published, climactic forty-fourth chapter of the sixth of his seven planned Alexandra Quick novels. The names that came to my mind were Homer, Virgil, Dante, Beethoven, Tolstoy, Hayao Miyazaki, Jack Kirby - the human mind soaring like an eagle to the height of achievement, stirring power, and awe. I repeat: there is no writing being done today of this level. Start reading the first of his stories, "Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle." You will be thanking me in time.
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A WORK OF GENIUS
In my last post, I have linked you to a video about the depths of human idiocy. Now I want to do something like the opposite.
The man who signs himself Inverarity is not only the greatest fanfic writer alive, he has to be the greatest writer in any field in the world today. At least, if anyone had produced anything as great anywhere else that was not fanfic but professional writing, we'd not only be hearing it across the media, we'd probably be talking about a coming Nobel Prize. But then, perhaps, only in the unpaid field of fanfic, rewarded only by the unprompted admiration of your readers - many of whom will themselves be writers - is it possible to write with as much greatness as Inverarity manages to put in his work. Professional publishers and editors would have treated him as they did Jack Kirby, a man of similar immensity and singularity of mind. That, if you please, was fifty years ago. Since then, the steady advance of corporate power and sterility across the landscape has reduced the arts to an even worse state.
Instead, having fallen in love with the Harry Potter novels - like so many of us - as an adult, and, like a few of us, set out on his own heptad, imitating JK Rowling's form: seven novels, cast over seven years, about the schooling and adventures of an American witch called Alexandra Quick, in the same world as Harry Potter. But, with all due respect for a writer I love (and a woman of heroic temper and unbreakable courage), Rowling is at best the Boccherini or the Haydn to Inverarity's Beethoven.
I may be exaggerating, but not by choice. That was really my reaction this afternoon, when I made my way through the just-published, climactic forty-fourth chapter of the sixth of his seven planned Alexandra Quick novels. The names that came to my mind were Homer, Virgil, Dante, Beethoven, Tolstoy, Hayao Miyazaki, Jack Kirby - the human mind soaring like an eagle to the height of achievement, stirring power, and awe. I repeat: there is no writing being done today of this level. Start reading the first of his stories, "Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle." You will be thanking me in time.