But I’m going to give this the old college try.
Coming a few days late to the picnic, I was recently made aware of this editorial from the writer of Enders Game, Ender Strikes Back and Field Of Ender. Or something like that.
I used to think highly of Card as a good example of a working writer. Over the years, though, I’ve watched him seethe with rage at J.K. Rowling for writing better than he does and it has gotten tiresome. When he isn’t trying hard to drive home the key points of his Mormon philosophy in the guise of literature, Card can come up with some entertaining set pieces. Like Rowling he can create vividly imagined alternative universes. As he eagerly points out every chance he gets, there are many similarities between his Ender series and Harry Potter.
A young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities, who are to be educated in a remote training facility where student life is dominated by an intense game played by teams flying in midair, at which this kid turns out to be exceptionally talented and a natural leader. He trains other kids in unauthorized extra sessions, which enrages his enemies, who attack him with the intention of killing him; but he is protected by his loyal, brilliant friends and gains strength from the love of some of his family members. He is given special guidance by an older man of legendary accomplishments who previously kept the enemy at bay. He goes on to become the crucial figure in a struggle against an unseen enemy who threatens the whole world.
Of course both of these stories–Potter and Ender–bear striking similarities to many other works of fiction out there. (Has Card ever acknowledged his debt to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers?)
Since Card doesn’t seem to see it for himself maybe I can explain why Rowling is a gajillionaire and Card is still trying to make ends meet by giving seminars in dank hotel conference rooms.
J.K. Rowling’s books are written in a voice which smiles and crackles. She knows how to engage her audience without being pedantic or churlish. Her world weaves together elements from the universal mythologies in such a way as to reinvent those centuries-old tales within her framework. Where she writes speculatively she does so in a simple, straightforward manner that is easy for readers of all ages to grasp. Rowling wraps her stories in sparkle-bright nuggets like ice cream cones, joke shops and treacle tart. Card, on the other hand, takes the same source material and weaves a dark, dystopian world of cold metal and space. Even the language is harsher. Where Rowling has poetic words rooted in French (’Voldemort’) for even her villians, Card resorts to hard, cold gutteral words (’bugger’) which leave the reader feeling raw instead of intrigued. To say the books are the same is to say that I am the same person as Barack Obama because we both have a skeleton.
It’s absurd.
What’s even more absurd is that Card is one of the legion of people who have decided that J.K. Rowling has no right to criticise Steve Vander Ark because she has lots of money and Vander Ark doesn’t. It’s the oddest argument against intellectual property rights that I’ve ever seen and seems to be springing from a sort of envy. Why else would he use words like ’stupid’, ‘pretentious’, ‘coward’, ‘pathetic’ and ‘bully’?
Oh well. Card says in the piece that he makes enough money off Ender’s Game to be content. That’s good, because I doubt I’ll be throwing any more of my book-buying dollars his way.
Not only is that the plot to Harry Potter and Ender’s Game, it’s the plot to Star Wars. And, once you take out the “game played in mid-air” part, it’s the plot of about a million other movies and tv shows (can we say “Buffy”?) and books and stories throughout history because “Kid with shitty life discovers he’s someone extra special and trains a band of friends to stand up against evil and thus goes on to save his community” is a pretty standard take on the whole hero story.
I really loved “Ender’s Game” when it was a novellette (or whatever shorter length it was originally). The fact that Card thinks he improved it by stretching it out beyond what the plot would support, filling it up with his clunky writing, and turning what had been a thought-provoking, self-contained story into the beginning of a pretentious, portentious trilogy tells me that as a judge of writing, he’s a flop. So why should anyone pay attention to his opinions about other writers?
Yes, B, exactly. I’ve been reading OSC’s reviews of Potter books for five years now, and he’s always so churlish and self-referential. As though he invented Hero’s Journey mythology in Ender’s Game instead of pimping it out to win himself a Hugo.
The fact that Card thinks he improved it by stretching it out beyond what the plot would support, filling it up with his clunky writing, and turning what had been a thought-provoking, self-contained story into the beginning of a pretentious, portentious trilogy
YES!!!! My first experience with Card was the Alvin Maker series–which is closer thematically to Harry Potter than Ender’s Game in my mind. In fact, when I first heard about Harry Potter I was reluctant to read it because it sounded too much like Alvin Maker–a series I liked but had problems with. Card tends to leave any semblance of Joy out of his writing when he touches on the Hero’s Journey stuff. It’s as though he thinks being a Hero is so fraught with peril there is no room for a sunny day in the fellow’s life.
So why should anyone pay attention to his opinions about other writers?
Well, according to him it’s because he’s terrific. And he once wrote this little book called Ender’s Game ::cue ooohs and ahhhs from crowd.::
All he’s done is throw the latest salvo in the tired SciFi versus Fantasy war that has been going on for the last 80 years at least. “Which Genre is worthy?” The only thing that crowd agrees on is that they don’t suck as much as Romance. As a romance writer (which is I guess what my stuff technically is, even though I just think it’s “novels”) I think the whole Genre Bully war is a bit silly.
But just because my genre always loses. Romance is the Missisisippi of subgenre fiction.
I read the first Alvin Maker book. I don’t think I connected the writer with the “Ender’s Game” writer, so I certainly came to it without prejudice. I wanted to enjoy it. And the concept seemed so rich in possibilities. But the writing was so clunky! As we’ve discussed before, I don’t mind as much as you do when a book is a downer, but I’m much more demanding about style. Poor OSC — he loses on both counts.
So you figure that if a reader doesn’t maintain strong barriers against seepage, romance books will find their way in and create a kind of literary sludge?