Trouble getting into it may have depended on what you tried as your entry point. A lot of people make the (IMO) mistake of trying them in in-world chronological order. IIRC the White Wolf reprints are partially responsible for this. The original stories published between '61 and '64 are pure pulp energy. He wrote a novelette and novella in '67 and '71 building on the world, and then the first full-length novel in '71. This was set earliest in Elric's life and digs into his backstory and origins more, but it gets away from the original pulp energy. It and much of what follows is much more introspective and slow (IMO), and relies on the reader either being into that kind of story or already in love with Elric as a character and so willing to go along with the slower character exploration.
Absolutely. I have actually been meaning to get into Elric again and give it another try. When I said I didn't understand the appeal, it wasn't a criticism, it was me genuinely not understanding. My entry point was Book One, which someone who is a fan once explained to me actually came later. So at some point when I have time, I am going to try to read the other books and see if there is a difference (something about the dialogue with him having all these ideas that made it hard to be king because he read a lot just felt kind of juvenile to me, and I admit that colored my reading from that point on). Also another unfair thing is there have been many Elric imitators so because I came to Elric later, my reading was colored by the fact that it was so successful it became a cliche (and you can't blame Moorcock for that)
I always tell people to start with the original stories from the 60s. Nearly as much or just as much pulp energy and action and velocity and excitement as Howard, with more imagination and weirdness, and basically none of the distasteful elements.
This is what I was told as well. Which story would you pick as the best starting point?
Isn't that a bit tautological, though? Haven't critics always favored more literary works, with more symbolic or allegorical meanings? Back when Lester was signing Brooks I'm sure he knew the critics would crap on it (as they did), but that the audience wasn't as critical.
Lol it is. This is one reason why my criticism here is somewhat measured if you look at all my posts. But I do think a lot of publishing now is looking for that NPR listener type, and a lot of more mainstream readers feel sneered at. And just being in publishing, you see the attitude among writers and publishers in general. And I would say it is worse now than it was say ten or 15 years ago. I think there is a reason you are seeing this reaction. On the other hand, I think we are starting to see a shift. I am not sure if that is going to lead in a better or worse direction though. Like I said, some of the people who raised legitimate criticisms have simply inverted the gate keeping, or set up even worse criteria
As Ruin Explorer mentioned, as recently as 10 or 15 years ago even the better-written fantasy like GRRM tended to get backhanded compliments in mainstream criticism, implicitly judging anything good as a rare exception out of a genre sewer.
Nowadays, as other folks pointed out earlier, we have a broader range of talented writers who grew up with fantasy and are more ambitious and skillful writers than a Brooks or a Piers Anthony, and we have fewer men reading fiction overall. No wonder if some of those men are seeing the publishers catering to them less and complaining about it.
The thing is 80s fantasy in particular was just bad. There were exceptions. Orson Scott Card, for all his controversies today, was someone who stood out to me at the time. But stuff like Eddings, Brooks and Piers Anthony felt very conservative in terms of just sticking what was considered the safe parameters of the genre. So I think one of the things that kind of made that era bad was it had this conservative strain that filed down a lot of the rough edges (I think now we are living through a kind of progressive conservatism that people have been reacting to, that files down different edges). I found stuff from the 70s and 90s to be a lot better. And lately I have had tremendous difficulty connecting with anything (though honestly a lot of that is just me being old: styles change a lot with time and a lot of what I am reacting negatively to isn't even any of the stuff we are talking about but things as simple as younger people have a different way of approaching humor than the previous generation, they have their own language that I don't understand). Even the last period I genuinely enjoyed this stuff, say the mid-2000s, isn't what I would call a golden era by any stretch anyways. Like I said I am largely content now to go back read the stuff people all agree are classics and occasionally find something new that is surprisingly good
