Posted by Brian McCue on October 01, 1997 at 07:05:36:
In Reply to: Wow, whole herds of Vance fans posted by MikeE on September 30, 1997 at 23:39:48:
:What was your first Vance book? What caused you to keep him in your list of authors to search out?
My first Vance book was Lyonnesse, loaned by a friend when it first came out in trade paper. I didn't like it. Faced with some evidence that Vance's stuff was probably pretty good, I bought Galactic Effectuator and something else (probably Star King) used and took them on a vacation. I really liked their story lines and the quiet humor of Vance's diction. Soon I was buying all the Vance books in sight, though it took at least a year to find The Palace of Love. Eventually I borrowed that copy of Lyonesse again and liked it a lot. My conclusion was not that Vance is an acquired taste, but that reading his work is an acquired skill. When I first read Lyonesse I took all the descriptions, e.g. of the King, at face value. When I read it the second time, I realized that Vance uses irony i.e., the rhetorical device of saying one thing and meaning another (as distinct from "poetic justice," as the media commonly use "irony" to mean), and I was able to understand what he really meant.
This point has quite a bit to do with the earlier question of "Off with what book should one start a new Vance reader?"
I wonder if Vance-likers also like Vladimir Nabokov.
Brian McCue