Irony Indeed

~ Cheryl

Various people on Twitter have been pointing at this piece by Lev Grossman in Time, in particular the following:

Most painful irony: By winning, nerd culture has lost. When I was a kid the fact that comics and games and fantasy and whatever were awesome was a secret, and people gave me a hard time about it. Now suddenly everyone’s all, hey, no, this stuff is great, Iron Man, woo! Which means instead of being our little secret, now it’s all about big corporations selling nerd culture to as many Joe Douchebags as it can pack into the multiplex. And where am I in that transaction? I don’t want to be anywhere near it.

That, of course, is a sentiment we are all familiar with. It is the “not part of our community” argument that we hear so much of from the old guard at Worldcon. So why was Mr. Grossman at Comic-Con instead of sobbing into his beer in Montreal? Could it be that he has a novel out and he thinks he has more chance of selling copies at Comic-Con because there are so many more people there?

(To be fair, those I know who have read it say that it is a very good book.)

5 thoughts on “Irony Indeed”

  1. If you want to be an oddity and part of a group that will never be cool and recognised, go be a telephone pole spotter – I love that the the things I have loved for so long are now popular with the general public now too..

    Yes it means it isn’t quite so much ‘mine’ anymore but it also means there is more to see on tv about it, more about it in the media generally and more interesting people to meet who also love it.

  2. I agree with the “get hoi polloi out of my gutter!” assessment of his argument. However, to be fair, I think Lev Grossman was at ReaderCon this year, so he’s putting his money where his mouth is on that.

  4. Ah, thank you Graham. I did check the online membership list but could not see him there. Hopefully he will enjoy Worldcon rather more than Comic-Con.

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