Traditions and Criticisms
Literary traditions are useful things. They’re constructions of literary critics, sure, but useful constructions. A well-articulated tradition can show how different writers deal with the same idea or theme, demonstrating different approaches to a given problem or artistic ideal. It can show affinities between writers, sometimes bringing out resemblences between different figures in such a way as to cast new light on everyone involved. At the grandest level, the whole history of writing in a given language or from a given nation can be seen to be part of a tradition, showing the evolution of a language or the concerns of a people.
The problem with the idea of a tradition is that it can also lead to ossified thinking. A set of writers can be fixed as a canon not to be questioned, examplars of an ideal that can only degenerate. Or a critic might focus on works written within one tradition alone, ignoring works from beyond that tradition. And, as a result, ignoring the existence of other traditions entirely.
I’ve been thinking along these lines since I recently stumbled across an article at the Atlantic website. Written a few months ago by Joe Fassler, it tries to explain why ‘literary’ fiction is suddenly full of ‘genre’ elements (Fassler takes the distinction between ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ for granted; I’m less sure). I thought the piece failed to establish its premises and then failed to make a convicing argument based on those premises. And those failures, I think, come from a limited idea not only of what literature is, but of the existence of the muliplicity of literary traditions within the Anglophone world.
What follows may well be total coincidence.
While 
Whenever discussions of fantasy fiction arise, the question of “which came first?” inevitably follows. Newbies mistakenly think that J.R.R. Tolkien started the genre, overlooking authors like William Morris and E.R. Eddison who had already begun a rich tradition of secondary world fantasy. The same arguments swirl over the many sub-genres of fantasy, too. For example, most believe that Robert E. Howard is the proper father of swords and sorcery, beginning with his 1929 short story “The Shadow Kingdom.” But others have pled the case for Lord Dunsany’s “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth” (1908), and so on.
Last Friday was Friday the thirteenth. It was also Clark Ashton Smith’s birthday. In memory of that conjunction, I’d like to write a bit about Smith and his work. I have only a few thoughts about Smith’s prose style; Ryan Harvey’s excellent and insightful look at Smith’s fiction can be found in four parts, 
I’ve been in unwilling low-content mode for the past couple of weeks (question: what’s worse than getting the flu at Christmas? Answer: getting the flu along with a sinus infection). That’s meant I’ve had some time to read, which is good for a number of reasons. As it happens, though, one of the things I picked up to read left me wondering something I’ve wondered several times before: why do certain books pull me along, and compel me to read them, even when I think they’re not particularly good?
There are two different stories about how it began.