Re: Bit More On Raptor Red(Uh-Oh, Opinion)

[JCMcL <darwincr@laplaza.taos.nm.us>]

On Thu, 25 Jan 1996, GROSS CORY WALTER wrote:

>     Good day,
>     
>         Well John, I must apologise for actually having my own 
> opinion on this book. I didn't mean to have comments that don't fall 
> in with all the blindingly rave reviews it seems to be getting.
> 
>         I do realize that this is FICTION and for that reason, I only 
> talked about how the book was written and not the palaeontological 
> information therein. I speak with the certainty of someone who could 
> write an English paper on it (I only graduated high sc.this past 
> summer, I'm still working it out of my system:-)). As a work of 
> FICTION, it is open to critiquing; and I(me, myself, and...) 
> personally thought that his style left somthing to be desired. I 
> imagine that there are those of you who wouldn't agree with my 
> opinion that Anne Rice is the best writer out there and you would be 
> well within your right to think that. If we are to look at _Raptor 
> Red_ as _The Dinosaur Heresies_ with a plot and a cast, then we 
> bother with it any more; but if it is to be considered a "real" 
> work of FICTION, then it is open to debate about how good it is.
> 
>         So, should we stop trying to write dinosaur-point-of-view 
> stories? No. I never said that. All I said was that I didn't think 
> that Bakker was the best at it. There's this one story in particular 
> in the anthology _Dinosaur Fantastic_ called _After The Comet_(I 
> think) that I thought was rather good. It only used latin names once 
> or twice and had little in the way of metaphor or any other of Bob's 
> tools. Your only clues to the time frame was the title, fauna, and 
> characteristic bad weather. The animals also acted in our closest 
> approximation to the way real animals did/do think and act; they 
> weren't scaley people.
> 
>         And by the way, my position isn't loftey. I'm just a first 
> year dino-nut who also writes fiction and had on hell of an English 
> teacher...
> 
> Later,
> Cory Gross

Never, EVER apologize for having your own opinion about a book, or 
anything else!  Sometimes your opinion is all you have.  

Of course, as you see in this forum as elsewhere, if you have an opinion, 
and put it up above the level of the trenches for all to see, they will 
shoot at it.  It's gratifying to have opinions that others will take the 
time to shoot at.  

And thanks for the recommendations, too.  I'll try to find that 
anthology.  

Keep on truckin'.  You have to know, I think, that I haven't read all of 
Bakker's book because this manner of fiction is difficult for me; half 
the fun of dinosaurs is that they're so very alien, and our efforts to 
fill the empty fossil skulls with thought are necessarily colored by the 
fact that these thoughts originate in the skulls of living primate 
mammals rather than in those of some birdly sort.  

Thank you again.

John McLoughlin