I have to say, this has been bugging me for quite some time. Probably a year and a half ago I was discussing some book review related issues on one of the Polish message boards and wrote that it must be a typically Polish thing to hunt for post-modernist games in fantastic fiction literature. By post-modernist games I mean not only the structure related experiments but mostly all the intertextual tricks so often used by post-modernist writers.
Since alles schon dagewesen it becomes pretty obvious that, whether they want it or not, writers often repeat what their predecessors had written, but there is a certain group that clearly loves dropping various hints and allusions to other works of art (be they literature, paintings or films). This has recently become a popular habit in Poland to use such cultural allusions. What probably started 20 years ago with the publishing debut of Andrzej Sapkowski, currently is a popular thing, obviously loved by authors and readers alike.
We, readers in Poland, are passionate about hunting for such allusions, probably because we believe that makes us 'smart' and 'educated'. While this thesis may be argued, I must say that ever since I started various online discussion, I may have never seen foreign (meaning everyone but Poles) readers discuss such things about popular Western writers. The only example that axtually comes to my mind is a series of posts called 'Climbing Olympos', written by Dan Simmons French translator, when he was working on French edition of 'Olympos', which can be found here, here, here and here
But coming back to that online discussion I had and the argument I raised, namely that Poles must be particularly good in discovering all those little allusions, be that due to their experience or simply cause they are simply better educated. My opponents argued that I cannot know that but in fact I've been visiting various online message board or reading some notable usenet groups for almost 10 years now and honestly can't say that I've seen such discussions led by Brits or Americans. I wouldn't like to sound pretentious or start a war - I'm just curious why it so and why don't you find it interesting to discuss and delve into the background of the same novels or stories we all love reading so much?
We, readers in Poland, are passionate about hunting for such allusions, probably because we believe that makes us 'smart' and 'educated'. While this thesis may be argued, I must say that ever since I started various online discussion, I may have never seen foreign (meaning everyone but Poles) readers discuss such things about popular Western writers. The only example that axtually comes to my mind is a series of posts called 'Climbing Olympos', written by Dan Simmons French translator, when he was working on French edition of 'Olympos', which can be found here, here, here and here
But coming back to that online discussion I had and the argument I raised, namely that Poles must be particularly good in discovering all those little allusions, be that due to their experience or simply cause they are simply better educated. My opponents argued that I cannot know that but in fact I've been visiting various online message board or reading some notable usenet groups for almost 10 years now and honestly can't say that I've seen such discussions led by Brits or Americans. I wouldn't like to sound pretentious or start a war - I'm just curious why it so and why don't you find it interesting to discuss and delve into the background of the same novels or stories we all love reading so much?
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