Brendan Halpin's Blog, page 25

Aphorism

People who make fun of you hate themselves; people who make fun of themselves hate you.

The Importance of Symbolism, or Pay Attention in English Class

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how I thought English Classes in high school should stop teaching novels.  I titled the post "English Class...huh! What is it Good For?"

Well, fans of Edwin Starr answered the provocative question, but I wasn't really suggesting that English Class was good for absolutely nothin'. 

And I've been thinking about one of the best, most important things students learn in English class: (apart from, hopefully, how to write a coherent sentence) symbolism.

This is one of the things that students complain about the most in a high school English class: "picking apart" a work of literature and looking for symbolism. That word is usually deliverd with ironic emphasis and an eyeroll in case you missed the point that the student believes this is a completely pointless exercise.

But the thing is that symbolism is hugely, colossally important in the real world. More so than almost anything else you learn in high school.

A quick example from the national stage: Barack Obama.  As all presidents are, he's more than just a person. He's got symbolic importance.  And much of the strong feeling about him on either side is fueled not by him or his policies, but by him as a symbol.  I'll admit it: as a liberal, I'm gonna vote Democratic no matter what. But whereas I was fed up pretty quickly with Bill Clinton's corporate-friendly centrism, I give Obama a pass on this, even though he ran to the left of Bill Clinton and is governing right about in the same centrist position.  Why? I think it's probably that I really like the symbolism of having an African-American President.  I like what it says about my country, and I like the message it delivers to my non-white students. In short, I like the symbol probably more than I like the actual person.  Similarly, I don't think it's an accident that Obama inspires such vitriol from a lot of white people.  White people in this country are raised in an environment that tells us in a hundred subtle and not so subtle ways that we are better than black people simply by virtue of not being black.  Having a black president undermines this pretty severely, which is why I like it.  And why some other people don't. 

Before the internet goes crazy on me again, I'm not suggesting that you are racist if you don't agree with Obama's policies.  I am suggesting that the level of vitriol and adoration out there about to this President is directly related to the symbolism of having a black man in charge.  For many white people, this is a very scary, threatening inversion of what we've been taught to think is the natural order.  For many other people of all races, it's a symbol of hope.

So, yeah. Symbolism.  Here's another example: In the neighborhood where I live, we had a dirty, disgusting supermarket where the stench of rotten meat hung thick in the air. No, really.  This supermarket, owned by white suburbanites, catered primarily to the Latino community in my neighborhood.  So basically this was a place owned by white guys who didn't think their brown customers deserved to shop in a clean store.  It was a really contemptible place.

The owners recently shut it down and leased the space to Whole Foods.  And now a small but vocal group of people are up in arms, posting flyers, putting up shady anonymous websites, organizing marches, and generally being incredibly annoying while trying to stop a private business deal that requires no neighborhood input and for which the lease is already signed.  

For numerous reasons I won't bore my non-JP-living readers with, the entire anti-Whole Foods movement in my neighborhood makes absolutely no logical sense. It's so illogical on so many fronts that I have been known to rail against its idiocy.  But it's not really idiocy.  Because apparently this issue makes powerful emotional sense due to the symbolism.  Really, replacing a Latino supermarket (owned by suburban white guys with nothing but contempt for their urban Latino customers, but there I go being logical again) with one of the two greatest symbols of white yuppiedom in this country (Starbucks being the other) is a powerful symbolic act.  What people see in this business transaction is everything that bothers them about the way this neighborhood is changing.  The fact that they are wasting valuable time and energy opposing a private business transaction that they have no legal remedy to stop while the elected city government is making disastrous decisions left and right that they might actually be able to fight doesn't seem to bother the people opposing Whole Foods. The symbolism of these businesses and the symbolism of food itself have such emotional power that they have overruled logic and even self interest in a number of my neighbors.

So kids, don't ever say that studying symbolism is a waste of time.  It's hugely important to study symbolism. It is one of the most powerful forces in the world.  So study up!

 

Magic

With three teens in the house, I get exposed to a lot of today's pop music.  And most of it,like most of any kind of music, is crap. 

But I have recently been digging B.o.B.'s "Magic." 

I have a number of reasons for this.  One is the presence of Rivers Cuomo.  I don't worship Weezer the way some people do, but they are always good for at least two irresistable power pop gems on each album, and Mr. Cuomo gives us a fantastically catchy, upbeat chorus for this one.

And I usually like songs where musicians of disparate styles come together.  Though both B.O.B. and Rivers Cuomo are fundamentally pop musicians, Cuomo has the "alternative" label, and, let's just be clear here--Weezer is one of the whitest bands on earth.  (Not that there's anything wrong with that!  Some of my best friends are white!)  I liked Run-DMC's "Rock Box" and the Anthrax/Public Enemy collaboration on "Bring the Noise," because they kind of suggested that music doesn't have to divide us but could actually unite us.  Walk together, rock together, and all that. 

So, yeah, I have idealistic reasons for digging this collaboration.  But also, it's just full of something you see very rarely in pop music these days: joy.  This is especially true in rap, which has gotten incredibly, annoyingly emo these days. Remember when rap was actually fun?  It seems like most commercial rap today features some dude whining about what a screwup he is or all his money doesn't make him happy or something like that.  These days, waking up in the morning feelin' like P. Diddy seems to imply being full of regret and ultimately unsatisfied.  Which I don't think was what Ke$ha had in mind.  ("It's easy bein' Puff, but it's hard bein' Sean," Diddy laments in his latest single that he didn't even write.  Apparently it's not that easy bein' Puff either, since Diddy has outsourced his confessional lyrics.)

And though most popular rappers are pop stars, there is still this thing in 2011 where rappers have to pretend to be "hood."  Thus Degrassi alum Drake talks about having all his friends around "'cause I don't even know who I'ma lose this year."  Yeah, it's hard out here for a Canadian TV star!  Keep it real, Drake!

B.O.B., though, about whom I know absolutely nothing, doesn't seem to be seeking fake authenticity-- he's just an unabashed pop star.

So it's refreshing to hear a pop/hip-hop song that's long on the joy and meaningless boasting and short on the "boo hoo, it's so hard to be famous."   And at certain hours of the day, if you stand outside my kitchen window, you may actually spot me dancing to this one.  (Not a pretty sight, I'll admit, but it does happen.)

(apparently the official video is only available with the ad. Feh. I'm putting it in anyway.)

 

Netflix Instant Rocks

I see a lot of complaints about what people perceive as the flaws of Netflix's streaming service.  Principally, it seems to be that it doesn't look like the New Releases wall at the video store. (Remember those?)

This is certainly true.  The only time you find a recently-released mainstream movie on Netflix Instant is when it has bombed specacularly at the box office.

But the service does have many other charms.

One is the TV selection.  While, again, the most in-demand series are not here, it offers plenty of opportunity to catch up on shows that are a little older but still good. So we've burned through just about every Reno 911, which is freaking brilliant, about which more in a forthcoming entry, and are currently working through Trailer Park Boys, which is also funny, and not just because of the Canadian accents.  Though those are pretty funny.

But honestly the rest of my family watches way more tv episodes than I do.  What I really like about it is the absolutely huge selection of classic horror movies on offer.  The old Universal classics, some Hammer classics, most of the Vincent Price canon...well, you get the idea.  

Why, just the other day, when I was suffering with a bad cold and confined to the couch, I watched Count Yorga: Vampire.  This was a real gem from 1970 that managed to be creepy and sexy despite having the look of an old Columbo epsisode.  (The part where they discover the newly turned vampire lady, blood all over her face, corpse of a kitten in hand, was awesome.) 

It used to be that I had to wait for random Saturday afternoons to catch movies like this, usually interrupted by about 40 minutes of commercials per hour. Now I can watch one whenever I want!  What's not to love?

Well, only this: I simply don't have the bandwidth at home to support two people streaming video at once.  Which means that I'm often cut off from watching classic horror as my daughter devours yet another season of Scrubs.  I kinda wonder if switching from DSL to cable would help this problem, but I doubt if Comcast is going to give me a straight answer about whether I can use their internet service to bypass TV...

Back on the Bike

After the long, snowy layoff of the winter, I'm back on the bike for getting to work. Mostly.  And I've unintentionally discovered something odd.

My normal commuting bike, a "hybrid," is disabled due to a broken spoke and a broke owner. (Yes, it's that bad, people.  Go buy some books, willya?)

So I've taken to borrowing the other bikes in the house, all of which are mountain bikes.  This is a bit like going from a dependable sedan to a tank.  The mountain bikes are heavy as hell and geared for power, not speed, so I just can't go very fast.

When I bought my hybrid bike, the sales guy advised me not to buy anything else for commuting, because it wouldn't be that safe if I couldn't get the bike up to speed quickly.

And yet I'm finding the exact opposite is true.  I'm just feeling much much safer on the mountain bike than I ever did on the hybrid.  This is not primarily because of the heft of the bike (though knowing that I'm on a bike that can take most potholes means way less dangerous swerving on the ruined early-spring streets of Boston) but because of the increased sensible riding of the owner.  (or, you know, borrower.)

Knowing that I can't really go very fast makes me take far fewer stupid chances on the bike.  Even though the bike is sturdier, I feel far less like an invulnerable speeding ghost now than I did before, so I'm just not quite as stupid with the chances I take in traffic. 

It's not as fun when you can't go that fast, but I'm more likely to get more injury-free rides in this way. And I suppose pedaling a heavier bike and way more tire surface area probably provides a better workout. And I'm still getting to work faster than any other way.

But I still kinda miss feeling like an invulnerable ghost.

One, Two, Three, What Are We Blogging For?

My friend Daniel has derided my every social media effort from the beginning with a malicious glee that only your best friends can pull off. 

Well, as much as it pains me to admit this (and, believe me, it pains me a lot), I think he may have been right about blogging.

That is to say, he scoffed at the pointlessness of the entire exercise.  I've poured hundreds of thousands of words into this exercise over the last five years, convinced that I was building an online presence, or a brand, or something.  Now I think it's pointless.  I'm not going to stop blogging, but I'm going to more fully embrace the pointlessness. 

Initially, I thought I would attract readers with my brilliant pop cultural commentary, and they'd then buy my books.  Didn't happen, in large part because my pop cultural commentary, while unquestionably brilliant, was unfocused. 

So then I thought I'd focus on writing and writing-type issues, since that might help me reach the other bloggers and the other writers and the people who write about books.  But my audience didn't really grow. This is in part because, with my self-imposed restraints on subject matter, I was blogging less often. And partly because you can blog to inform or you can blog to entertain, but you can't really expect your deep thoughts on anything to gain traction unless you phrase them provocatively.

And then I spectacularly pissed off the right people and got tons of attention.  (I probably could have done this earlier by linking to them and ridiculing them in this space, which would get them to click through and see me ridiculing them, etcetera.) It would be very easy for me to continue doing this.  Baiting people by tweaking their dogmas is absurdly easy and kind of perversely fun.  But it's pointless.  We all go back to our separate corners of the internet and talk about how we're right and everybody else is wrong, and since the people who hang out in the same corners of the internet as us tend to be people we agree with, we wind up getting lots of confirmation of whatever we already thought. We can then use this as ammunition to go back and yell at each other.  And so on and so on. It's all very talk radio, very Crossfire, very pointless.

"Trolls" are widely derided throughout the internet--they're people who say outrageous crap in hopes of provoking an extreme reaction out of people.  I don't really get why they're widely derided, though, because most of us who spew a lot of words onto the internet are really little better.  Maybe we do it with a little more panache than the average youtube commenter, but many bloggers are pretty much doing the same thing.  And, as I've seen, keep at it long enough and it will eventually work!  Say whatever you want about me, just make sure the link isn't broken!Then I'll get my page views up!

(Aside: though I do regret the shitstorm I caused, I haven't taken the entry down because, what the hell, I'm not gonna pretend I didn't say that stuff.  And also, if I hadn't gotten all that attention, I might never have been accused of "mansplaining," which really tickles me.  I kind of imagine it in the Desi Arnaz voice: "Luuuucy!  You got some mansplainin' to do!")

So I'm not going to intentionally bait people to try to get page views.  Because that seems to be a currency you can't really exhcange for anything at all. (I will probably continue to unintentionally piss people off because I can't seem to help it, but that's not going to be my purpose.)

Instead, I'm just gonna write about whatever stupid shit is on my mind.  Well, no, I'm not going to write about sex, but all the other shit, horror movies, beer, video games, parenting, bike commuting, whatever.  I'm not going to do this because I'm hoping to grow or engage my book audience or "grow my platform" or whatever. I'm gonna blog because I like the sound of my own voice. So, yeah, Sokatch, it's pointless and narcissistic and I don't give a shit.

Maybe if you like the sound of my voice too, you'll hang around.  Or maybe you've got better things to do.  Like buying my books and telling everyone how awesome they are. 

On Being An Asshole

So I had one of those very rare and potentially life-changing experiences the other day, and it's got me a-thinkin'.  

And I probably wouldn't even write about this, except that I kind of feel like I have a responsibility to. 

A couple of chapters in IT TAKES A WORRIED MAN deal with a neighbor who drove me and my late wife Kirsten and our daughter Rowen out of our house.  I called him The Troll, because Kirsten and I dubbed him that after the troll in The Three Billy Goats Gruff, since he lived underneath us.

Anyway, so I ran into this man on Saturday.  And he stopped me and, tears in his eyes, gave a heartfelt and deeply moving apology for his behavior ten years ago. I thanked him, shook his hand, and went into my car and cried.

This is partly because I just experienced this rush of emotion that I still can't quite process.  And it was partly because it is just such an incredible relief to forgive this person and not feel angry at him anymore. (I tried forgiving him without an apology, but I couldn't manage it.  Because I'm an asshole.)

I am incredibly grateful to this man for having the courage to stop me and say what he said to me.

And I'm a little flummoxed.  Because I had parked a lot of my anger over losing my wife at 35 on his doorstep.  Of course, his behavior was unrelated to Kirsten's cancer, but it made emotional sense to me even though it makes no logical sense at all. But who can I be mad at now?

So now I'm not mad at him anymore. In fact, I admire his courage in apologizing to me for ten-year-old offenses.  And I feel kind of bad that all the nasty shit I said about him remains in that book.  And I wonder, who do I owe an apology to for being a dick?  Probably a lot of people.  I am kinda haunted by a memory of being cruel to Phoebe Wood in the senior lounge one day in 1986.(yeah, kids, you can feel guilty about shit you did in high school even in your 40's) She ran crying from the room, and, as far as I know, I never apologized.  So yeah. That was wrong.  Phoebe-- no idea if you even remember that, but whether you do or not, I'm sorry.  

I came home from having this conversation and found that a blog entry I'd written had pissed off the internet.  

I think I made a valid point, but in such a dickish way that I undermined everything I was trying to say.  

For over five years, I've wanted an audience for this blog beyond my few long-suffering friends and fans who check in regularly, and I finally got it-- over a thousand hits in two days.  I usually get about 80 in two days.  But so, great-- a thousand people who never heard of me before yesterday now think I'm an asshole.  I'm not sure that's an improvement.

I wrote that entry in such a dickish way because it's kind of easy fun (and, let's face it, lazy writing)  to write snarky stuff, of course, but I think it's also a kind of release valve for all of my anger.  

I've written before about the fact that I think anger is a proper reaction to injustice; I don't know how anything ever changes if you don't get mad about things that are unfair.  But the world is so incredibly unfair on so many fronts that it just gets exhausting to be angry about everything that sucks.

So, I mean, how do you conduct yourself in a world of horror and injustice?  Like, how do  you acknowledge everything that sucks without adding to the suckishness by being a dick?

Clearly I'm still working on this question.  

I kinda wonder if I should blog at all. If it's just going to be a little outlet for my snark and anger, well, those things are hardly in short supply in the world. And in my fiction, especially Donorboy, Long Way Back, and Forever Changes, which I think of, not completely ironically, as my grief trilogy, I tried to counter the ugliness of the world with beauty.   I can do that in fiction, but I clearly have a hard time doing it in this format.

And, anyway, I don't think the blogosphere is a very welcoming environment for beauty.  

No conclusions today. But since I seem to be a better fiction writer than nonfiction writer, here's an excerpt from my forthcoming novel NOTES FROM THE BLENDER, co-written with Trish Cook, a wonderful and talented white woman. 

This scene is late in the book, so I guess it's got a few minor spoilers. But I think it speaks more eloquently to how I'm feeling than anything else I can write right now.  In this scene, Delcan, 16, is talking to Carmen, his dad's fiancee and mom of Neilly, the hottest girl in school and his new stepsister. 

 

"So how are you doing?"

"Honestly? I feel like a piece of crap."

"Lot of that going around today. Neilly said more or less the same thing before she left."

"She said I was a piece of crap? I'm not really surprised. I pretty much deserve that."

"No, I mean, she said she felt horrible."

"Yeah. I guess that's my fault. Where'd she go?"

"She went to the Day of the Dead thing with your dad." Well, that was weird. "I guess—so you guys had some kind of fight or something?"

"Or something. It's actually pretty embarrassing. I don't feel like talking about it. I don't . . . I mean . . . I don't know what the . . . I just feel totally lost right now. You know? I just want to be happy, and I guess I don't know how. I kind of thought that having a girlfriend or whatever . . . I don't know, like the girl I thought I liked didn't show up last night, and Neilly had told me to give up on her ages ago, which I guess I should have listened to, but anyway. It's like, I scared Chantelle away by being angry, and Neilly's been, like, my best friend, like the person my age who's really stood by me, and now I was a dick and drove her away by being angry. And I'm always barking at Dad. I'm too . . . I'm mad all the time, and I kind of like it, you know, but it gets . . . I guess I'm just tired. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah. I think so." She ate a bite of Chunky Monkey. "I know this is kind of a dumb question, but is it just your mom that you're mad about? I mean, this"—she gestured around the room with her spoon—"this was a big change that we sprang on you, and I know it's got to be—"

"No. Dad was right about that. It's better. It's more fun." I paused for a minute. "I guess I should maybe tell him that."

"He'd appreciate it."

"Yeah. Well. Anyway, I guess, yeah, I'm mad about mom. I just . . . it's not fair that so many people who suck are still alive and my mom is dead. It's not fair that other people take their moms for granted and I'll never get to know mine at all, not really, I mean, not like who she was besides being a little kid's mom." And now I started to cry. "I mean, you know? It's not fair. None of it's fair. I miss her. You know? I mean, I'm happy for you guys, I actually am, and you can tell Dad I said that because I'm probably too chickenshit to say it myself, and I'm glad for Junior that he's going to have two parents. I just miss my mom. I want my mom back, and she's never ever coming back." My head was down on the table now, and Carmen put a hand, freezing from holding a bowl of ice cream, on the back of my head. It felt good.

"I'm so sorry, sweetie," she said. "And"—my head was still on the table, and I was talking tearfully at the wall—"I don't want to be mad all the time, you know, but I just don't want to . . . it's like being mad about her being dead is the only thing left that connects me to Mom. It feels like I'd be betraying her if I stop." Carmen rubbed my head some more with her freezing-cold hand. I guess that's, like, a thing moms do. It was really nice. But it made me cry more.

"Sweetie," she said, and I didn't mind her calling me that, "do you think your mom would want you to be mad forever?"

"I don't know if I can help it," I said.

Boys and YA, again

Don't blog while annoyed, don't blog while annoyed....crap. Too late.  Woke up this morning to find references to this article in my twitter stream.  

It's yet another article about how boys don't read and nobody quite knows how to encourage them to read.  

So here's what annoyed me. My twitter stream is full of women pooh-poohing this-- either saying that this isn't really a problem, or there shouldn't be articles about it, or that we really should be talking about the WNBA instead. (?)

Please try and imagine for me this scenario with the genders reversed.  An article appears about how girls may be deficient in some crucial academic area. And a bunch of men take to the internets to proclaim that they're sick of hearing about this, and it's not really a problem, and why can't we talk about sports instead.

Yeah, that would go over well.

So, a couple of things.  Yes, the books we read as English majors in college tend to skew more male-written and male-oriented.  And this bias definitely trickles down into the high school curriculum, though, in both cases, far less now than it used to. 

I'd suggest this is because the gatekeepers of the academic curriculm have typically been male.  

But this article isn't talking about the academic curriculum.  It's talking about reading in general.  And guess who the gatekeepers of children's and YA fiction are? Yep. As I've noted before, they are overwhelmingly women.  And as I may or may not have noted before and don't feel like looking up right now, they are overwhelmingly white women. 

It has been presented to me as an article of faith that diversity is important because people bring their unconscious biases and prejudices to whatever they do, and a variety of voices help ensure that a variety of interests are served.

So is it possible, O women of twitter, that a field that is overwhelmingly dominated by white women might possibly, just maybe, be producing works that are, on the whole, friendlier to that group than to other groups? Might editors and librarians and authors be bringing their own subconscious biases to their work, or are white women somehow immune to this phenomenon?  

The oppression of women is real and continues in numerous areas of endeavour.  In children's publishing, though,women cannot rage against the machine.  Women are the machine.  And when faced with a charge that the machine they control may not be serving everyone equally, several, at least this morning, are rising up to angrily put the charge down.

Again, please imagine this with genders reversed. I'll bet people would start throwing the word privilege around pretty quickly.

The Waiting

As Tom Petty famously reminds us, it is, in fact, the hardest part. I think Tom was talking about love, or maybe the bag of weed he sent a roadie to get, but this certainly applies to writing.  Writing itself is fun. Doing edits is kind of a pain, but, realistically, it's still pretty fun.  Doing copy edits sucks, but not the way, say, working as a telemarketer sucks. So all that stuff is good.

Promoting your work is occasionally frustrating and humiliating, but still mostly fun.  I enjoy the time I spend online, and I have really enjoyed meeting real readers in the real world.  It's only frustrating because you can't really know if your efforts are helping your sales, and it's only humiliating when you go to give a reading and nobody shows up, as happened to me and 6 other authors one beautiful early summer day in Washington DC.

But then there's the waiting.  Wait for your editor to read your latest. Wait for your editor to tell you whether they want to publish your latest. (if no, go back to waiting as you submit to more editors). Wait for edits. Wait for copy edits. Finish copy edits and wait for galleys. Wait for the book to be published. Wait for six months at least to find out how well the book is selling.  Get calls about movie interest.  Wait.Wait. Wait.

I mean, look, it's  not like any of this waiting is an actual hardship.  It's not even as bad as waiting at the DMV or Jury Duty.  But it is kind of hard.  Because writers make up stories. It's kinda what we do. So left with a void of information, we make up all kinds of stories about what's currently happening, what might happen in the future, what the best case scenario looks like, and what the worst case scenario looks like, and it can get kinda exhausting doing all this stewing in your own juices. 

Here's Tom Petty himself. Sorry 'bout the ad:

 

And for those who are feeling like losers because they're checking their email every 30 seconds and frantically checking their phones to see if they've missed calls, you're not a loser (or, anyway, not any more than the rest of us.) But here's Tom with some encouragement:

 

 

How Fantasy and Science Fiction Made Me a Better Reader (and Writer)

When I was younger, I read a ton of fantasy and science fiction.  Actually, a quick glance at my goodreads page shows that I still do.  

I have very fond memories (though I can't peg them to any specific year) of browsing the science fiction section on the mezzanine of the Cincinnati Public Library and just grabbing anything that appealed.  My only specific memory is having my mind completely blown by Clifford Simak's "All The Traps of Earth."

In the spectrum of respectable genres, mystery is at the top--I think this is because a lot of people who read literary fiction read mysteries as a kind of guilty pleasure.  Science Fiction comes next, though with a lot of limitations--i.e., William Gibson and Jonathan Lethem before he became The Bard of Brooklyn are okay, and SF forays by non-genre authors (I'm lookin' at you, Margaret Atwood) are okay, but most of it is still scorned.  And down there at the bottom of the barrel is lowly Fantasy, kept company by Horror. (Which is often a kind of fantasy, if you think about it.)

Fantasy is kind of a tough sell to non genre readers.  It's got conventions that are sometimes hard to take--Conan and his thews, the goofy names, and, in epic fantasy, an unfortunate tendency toward twee-ness.  Lord of the Rings is the most respectable fantasy novel, and though it grapples with big themes in what seems to me like an incredibly moving way, I can totally see how non fans might throw the book aside in disgust as soon as they meet Tom Bombadil.  

Also, Fantasy and SF are often heavy on the world building and light on the believable characters.  Not always, by any means, but you will definitely run across novels in these genres with amazingly inventive worlds populated by characters you don't believe in for a second.  (All genres have their limitations.  Literary fiction often has a problem with believable characters milling around not doing much for 300 pages.)

But here's what almost every fantasy and SF novel and short story does really well: exposition.  Every time you pick up something in this genre, you have to locate yourself in a world of the author's imagination.  The author has to reveal the rules and the layout and all this stuff without giving you a dull paragraph saying "Here are the races and classes of my world, and here is the magic (or even magick, or, in extreme cases, magicke) that works, and here are the limitations,and the following magickal creatures may make appearances..."

So even the worst writers in these genres tend to be really good at exposition.  By reading in these genres, you get really good at figuring out what the deal is in the first couple of chapters.  

This, of course, is something you have to do in any kind of novel. It's just more extreme with these genres.  I have often seen students baffled by realistic novels that don't take place in their time period or their part of the world because they're not practiced at picking up clues.  

I really think that reading a lot of fantasy and science fiction as a kid helped me succeed as an English major and has generally made my reading life richer, because I got used to figuring out what the deal was without having it spelled out for me.

Though I rarely write in these genres (with some exceptions), I do try to use what I learned from all that reading when I write.  I always try (though I probably don't always succeed) to reveal the world in which my stories take place without resorting to clunky paragraphs where the deal is explained outright.  To the extent that I succeed at this at all, it's due to the science fiction and fantasy I read as a kid and continue to read.  

I'm not saying everyone should read these genres; I guess I'm just saying that you shouldn't automatically roll your eyes when you see some kid reading a book with an elf on the cover; she's on her way to becomeing a really skilled reader, and maybe a better writer as well.