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Pity the poor artist who establishes their reputation in one medium, then sees the medium do a big shift. Willis probably could write books which fully encompa
by mechanical_fish 16y ago
Pity the poor artist who establishes their reputation in one medium, then sees the medium do a big shift.
Willis probably could write books which fully encompass the cellphone-era worldview. But will they be Connie Willis books? Or will the loss of all those old tropes make her new style inevitably different from her best-selling old style?
Think of PG Wodehouse, blithely writing novels set in early-twentieth-century England as late as 1975. (Though this example is a bit contrived, since some would argue that Wodehouse wrote about a society that never existed.) Or Bach, plugging away on his late Baroque masterworks years after the Baroque went out of style.
- jonhendry 16y ago"(Though this example is a bit contrived, since some would argue that Wodehouse wrote about a society that never existed.) " Just think of the Drones club as a bunch of bun-tossing elves.
- lukev 16y agoOn the other hand, I love both Wodehouse and Bach.
- mechanical_fish 16y agoOf course! In fact, I just discovered that The Art of the Fugue, which I believe Bach wrote toward the end of his career, really does sound better to me than his earlier stuff. Good for him for plugging stubbornly on in the genre he had mastered and which he knew best.
- indrax 16y agoWait, are you telling me that he was retro before retro was cool?