Buh-bye Xanth

[gategrrl]

I am *finally* getting rid of a set of three books by Piers Anthony that I bought back when I was in high school (that would be 1980-1983). Back then, Anthony's racy sex-text was all the rage among the crew of nerdy SF dorks I hung out with, and I even read his other series--the one that starred Death and other mythical people. It was a cool idea that I like even today, but---

Xanth. Oh my. I dragged the first three books of that series out for another look (I'm being ruthless about winnowing my shelf space down). I've had them sitting in boxes or on my shelves for decades now. And was I...disgusted. Yes, that's one way to put it. I can see why I liked the books *then*. They were full of juvenile sex-jokes, stereotypes of women that were "funny" but I see now, weren't. In the last book I checked over, Anthony even put a twelve year old boy (in the body of a well-thewed barbarian) in sexual situations. It's all very burlesque. And after that third book in the series, I heard it went downhill even from there, and even my SF nerdy dork buddies and I wouldn't go near them. Or at least I didn't--another friend of mine read them, shook her head, and said they weren't worth the money.

I heard a well-known SF writer at a convention during the 80s was once asked, "What do you think of Piers Anthony?"  The writer replied, "He's a good typist."

(it may have been Harlan Ellison, but I'm not sure)

Anyhow, after hearing that possibly apocryphal story, my mind has stuck on that reply for years and years.

Comments

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

I didn't get up that far.

I think the book after Ogre Ogre or was it Nightmare was the last one I read.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

You know, thinking on it, I DID buy about three or four books of the series after that, but I'm not sure if I got up to Night Mare. By then it was starting to creep me out and the writing was so full of bad puns I gave traded those later books off. I kept the first three because they were "better" than the others and I had fonder memories of them. Until today.

I remember being in a bookstore (when was I not?) and reading through a collection of his short stories. In the foreword, Anthony noted that these were stories that had been rejected long before by his previous publishers.

After skimming through a couple of them, I put it back on the shelf. yeah. One of the stories involved a guy who is transported to a world where women are kept as milkers, and have huge boobs, and he tries to have sex with these mindless, huge-boobed women. He does, but realizes the males they're bred with are really hugely hung, so the woman is too roomy.

I shit you not. I didn't see the afterword entil2000 mentioned, but holy crap, I didn't need to. After reading that crap, I never read his books again. And that was, oh, in the late eighties? I sometimes felt a creepy vibe about the way he wrote about his daughters in his afterwords, too.