On Dec 17, 2008, at 3:35 PM, WJhonson(a)aol.com wrote:
Ender's Game is from 1985.
Doing a google reality check I get six hundred thousand hits for
"Ender's
Game" (enquoted).
So (even though I've never heard of it), it seems to have gotten a
substantial appreciation base.
For interpretive claims, we, as expert editors, shouldn't need to
rely on
our own words or interpretation or analysis with that level of
interest.
There should be several published book reviews that could be cited
for that
sort of claim.
Right?
Maybe. It's possible that, if someone wanted to go digging for book
reviews of a 23 year old novel that one of them would mention the
Stilson situation in enough detail that we could cite it as an
explanation for the overall situation (which is that it is steadily
revealed throughout the novel to both the reader and to Ender that
Ender killed Stilson).
However, I question why an obvious aspect of the novel that any reader
of the novel will see (even if it is not there on the level of
description, but rather by implication) requires such a snipe hunt to
get an incidental mention of something that nobody who has actually
read the novel would dispute is true, even if it is not on the level
of obvious description.
-Phil