I FULLY agree that there are critics of specfic who won't engage the material in the slightest (I'd go so far as to say there are MANY critics like this). Litsnobs who frown on anything they don't consider part of their genre, openly deriding it and those who appreciate it, and mock the people who attempt to read their genre and put it down because they didn't like it ("Obviously they don't
understand...").
Thing is, I feel like Walton's doing the same thing. But it's worse, because she's doing this to people who gave an effort.
One of my [seemingly many] problems with Walton's post is that she derides people who made earnest attempts to engage the text and did not appreciate it -- or if they did appreciate it, they didn't appreciate it "correctly."
No one can say "tachyon guy" didn't engage the text. He became so intellectually invested in FTL travel and the mechanics therein that he couldn't work past it. This isn't entirely unlike the physicist who can't read those stories because s/he knows it not to work, the computer scientist who can't deal with how computers are represented in modern media. This isn't a guy I'd lump with those who failed to miss the cues. This is a guy I'd wave over and direct to some HARD sf books.
Or what about her aunt, who likened fantasy to mythology? How does this inspire laughter? Mythology and fantasy aren't exactly apples and oranges. I can talk about a super-powerful old man in a white robe wearing a long beard, and depending on your lens you could call him God or Gandalf or a stack of other names. Say what you will, but this woman read the book and engaged it enough to parallel it to that which she was highly familiar. But, of course, she didn't "get it" did she? And so, Walton laughs.
Just the whole thing really puts me off.
PS -- Totally agree with you about CATCHER IN THE RYE. I thought Holden was a whiny twat who needed a good smack in the mouth with my open palm
