The RONA JAFFE test
So, what's the REAL difference between mainstream academic literary critics, and scholars who focus on fantasy literature?
Let me hereby propose the RONA JAFFE test, which I've discovered from recently reading (way too much) traditional literary criticism on postwar American literature.
If you hear Jaffe's name and think about her best-selling 1958 novel, The Best of Everything, well then, you're a traditional mainstream literary criti.
But if you think, "Wait, you mean that opportunistic nut-job who contributed to the mid-80s Satanic panic with Mazes and Monsters in 1981?", your fantasy credentials are assured.
Let me hereby propose the RONA JAFFE test, which I've discovered from recently reading (way too much) traditional literary criticism on postwar American literature.
If you hear Jaffe's name and think about her best-selling 1958 novel, The Best of Everything, well then, you're a traditional mainstream literary criti.
But if you think, "Wait, you mean that opportunistic nut-job who contributed to the mid-80s Satanic panic with Mazes and Monsters in 1981?", your fantasy credentials are assured.
Yep, it's M&M for me—but not the book, the afterschool special, which (if I remember correctly) was weirdly branded with her name: It wasn't just "Mazes & Monsters," but "Rona Jaffe's Mazes & Monsters," as if we, as teenagers in the 1980s, were supposed to know who she was.
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