"I want to make mind-movies that will get people going." is a relatable ethos for me. I definitely get the desire you mention about infusing genre with meaning that comes from outside of it, as a secret or "easter egg". For me, it's not that it "elevates" the work or whatever (and I agree that literary-vs-genre is a false, usually unhelpful dichotomy), but I think that splicing of disparate elements—different traditions, mental touchstones, whatever—creates something interesting in almost all cases.
Also, my dad worked for Cornell Cooperative Extension in the 1990s and the name always struck me the way you mentioned here. I still don't know what he did there, lol.
"I want to make mind-movies that will get people going." is a relatable ethos for me. I definitely get the desire you mention about infusing genre with meaning that comes from outside of it, as a secret or "easter egg". For me, it's not that it "elevates" the work or whatever (and I agree that literary-vs-genre is a false, usually unhelpful dichotomy), but I think that splicing of disparate elements—different traditions, mental touchstones, whatever—creates something interesting in almost all cases.
Also, my dad worked for Cornell Cooperative Extension in the 1990s and the name always struck me the way you mentioned here. I still don't know what he did there, lol.