# Is serious  literature  for the select few?



## blazeofglory (Mar 29, 2016)

A piece of literature or also art is generally targeted at a few selected readers, written in their interests  based on their educational level with their class or genres in focus. It seems it is undemocratic. This is an aristocratic attitude.  The very foundation is shakily pillared and a time will come the target group or the cohort  in focus will be a lost generation. For the taste has changed. Post modernism, metanarrative, deconstructionism are some of the catchwords losing sheen in this age of the smart  phone or the internet. The serious reader these serious writers looking for is nowhere available, if any one in a thousand.  Writing for the mass or writing for the class is the motto?
The flavor is  changing and the serious writer failing to flow with the stream of the new is playing a losing game


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## ppsage (Mar 29, 2016)

I think I'm safe in saying that characterizing literature as serious (or not, I guess) has been deemed here at WF a ridiculously ambiguous enterprise. Not that we can't reopen the floor. The spectrum of literature has considerable dimensional sophistication and flavors and colors blend and swirl. -------------- I would say that median works of popular fiction have actually, over the last three centuries of rising literacy, increasingly gained depth as literature, but the standards to measure something like this are super slippery. --------- I am very confident that works of literature that cause large-ish numbers of people to thoughtfully consider important ideas and situations will continue to be written and read.


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## Patrick (Mar 29, 2016)

blazeofglory said:


> A piece of literature or also art is generally targeted at a few selected readers, written in their interests  based on their educational level with their class or genres in focus. It seems it is undemocratic. This is an aristocratic attitude.  The very foundation is shakily pillared and a time will come the target group or the cohort  in focus will be a lost generation. For the taste has changed. Post modernism, metanarrative, deconstructionism are some of the catchwords losing sheen in this age of the smart  phone or the internet. The serious reader these serious writers looking for is nowhere available, if any one in a thousand.  Writing for the mass or writing for the class is the motto?
> The flavor is  changing and the serious writer failing to flow with the stream of the new is playing a losing game



I think the proliferation of smart phones and trivial media will, if the phenomenon has any power at all, have the opposite effect to the one you propose. The novel could increasingly become a place of refuge for those who have a need for sustenance. James Joyce's books are probably more saleable now than they were when first published. The other thing to consider is that higher sales of commercial fiction is also a good thing for literary fiction; a surplus of commercial fiction allows agents to take on more "niche" writers.

The important question is whether people are more literate than they were fifty years ago. Perhaps not with regard to the classics and the Bible (although I really have no measure for that), but books seem to be more widely available (and read) than ever before. But commercial fiction is often a stepping stone for avid readers (and they do exist) to read increasingly complex material. Again, it's only a good thing.

As a writer, I don't give much thought to what people want to read; I aim to convince them by my passion for what _I_ want to write and by the quality of the work.

We do need good teachers and a good curriculum to promote the value of high art, however. It is something that requires appreciation.


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## Sam (Mar 29, 2016)

Even if 'serious' literature is only for the select few, why do you care? Will it stop you from reading it? 

I used to upbraid people for reading what I felt was horrible writing. I routinely had arguments with Kyle and Michelle (two Veteran WF members) about _Twilight, _for instance, and how they shouldn't have been reading it; until I realised that by telling them what not to read, or what I felt was good enough for them to read, it was in effect no better than someone trying to proselytise a person of non-faith. 

You'll avoid a lot of anger and pain if you read and write whatever you want to. I no longer chastise people for reading _anything_. Or, rather, for not reading something. It's a fruitless and futile endeavour. Concentrate on what is in your power to control: what you want to read and write. 

Serious literature isn't dead, anymore than a paperback novel is dead after the invention of e-readers. Paperback novels still sell by the millions, and serious novels continue winning Nobel prizes every year.


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## escorial (Mar 29, 2016)

Serious lit will always have a solid base with the university set...as for the less educated in society the serious literature will probably stop once they leave school...overall I think the future of serious literature is the same as its always been and will continue to do so...


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## bdcharles (Mar 29, 2016)

blazeofglory said:


> A piece of literature or also art is generally targeted at a few selected readers, written in their interests  based on their educational level with their class or genres in focus. It seems it is undemocratic. This is an aristocratic attitude.  The very foundation is shakily pillared and a time will come the target group or the cohort  in focus will be a lost generation. For the taste has changed. Post modernism, metanarrative, deconstructionism are some of the catchwords losing sheen in this age of the smart  phone or the internet. The serious reader these serious writers looking for is nowhere available, if any one in a thousand.  Writing for the mass or writing for the class is the motto?
> The flavor is  changing and the serious writer failing to flow with the stream of the new is playing a losing game



Hmm. While I cannot claim to be a "serious" writer producing "literature", I would say that by its very nature my writing is highly undemocratic. It assumes myself at the Godhead, manipulating and creating and destroying as the whim takes me, all with a view to expecting people to hand over nominal sums of money to share my visions that I generated myself at no cost.

That being said, I think the platforms available to writers are evolving and writers could do worse than investigating a few alternatives. Before I started my book(s) I was looking into creating a mobile game, a sort of smartphone based real time augmented reality adventure in which the players could create parts of the story themselves, add pictures and narrative and media and so on. The books spun off as a sort of backstory vehicle, and I often think about those game plans and mean to revisit them. I sometimes wonder if that could be worked into the future of writing.

If I had to write for the masses, I simply wouldn't do it. I would rather re-engage with my day job. For better or worse, I write for people like me.


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## Terry D (Mar 29, 2016)

What's "serious" literature? J.K. Rowling has made more than a billion dollars from Harry P and friends -- that's serious money. The block-buster books by Dan Brown, James Patterson, E.L. James, and the rest keep the big publishing houses in business and keep tens of thousands of people working, that's serious economic weight. In 2015, 571 million books were sold (that's just print books, unit sales of ebooks is harder to come by) that's serious popularity. I don't like to draw lines between what is commonly called 'literary' fiction and other genres. Good writing transcends those lines, and good writing is written by people who don't worry about being 'serious'. They write what they have to write, just like you and I.


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## Bloggsworth (Mar 29, 2016)

Read a book because you want to read it, not because of what self appointed judges of taste and/or quality tell you you should read. I got half way through Mrs Dalloway before setting it aside - Yes it was beautifully written, exquisitely constructed sentences, but for me it was going nowhere. It reminded me of one of Dorothy Parker's most memorable book reviews: "_This book should not be set aside lightly.... It should be thrown with great force_." Not that that was what I thought of Mrs D, but if a book doesn't hold your interest as a story, is it "Good" writing? Hardy, Trollope, Austen, Le Carré write beautiful books that you want to read, so why waste your life on books that are difficult to read, move at snail's pace, and are boring to read. As much as I like a good biscuit, do I need to know, at great length, how hard Proust found it to get to sleep?


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## Aquilo (Mar 29, 2016)

Times move on, so do modes of communication. What's canvas art for one generation will blend into string art from another generation. It doesn't make any one form of expression less serious than the other, or any one generation's classification of literature any better than the other. In fact, it just opens up new ways of looking at something creatively, e.g., via use of the Internet, social media in general etc. And that's the skill of the artist/author. Language itself has always been seen to shift and change, so should classification and mode of... transportation of 'literature' in general. If it's mostly stuck in a university setting and new ways of getting to readers aren't exploited, that's not a decline in numbers on the reader's part, just an inability to move with the times and appeal to a faster moving market.

I won't read literature. But it has nothing to do with the size of my brain pan. I just don't like the whole class debate it's played with.


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## PrinzeCharming (Mar 29, 2016)

I really like this discussion! Time to engage! 



blazeofglory said:


> A piece of literature or also art is _*generally *_targeted at a few selected readers, written in their interests  based on their educational level with their class or genres in focus.



In a generalized nutshell, yes. You're right. However, there are always _exceptions _to rules. Hence, Liz Murray going from homeless to Harvard. The books she read were not books someone would find in a crack house. It's a very sad story. Her parents were drug addicts. She read her way through self-educating and perseverance. 



ppsage said:


> The spectrum of literature has considerable dimensional sophistication and flavors and colors blend and swirl. -------------- I would say that median works of popular fiction have actually, over the last three centuries of rising literacy, increasingly gained depth as literature, but the standards to measure something like this are super slippery. --------- I am very confident that works of literature that cause large-ish numbers of people to thoughtfully consider important ideas and situations will continue to be written and read.



Yes, you are right about the slippery slope as well as the readership involved. People have very busy lives with limited time to invest. If the literature is evaluated as valuable, those readers will recommend the works to others. This produces larger numbers which will demand more from the author. 



Patrick said:


> The important question is whether people are more literate than they were fifty years ago. Perhaps not with regard to the classics and the Bible (although I really have no measure for that), but books seem to be more widely available (and read) than ever before.



This is a great question to address! I am intrigued to hear Lee C's response to this! It makes you wonder. Personally, I have always said that technological advancement has significantly hindered physical intimacy in modern relationships. Now, in regard to literacy, are we raising a future of visual learners? 



Patrick said:


> As a writer, I don't give much thought to what people want to read; I aim to convince them by my passion for what _I_ want to write and by the quality of the work. We do need good teachers and a good curriculum to promote the value of high art, however. It is something that requires appreciation.



Yes, I agree with you here. If you give someone what they want but you have no desire to write it, will they read it to fulfill their own desire or trash it because you're not feeling the genre like they do? Read what you want, write what you feel. If someone isn't interested in reading what you feel, don't waste your time writing what they want to read. 



Sam said:


> You'll avoid a lot of anger and pain if you read and write whatever you want to. I no longer chastise people for reading _anything_. Or, rather, for not reading something. It's a fruitless and futile endeavour. Concentrate on what is in your power to control: what you want to read and write.



This is exactly it. A writer shouldn't _*force *_themselves to cast a line in stagnant water. If they enjoy writing something that is unpopular or not demanded, or not in the current flow of the market, allow them to continue pursuing those dreams. 



escorial said:


> Serious lit will always have a solid base with the university set...as for the less educated in society the serious literature will probably stop once they leave school...overall I think the future of serious literature is the same as its always been and will continue to do so...



I haven't met someone who reads scholarly articles for fun. It's always academia related. 



bdcharles said:


> For better or worse, I write for people like me.



This beautifully concludes this segment of replying. Thank you!


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## Patrick (Mar 29, 2016)

Bloggsworth said:


> Read a book because you want to read it, not because of what self appointed judges of taste and/or quality tell you you should read. I got half way through Mrs Dalloway before setting it aside - Yes it was beautifully written, exquisitely constructed sentences, but for me it was going nowhere. It reminded me of one of Dorothy Parker's most memorable book reviews: "_This book should not be set aside lightly.... It should be thrown with great force_." Not that that was what I thought of Mrs D, *but if a book doesn't hold your interest as a story, is it "Good" writing?* *Hardy, Trollope, Austen, Le Carré write beautiful books that you want to read, so why waste your life on books that are difficult to read, move at snail's pace, and are boring to read.* *As much as I like a good biscuit, do I need to know, at great length, how hard Proust found it to get to sleep?*



I can't comment on Proust because I don't like to read translated literature which relies so much on prose stylism; it doesn't capture the voice. I'd have to learn French to really appreciate Proust. But slow and difficult aren't reasons to dislike a book. I like chess, and chess can be very slow and very difficult. It can also get boring, and that's the time to stop playing for the day. The same is true of books.

In my case, the more "difficult" literature I read, the more I find the relatively easy stuff boring. I have arguments with my father about this because he's a proponent of minimalism, and I find it drab. Fortunately, there are enough individuals in the world to prefer different things. However, nobody will convince me that it is entirely subjective. Shakespeare, Milton, and Joyce were all quite brilliant writers (there are others), and that is objectively true whether you like them or dislike them. There are many writers I dislike, but I try to refrain from attacking their ability (unless they are popular writers who really, objectively, can't write).


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## midnightpoet (Mar 29, 2016)

I think often the perception of "serious" or "classical" literature is that it's stuffy and pretentious.  Sometimes it is, but often not - think how many movies, plays and even musicals are based on them.  Timeless stories with compelling characters will always, I hope, continue to stir the imagination and lift the spirit (and sell books).


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## Jack of all trades (Mar 29, 2016)

What is "serious" literature?  Why should that be read and not something less "serious"?

Often, way too often, when someone sings the praises of an author, say Hemingway, that person is unable to express what is good about the writing. The response is generally, "It's Hemingway", as though that explains it all.

I have also seen debates where a line is taken from a "good" book and analyzed, and is torn apart for how bad it is. Yet when the true autho is revealed, the critics suddenly change tunes and praise the same line.

I read a blog about how the author had taken a story that had been published in The New Yorker and submitted under an alias. The story was rejected. It was rejected by every magazine he sent it to. He try again with a different story. Similar result. 

So there is not really some list of rules about what is good, or serious, writing. There's only opinions. And opinions change constantly. So read what you enjoy and write what you enjoy. If you're not trying to please the fickle crowd, you will probably have a good book or story.


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## blazeofglory (Mar 29, 2016)

Terry D said:


> What's "serious" literature? J.K. Rowling has made more than a billion dollars from Harry P and friends -- that's serious money. The block-buster books by Dan Brown, James Patterson, E.L. James, and the rest keep the big publishing houses in business and keep tens of thousands of people working, that's serious economic weight. In 2015, 571 million books were sold (that's just print books, unit sales of ebooks is harder to come by) that's serious popularity. I don't like to draw lines between what is commonly called 'literary' fiction and other genres. Good writing transcends those lines, and good writing is written by people who don't worry about being 'serious'. They write what they have to write, just like you and I.



A beautiful reply. Yes books must be really interesting, and unputdownable. Some books are serious, philosophical and of high literary value but that tire and bore us in a while and people take months to finish them for it is deemed such books must be read. For their style, use of words and indeed for their so called philosophy. But pompous words often embed their messages, meanings and they finally or if analyzed turn out shallow, though they appear to be something concrete looking at their complex sentences and difficult diction. I find often books full of craps though they are critically uprated and I try to find a meaning, a direction after going through a rigorous reading. They suck my time and energy and at the end of the day I reach a mirage though I might have set my eye on an oasis at the outset. 
That said, however some books are really good and I find Dickens, and Some Russian writers totally different and though I read their translated versions but they are transcending time and linguistic veneers. Some books end up in trashes once they get translated if they are stylistically great semantically gibberish. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are always exceptional and Dickens is immortal. I do not know where James Joyce will end up in if it goes through a translation. I do not know into how many languages it is translated. Maybe in some European but doubt they are translated in some major Asiatic languages like in Urdu, Araby, Hindi, Nepali or Mandarin. Imagine how semantically it will be poor if it comes in another language?


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## Patrick (Mar 30, 2016)

blazeofglory said:


> A beautiful reply. Yes books must be really interesting, and unputdownable. Some books are serious, philosophical and of high literary value but that tire and bore us in a while and people take months to finish them for it is deemed such books must be read. For their style, use of words and indeed for their so called philosophy. But pompous words often embed their messages, meanings and they finally or if analyzed turn out shallow, though they appear to be something concrete looking at their complex sentences and difficult diction. I find often books full of craps though they are critically uprated and I try to find a meaning, a direction after going through a rigorous reading. They suck my time and energy and at the end of the day I reach a mirage though I might have set my eye on an oasis at the outset.
> That said, however some books are really good and I find Dickens, and Some Russian writers totally different and though I read their translated versions but they are transcending time and linguistic veneers. Some books end up in trashes once they get translated if they are stylistically great semantically gibberish. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are always exceptional and Dickens is immortal. I do not know where James Joyce will end up in if it goes through a translation. I do not know into how many languages it is translated. Maybe in some European but doubt they are translated in some major Asiatic languages like in Urdu, Araby, Hindi, Nepali or Mandarin. Imagine how semantically it will be poor if it comes in another language?



It doesn't matter that Joyce isn't easily translated; it's a mark of his command of a very rich and complex language: English. There isn't a writer alive today who has the immense talent (and it is talent as much as Bobby Fischer wiping the floor with every grandmaster in his era was talent) of Joyce or Shakespeare.  they come along very rarely. 

Unfortunately, many bristle with jealousy and call such writers, and even the love of such writers, pretentious. There's a good reason these writers are respected so much by all the best writers; a writer, no matter her level of ability, should furnish her mind with beauty. Unfortunately, writers tend to be less respectful towards the great exponents of the craft than other artists. Imagine calling Claude Monet pretentious for his impressionist art.

The fact anybody wants to express himself to others can be construed as pretentious. I can read and enjoy different kinds of literature, but the anti-intellectual stuff is one of the reasons, beyond this board, why I have nothing to do with writing groups.


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## Kevin (Mar 30, 2016)

Mmm... read it if you want to. Joyce, for instance... I'm too stupid to get it, so I don't. I can't even appreciate it. I've tried a couple times.
Becket...  there's another one. Molloy I get. Some of the rest of it? Uh-uh. Bloody Irish. "I can't go on. I'll go on." That one cracks me up every time.


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## LeeC (Mar 30, 2016)

I'd have to agree with Kevin here. To my mind, it's all in the interpretation of "serious reading," relative to individual perspective. I get the academic innuendo, but I'm not keen on cultural inculcation having found too much self-serving bias in it. Another aspect is that I can't connect with books like Joyce's Ulysses which make my head hurt. I get it that he's getting at the heart of Dublin in his writing as he sees it, but it doesn't draw me in. I'm also aware he broke new ground in writing style, but I fail to see the value of such in many cases. Sometimes I think we humans play too many one up games, as like with my daughter trying to explain Dante's Divine Comedy to me. Didn't sink in with my cultural nurturing. 

On the other hand, there are many books deemed serious that I've enjoyed. For example, at times I think back on Melville:

"Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?"

and his especially evocative writing such as:

"Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred." 

So to me serious reading is serious writing I can connect with, and that has sufficient depth to make me think. As to the OP, I don't consider that "an aristocratic attitude," or even as they'd say on the res, an uppity ingun. 


What I see more today, in a fast track visual world, is a reluctance to engage sprockets. That is with so many living in a sardine can, the focus is more on finding the key to what each imagine self-fulfillment. Something that's not easily found without looking outside oneself. 

"_Life does not cease to be funny when people die_
_anymore than it ceases to be serious when people_
_laugh._"         ~  George BernardShaw


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## Bishop (Mar 30, 2016)

Patrick said:


> It doesn't matter that Joyce isn't easily translated; it's a mark of his command of a very rich and complex language: English. There isn't a writer alive today who has the immense talent (and it is talent as much as Bobby Fischer wiping the floor with every grandmaster in his era was talent) of Joyce or Shakespeare.  they come along very rarely.



Something to bear in mind: These writers were seen in the same light in their time as Stephen King is in ours. They wrote to their generation, using their generation's language, vocabulary, subject matter. King (and many other great writers, even within 'pop' genres) writes what he wants to write to say what he wants to say. Sometimes he writes trite, entertainment based pieces. Shakespeare did the same--read some of his lesser-known plays, and it's immediately clear that he sometimes wrote just for a paycheck. But Will was just as crass and pop-minded as any writer today is. He appealed to the people in the pit and the people in the balcony, and that was his goal. They're considered timeless because of how we look back at them, not because the language was more complex. To them, Chaucer's language was massively complex, and many probably didn't 'get' him, and all wanted to go see Bill's plays because those were more on their level. That's just the evolution of language.

Language of the past is not pretentious... it's obsolete. That is simply no longer how we communicate. English does not work that way anymore. Language evolves with culture. You can make the argument that with the advent of texting and electronic communication, it's being de-evolved... but the reality is that it's the opposite. A new linguistic era is forming right now, and it's actually really exciting. It's a world where efficiency of words and letters is valued over form. Function is taking a forefront to beauty within words, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. If Joyce or William were trying to write in their language styles today, they'd have a damn hard time getting published. And when they did get published, they'd probably have a very small readership.

Writers like King, on the other hand, appeal to the masses. King has undeniably written some masterpieces that will live on beyond his time. Has he written his "Hamlet"? I'd argue yes. And I'd argue that after he's gone, it will be taught in schools just like Will's work is now. And then, forty years from now, when language is evolving again and people are experiencing art and writing in new forms, King's writing will be considered "pretentious." That's just the evolution, the flow of art. Much as people don't want to admit it (at least, many don't...) rap music will one day be considered "classical music". It's as inevitable as the heat death of the universe: art evolves forward.


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## Patrick (Mar 30, 2016)

Bishop said:


> Something to bear in mind: These writers were seen in the same light in their time as Stephen King is in ours. They wrote to their generation, using their generation's language, vocabulary, subject matter. King (and many other great writers, even within 'pop' genres) writes what he wants to write to say what he wants to say. Sometimes he writes trite, entertainment based pieces. Shakespeare did the same--read some of his lesser-known plays, and it's immediately clear that he sometimes wrote just for a paycheck. But Will was just as crass and pop-minded as any writer today is. He appealed to the people in the pit and the people in the balcony, and that was his goal. They're considered timeless because of how we look back at them, not because the language was more complex. To them, Chaucer's language was massively complex, and many probably didn't 'get' him, and all wanted to go see Bill's plays because those were more on their level. That's just the evolution of language.
> 
> Language of the past is not pretentious... it's obsolete. That is simply no longer how we communicate. English does not work that way anymore. Language evolves with culture. You can make the argument that with the advent of texting and electronic communication, it's being de-evolved... but the reality is that it's the opposite. A new linguistic era is forming right now, and it's actually really exciting. It's a world where efficiency of words and letters is valued over form. Function is taking a forefront to beauty within words, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. If Joyce or William were trying to write in their language styles today, they'd have a damn hard time getting published. And when they did get published, they'd probably have a very small readership.
> 
> Writers like King, on the other hand, appeal to the masses. King has undeniably written some masterpieces that will live on beyond his time. Has he written his "Hamlet"? I'd argue yes. And I'd argue that after he's gone, it will be taught in schools just like Will's work is now. And then, forty years from now, when language is evolving again and people are experiencing art and writing in new forms, King's writing will be considered "pretentious." That's just the evolution, the flow of art. Much as people don't want to admit it (at least, many don't...) rap music will one day be considered "classical music". It's as inevitable as the heat death of the universe: art evolves forward.



It's not a question of vocabulary. Nobody denies that language changes. Shakespeare is easier, though he wrote a long time before Joyce, to understand than Joyce because of the weight of Joyce's literary allusions. Something like Dubliners is very accessible in a "modern" minimalist sense, but Joyce became a great synthesist for Ulysses, moving in the opposite direction of the trend. He was actually ahead of his time and Ulysses remains ahead of contemporary literature.

I am sure King will be remembered very well for his vast body of work, but he will not be considered a linguistic genius like Joyce or Shakespeare, because he isn't considered one of the finest prose stylists of his own generation. What he is is a very good storyteller. Let's not pretend that King is doing for language today what Shakespeare and Joyce did for it in their respective generations, however.

Two of the finest prose writers today would be Hilary Mantel and Edward St. Aubyn. I predict both will be thought of as masters, but again it's not really fair to compare them to Shakepseare and Joyce, who tower above all other British writers.


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## Sam (Mar 30, 2016)

Patrick said:


> Two of the finest prose writers today would be Hilary Mantel and Edward St. Aubyn. I predict both will be thought of as masters, but again it's not really fair to compare them to Shakepseare and *Joyce*, who tower above all other *British* writers.



I'd say ol' Jemmy is rolling over in his grave right about now.


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## Bishop (Mar 30, 2016)

Patrick said:


> It's not a question of vocabulary. Nobody denies that language changes. Shakespeare is easier, though he wrote a long time before Joyce, to understand than Joyce because of the weight of Joyce's literary allusions. Something like Dubliners is very accessible in a "modern" minimalist sense, but Joyce became a great synthesist for Ulysses, moving in the opposite direction of the trend. He was actually ahead of his time and Ulysses remains ahead of contemporary literature.



That can be argued. Either side of it has valid points, some will claim Joyce's allusions have greater weight, others will argue the same for Bill. Some will argue Joyce's prose sloshes in its own confused mess of allegory and metaphor, and others will claim Bill's subtext does the same. Your adoration for him notwithstanding, Joyce was less 'ahead of his time' and more 'out of his mind'. Not that that's a bad thing; some great literature has been written in moments of insanity. Jules Verne wrote ahead of his time, Joyce simply wrote in a very deep and cerebral space. Which, unfortunately, means absolutely zero if it doesn't reach an audience. Obviously, Joyce has his followers and has solidified his place in history. Other writers with similarly "weighty" material have not, and will never.



Patrick said:


> I am sure King will be remembered very well for his vast body of work, but he will not be considered a linguistic genius like Joyce or Shakespeare, because he isn't considered one of the finest prose stylists of his own generation. What he is is a very good storyteller. Let's not pretend that King is doing for language today what Shakespeare and Joyce did for it in their respective generations, however.



King will be remembered, and studied, and is already considered a linguistic genius. His writing captures voices and characters from every walk of American culture, with dialogue especially being a massive strong suit of his, capturing the literal voices of a diverse selection of people. No one has more strongly married literature and reality, all while writing predominantly of the supernatural. His ability to capture the sensibilities of every age group, every class, every subculture is something that elevates him beyond his genre. If nothing else, studying many of King's works is studying American life. And I promise you, that is the light in which he'll be cast as time ebbs on. In my university, and many others, it already IS the light he's cast in.

And he's just one of many often brushed-aside pop writers who transcends that word. King is doing for language today what Shakespeare and Joyce did in their time. That is to say: nothing. _They merely used the language of their time to tell their stories to their people. _Say what you want about Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake, but their words are plain language for their time. It seems more complex now because language has evolved to a simpler form. The allegory and metaphor obviously goes deeper, but the same can be said for King. Much as many people who are in English Literature programs all over the country WANT older literature to be "superior" to modern writers, it's simply not. It's just more exclusive because of its language.

Take Chaucer. Many regard his work as one of the greatest of its time, with deep allegory and eternal themes. This is, to remind you, the work that included analingus, flatulent humor, and those are the _tame _moments of his crude humor. But modern audiences have no idea that someone's farting in another person's face because the language is obsolete.



Patrick said:


> Two of the finest prose writers today would be Hilary Mantel and Edward St. Aubyn. I predict both will be thought of as masters, but again it's not really fair to compare them to Shakepseare and Joyce, who tower above all other British writers.



In your opinion. There is a disconnect in a lot of people who study literature, thinking that "greatness" and "timelessness" can be measured objectively. They can't be. Whereas some people think Hawthorne is timeless, I think his work is moronic. Whereas I think Titus Andronicus is a more important play than MacBeth, people disagree. These things will be eternally debated, but the one constant between all of these things is that there is no wrong answer. Personally, I'd rather read Joyce's pornographic letters to his wife than even a single sentence of Ulysses. Clearly, you'd disagree. But neither opinion or option is wrong, per se, as art is subjective, not objective. If it were objective, those metaphors and allegories and allusions would all mean nothing.

Also, James Joyce was Irish. My British deskmate here reminded me how offended he'd be.


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## Patrick (Mar 30, 2016)

Sam said:


> I'd say ol' Jemmy is rolling over in his grave right about now.



British Isles, of course. :lone:



Bishop said:


> That can be argued. Either side of it has valid points, some will claim Joyce's allusions have greater weight, others will argue the same for Bill. Some will argue Joyce's prose sloshes in its own confused mess of allegory and metaphor, and others will claim Bill's subtext does the same. Your adoration for him notwithstanding, Joyce was less 'ahead of his time' and more 'out of his mind'. Not that that's a bad thing; some great literature has been written in moments of insanity. Jules Verne wrote ahead of his time, Joyce simply wrote in a very deep and cerebral space. Which, unfortunately, means absolutely zero if it doesn't reach an audience. Obviously, Joyce has his followers and has solidified his place in history. Other writers with similarly "weighty" material have not, and will never.



I take issue with comments like that; it's just silly to say Joyce was out of his mind when Ulysses is a tremendously comlex and ordered structure. People often wrongly think Joyce is chaotic, as though he were writing in a brainstorm. The appearance of chaos and "madness" in Ulysses arises when the reader doesn't grasp the layers and the "whole" in the part. Joyce successfully married hyper realism and fantasia. To set the Odyssey in 20th century Dublin (and that's not the only play within a play in Ulysses) takes a tremendous creative energy that you just don't see elsewhere. Name one contemporary author who is like him. That's why Ulysses remains way ahead of contemporary literature. 



> King will be remembered, and studied, and is already considered a linguistic genius. His writing captures voices and characters from every walk of American culture, with dialogue especially being a massive strong suit of his, capturing the literal voices of a diverse selection of people. No one has more strongly married literature and reality, all while writing predominantly of the supernatural. His ability to capture the sensibilities of every age group, every class, every subculture is something that elevates him beyond his genre. If nothing else, studying many of King's works is studying American life. And I promise you, that is the light in which he'll be cast as time ebbs on. In my university, and many others, it already IS the light he's cast in.



I am sure King is much more interesting to an American reader than an English reader. I have very little interest, honestly. I do like Charles Portis though. I think Portis was a great writer of character and dialogue. But American authors generally don't do much for me.



> And he's just one of many often brushed-aside pop writers who transcends that word. King is doing for language today what Shakespeare and Joyce did in their time. That is to say: nothing. _They merely used the language of their time to tell their stories to their people. _Say what you want about Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake, but their words are plain language for their time. It seems more complex now because language has evolved to a simpler form. The allegory and metaphor obviously goes deeper, but the same can be said for King. Much as many people who are in English Literature programs all over the country WANT older literature to be "superior" to modern writers, it's simply not. It's just more exclusive because of its language.



You can't say that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (particularly the wake) were plain language for their time. Absolutely not, lol. They bewildered people every bit as much then as they do now. Virginia Woolf couldn't even read Ulysses, nor could D.H. Lawrence. 



> Take Chaucer. Many regard his work as one of the greatest of its time, with deep allegory and eternal themes. This is, to remind you, the work that included analingus, flatulent humor, and those are the _tame _moments of his crude humor. But modern audiences have no idea that someone's farting in another person's face because the language is obsolete.



The problem with Chaucer for the modern reader is that the vernacular of the British Isles has changed so much from all the Latin, Greek and Norman influences. You really have to understand the history of the Island before you try to summarise why certain authors are no longer readable. English English, unlike its cousin American English, has a very long evolution that Joyce stylistically represents in the 14th episode "the cattle of the sun" of Ulysses, and it is the most linguistically complex episode of Ulysses, mirroring the birth of a child in the birthing house.

Joyce's language was as foreign to his time as it is to ours, in fact more so because back then they didn't have access to the decades of scholarly writing on Joyce that we have today.



> In your opinion. There is a disconnect in a lot of people who study literature, thinking that "greatness" and "timelessness" can be measured objectively. They can't be. Whereas some people think Hawthorne is timeless, I think his work is moronic. Whereas I think Titus Andronicus is a more important play than MacBeth, people disagree. These things will be eternally debated, but the one constant between all of these things is that there is no wrong answer. Personally, I'd rather read Joyce's pornographic letters to his wife than even a single sentence of Ulysses. Clearly, you'd disagree. But neither opinion or option is wrong, per se, as art is subjective, not objective. If it were objective, those metaphors and allegories and allusions would all mean nothing.
> 
> Also, James Joyce was Irish. My British deskmate here reminded me how offended he'd be.



I am not a postmodernist, so I do believe there are objective principles in art, and I think it is wrong to ascribe greater artistic merit to Joyce's private letters to his wife than his great works.

As I said to Sam, I was referring to the fact both men are from the British Isles. I am aware of the fact my own country (England) and Ireland are separated politically.


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## Bishop (Mar 30, 2016)

While I wont go point for point in my counter argument on that (simply because I'd be repeating myself), I will say I'm very interested in reading some of your work, Patrick. Back when I was getting my English degree, I remember hearing many a talk like yours, but never did see the work that resulted from these schools of thought. I suppose I'm just interested in what the modern student of a writer such as Joyce produces.


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## Patrick (Mar 30, 2016)

Bishop said:


> While I wont go point for point in my counter argument on that (simply because I'd be repeating myself), I will say I'm very interested in reading some of your work, Patrick. Back when I was getting my English degree, I remember hearing many a talk like yours, but never did see the work that resulted from these schools of thought. I suppose I'm just interested in what the modern student of a writer such as Joyce produces.



You're more than welcome to. I write various things. The novel I am currently writing (the beginning is posted in the workshop) is quite different to my short stories and poetry. I am not loyal to any of these forms; the only thing that remains consistent is the fact I am a Christian.


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## dale (Mar 31, 2016)

blazeofglory said:


> A piece of literature or also art is generally targeted at a few selected readers, written in their interests  based on their educational level with their class or genres in focus. It seems it is undemocratic. This is an aristocratic attitude.  The very foundation is shakily pillared and a time will come the target group or the cohort  in focus will be a lost generation. For the taste has changed. Post modernism, metanarrative, deconstructionism are some of the catchwords losing sheen in this age of the smart  phone or the internet. The serious reader these serious writers looking for is nowhere available, if any one in a thousand.  Writing for the mass or writing for the class is the motto?
> The flavor is  changing and the serious writer failing to flow with the stream of the new is playing a losing game



i understand your point of view...but i think we are on the brink of society becoming frustrated with all these "trinket" 
options and actually longing for something real and artistic again. the world has been vapid and empty for too long. 
and people are starting to "shed this skin". and once people do? the longing for creativity and beauty in art and literature will return.


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## blazeofglory (Mar 31, 2016)

dale said:


> i understand your point of view...but i think we are on the brink of society becoming frustrated with all these "trinket"
> options and actually longing for something real and artistic again. the world has been vapid and empty for too long.
> and people are starting to "shed this skin". and once people do? the longing for creativity and beauty in art and literature will return.



You sound interesting. I often think we can write beautiful without being arrogant and conceited. So called great writers layer their creative works with chosen diction, embellishing their writings but when you dig into their writings we come upon jumbles words strewn elegantly but underneath the obvious all that remains of them is shallowness and pomposity.


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## dale (Mar 31, 2016)

blazeofglory said:


> I often think we can write beautiful without being arrogant and conceited.



i'm not sure if i agree with that. i'd almost argue that vanity is a virtue when it comes to art.


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## bdcharles (Mar 31, 2016)

dale said:


> i'm not sure if i agree with that. i'd almost argue that vanity is a virtue when it comes to art.



I think it is necessary for it to happen. The notion that punters might pay money for a glimpse at MY creations, might fall over themselves for a peek inside MY mind, is tremendously, thrillingly, marvellously arrogant! But it also ups the ante for the creator. No-one wants to be known for delivering crap. This then feeds back into one's bloating self-regard; and on, and on.

But that's just this one arena - and maybe not even there, not when objectively considered. Meanwhile, put me with a bunch of sports fans and I am sunk, well and truly out of my depth. Put me in a top end social or networking situation and I will dwindle and die.


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## Kevin (Mar 31, 2016)

'Vanity'? I think you have to push it more than that. I'd say definitely one has to become a completely conceited prick in order to be a successful artist. There's just so many factors. Take plagiarizing, how the hell is one supposed to pull that off if one cares a wit about anything or anyone else? You have to be completely believable when you deny. "I thought of this...when I was two-years-old."  Rock-stars... rock-stars are a great example... preening about on stage, banging teeny-boppers behind it, drugging it up, all the while every lick stolen.  The excesses, the lying, backstabbing, it's all conceit and posing, no talent necessary, except for theft, and posing.


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## InstituteMan (Mar 31, 2016)

dale said:


> i understand your point of view...but i think we are on the brink of society becoming frustrated with all these "trinket"
> options and actually longing for something real and artistic again. the world has been vapid and empty for too long.
> and people are starting to "shed this skin". and once people do? the longing for creativity and beauty in art and literature will return.



I think this is largely true, but I think we'll be surprised by the literature we get in response to that longing. In my own non-scientific sample of society, I know people who are very interested in old forms of art and people who are very interested in new forms of art. Maybe there's room for both sonnets and twitter poems.


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## bazz cargo (Mar 31, 2016)

> [h=2]OP Blazeofglory Is serious  literature  for the select few?[/h]


It is for anyone who can be bothered to read it.


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## Olly Buckle (Mar 31, 2016)

/\ /\ what he said/\ /\ 

Also, what is described as 'serious literature' in the OP is not, it is pretentious literature. Serious literature deals with the human condition, not that of a particular class, though a particular class may be used to portray it.


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## Book Cook (Mar 31, 2016)

Olly Buckle said:


> Also, what is described as 'serious literature' in the OP is not, it is pretentious literature.



See, I was going to respond with something touching the words you've written. But _pretentious _carries with it such negative connotations. Let's assume that Dostoyevsky didn't exist when he did, and that he is writing now. Same person, same insight, irregardless of the social structure back then and now. People would certainly call him a know-it-all, pretentious, bombastic and whatnot. But while I was reading Dostoyevsky (which we can all agree is a part of what the OP had in mind when referring to serious literature), I could find detailed descriptions of people close to me. And I mean to the letter. The level of insight into the human psyche that man had is mind-boggling and nowhere in his works did I detect any level of him elevating himself above the rest of the demographic. Actually, his protagonists (and arguably _all _characters) were full of real human flaws, and that, I believe, is not a mark of a pretentious writer.

I daresay that people today are not appreciative of this "serious literature", as the OP called it, out of two reasons: they cannot understand it or they cannot replicate it.


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## EmmaSohan (Mar 31, 2016)

Raise your hand if you have listened to Anthracite Fields.

I thought not. Pulitzer Prize for music in 2015. I did not enjoy a second of it, but when I was done, I did have the enjoyable (and irrational) feeling that I was better than all of you peasants.

I look at punctuation and grammar, and King seems to be a master technician at that.


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## Patrick (Mar 31, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> Raise your hand if you have listened to Anthracite Fields.
> 
> I thought not. Pulitzer Prize for music in 2015. I did not enjoy a second of it, but when I was done, I did have the enjoyable (and irrational) feeling that I was better than all of you peasants.
> 
> I look at punctuation and grammar, and King seems to be a master technician at that.



There is a misconception that people who read "serious literature" do it to appear better than others. Perhaps some people do, but they're more than likely those who have unread copies of these books on their bookshelves. I read what I do so that I might grow as a writer. I also enjoy serious literature, but not in the same way I'd enjoy lighter reading. I think both kinds have a place, but there are people who like to sneer at Harry Potter and there are those who like to show the same contempt towards literary fiction. I don't get it, but the only people missing out are those who adopt that attitude.

I think pretension is assuming one is better than everyone else for no good reason, not the attempt to convey complex ideas in fiction.


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## dale (Mar 31, 2016)

Patrick said:


> There is a misconception that people who read "serious literature" do it to appear better than others. Perhaps some people do, but they're more than likely those who have unread copies of these books on their bookshelves. I read what I do so that I might grow as a writer. I also enjoy serious literature, but not in the same way I'd enjoy lighter reading. I think both kinds have a place, but there are people who like to sneer at Harry Potter and there are those who like to show the same contempt towards literary fiction. I don't get it, but the only people missing out are those who adopt that attitude.
> 
> I think pretension is assuming one is better than everyone else for no good reason, not the attempt to convey complex ideas in fiction.



i agree. i love the classics simply because i personally love how the cared so much about the writing itself. 
the older lit authors i read really cared about how they strung words together.


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## David Gordon Burke (Apr 1, 2016)

Just adding my two cents.

It seems to me that the bulk of serious literature happens by accident.
The majority of banal commercial pulp fiction happened on purpose.

David Gordon Burke


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## Olly Buckle (Apr 1, 2016)

David Gordon Burke said:


> Just adding my two cents.
> 
> It seems to me that the bulk of serious literature happens by accident.
> The majority of banal commercial pulp fiction happened on purpose.
> ...



Maybe not quite 'by accident', rather the reasons for writing are contained within the literature, the reasons for writing the other sort are external to it.


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## LeeC (Apr 1, 2016)

Olly Buckle said:


> Maybe not quite 'by accident', rather the reasons for writing are contained within the literature, the reasons for writing the other sort are external to it.


Now that's the best explanation I've seen yet, and it also exemplifies the difference in saying much more than the sum of the words.


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## Flint (Apr 2, 2016)

Interesting thread 

Personally, I like the fact that there are all sorts of genres and writing styles, etc; it would be a boring world if everyone had to read and write in the same genre/style.

As to what constitutes good writing … for me, good writing pleases its target audience or achieves some kind of goal (winning a particular prize or selling X amount of copies, etc.). I don't think I can get to a more specific definition than that.

As far as 'classics' of English literature go, they may or may not be for a few people, but then again new-wave sci-fi authors like Robert Sheckley (whom I quite like) are probably not read by many people either. I don't think this makes these works good or bad, pretentious or not pretentious, etc.


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## dale (Apr 2, 2016)

i'm too pretentious to even believe in pretentiousness.


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## Patrick (Apr 2, 2016)

dale said:


> i'm too pretentious to even believe in pretentiousness.



The irony is it's often spouted by those who are incredibly pretentious about their own chosen brand of literature. I would say since Hemingway and his famous truculent attitude towards ornamental writing, people who believe in his school of writing have been consistently hostile towards prose stylists who experiment in other styles. Hemingway himself acknowledged just how great a writer Joyce was, even though he was his exact opposite. I think they admired one another quite a lot because of how different they were to each other.

I've been called pretentious before, but the reality is I don't hold back on the page. I will do whatever I have to to express the maelstrom that's often going on inside my head and in my heart. If I had the intention of impressing, I'd adopt a minimalist style and write within myself, because I think that sort of writing is more popular; but it would not have the same therapeutic effect, nor would it have any artistic appeal to me. I think my writing is every bit as masculine as a plainer style, because it's honest.


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## dale (Apr 2, 2016)

Patrick said:


> The irony is it's often spouted by those who are incredibly pretentious about their own chosen brand of literature. I would say since Hemingway and his famous truculent attitude towards ornamental writing, people who believe in his school of writing have been consistently hostile towards prose stylists who experiment in other styles. Hemingway himself acknowledged just how great a writer Joyce was, even though he was his exact opposite. I think they admired one another quite a lot because of how different they were to each other.
> 
> I've been called pretentious before, but the reality is I don't hold back on the page. I will do whatever I have to to express the maelstrom that's often going on inside my head and in my heart. If I had the intention of impressing, I'd adopt a minimalist style and write within myself, because I think that sort of writing is more popular; but it would not have the same therapeutic effect, nor would it have any artistic appeal to me. I think my writing is every bit as masculine as a plainer style, because it's honest.



yeah. i think sometimes people think that simply trying to be better or even being better is "pretentious". 
and i really hate this attitude within society today. it's like this mentality that the exceptional should "dumb itself
down" for the sake of this illusion of "equality". i can't stand it.


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## voltigeur (Apr 2, 2016)

I always thought that for a story to become literature it had to stand the test of time. To speak to several generations. 

Under that definition all we can do is write the best stories we can, and maybe; after we are dead, our stuff will be recognized as literature. 

Shakespeare didn't set out to write timeless classical plays. He was trying to make money in the 15 hundreds! I'm sure if he somehow saw that his plays are still being done he would be more surprised than anyone.

I think that it is more than arrogant to say "I write literature." It's kind of jumping the gun?


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## escorial (Apr 2, 2016)

shakey making filthy luker...i have to like that pov...volt...cool man


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## LeX_Domina (Apr 2, 2016)

truth

if you wanna get all artsy? write a movie.

that's how it works now


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 3, 2016)

I've thought of a million comments I want to make, always crashing on ppsage's prescient comment that "serious literature" is hard to define. But Patrick mentioned Milton. No one writes like that, because it's hard to read -- we can do better nowadays. I can easily say the same of Shakespeare, Hawthorne, and Dickens.

If serious means making an important impact on people's lives, the book _Speak _is very well-read. If serious means having an important topic, working on it for years, and then writing brilliantly, _The Fault in Our Stars_ was very successful. If serious means trying to have an impact on how we govern the world, _Inferno _apparently had the top sales of 2013.

If serious means trying to write in some new way that is not as good as current methods but might develop into something better -- right, small market.

If serious means something else -- what?


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## escorial (Apr 3, 2016)

i would define serious work as writing used by academics to be used in teaching the art of writing.....books that have sold loads and stood the test of time..it's so subjective me thinks......


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## Patrick (Apr 3, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> But Patrick mentioned *Milton*. No one writes like that, because it's hard to read -- *we can do better nowadays. I can easily say the same of Shakespeare, Hawthorne, and Dickens.*



No we can't, and no you can't.

The problem with modern liberalism is that it is regressive, and this extends to its influence on the arts. We have a bunch of trendies telling us what is and isn't acceptable, but it's all intellectually bankrupt. If something is going to surpass Milton and Shakespeare, it's going to be written by somebody who is at least their equal intellectually. In other words, it''s going to be written by a brilliant writer who is streets ahead of other contemporary popular authors.

To me, these comments are like undergraduate art students saying their post post post postmodernist art is better than Constable, Turner, and Monet. I think these are masters who are not bettered by every modern art graduate because they paint in a particular style. The same thing is true of history's greatest writers. You are not better than Shakespeare because you know what minimalism is.


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## Plasticweld (Apr 3, 2016)

Patrick, you are brilliant for explaining the obvious. 




Patrick said:


> No we can't, and no you can't.
> 
> The problem with modern liberalism is that it is regressive, and this extends to its influence on the arts. We have a bunch of trendies telling us what is and isn't acceptable, but it's all intellectually bankrupt. If something is going to surpass Milton and Shakespeare, it's going to be written by somebody who is at least their equal intellectually. In other words, it''s going to be written by a brilliant writer who is streets ahead of other contemporary popular authors.
> 
> To me, these comments are like undergraduate art students saying their post post post postmodernist art is better than Constable, Turner, and Monet. I think these are masters who are not bettered by every modern art graduate because they paint in a particular style. The same thing is true of history's greatest writers. You are not better than Shakespeare because you know what minimalism is.


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## Patrick (Apr 3, 2016)

Plasticweld said:


> Patrick, you are brilliant for explaining the obvious.



It drags me up to about average, at least.


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 3, 2016)

Patrick said:


> No we can't, and no you can't.
> 
> The problem with modern liberalism is . . . .



I don't know what modern liberalism is.

I think I can.



> Hawthorne: The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates.



This is too grammatically difficult. It's, in a way, an amazing achievement -- but if you want to reach people, you can't write sentences like this. We have learned to write better.

Also, for superficial reasons old works are not good examples. The above has too many commas, in the wrong places, to be a good example for students; Milton, like authors up to Bronte, use capital letters in an old-fashioned way; the use of exclamation marks has changed, as has semicolons.


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## Olly Buckle (Apr 3, 2016)

We have learned to write differently, Emma; and the way we write suits our modern ways of thinking and speaking, that does not make it 'better'. The way they wrote was suited to their society, and in many cases is still very impressive today. I am unsure how many of today's writers will be considered worthy of study in 4-500 years like Shakespeare is; Tim Rice's musical 'librettos'? Woody Allen's comedy scripts? Really?


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## LeeC (Apr 3, 2016)

Having reached a point in life, realizing how little I/we actually understand in our subjective cocoons, I see mostly opining. Thus it's heartening to see others with a tenuous grasp on the obvious. 

My own opinion is that is that Patrick is on a valid path, though maybe not as some would interpret his comments (which is my point in responding). 



Patrick said:


> The problem with modern liberalism is that it is regressive, and this extends to its influence on the arts.



But, I wouldn't call it modern, or liberalism, as we humans have been "subjectively discriminating" since creating pictures on cave walls. What is "modern" is that we've mainstreamed the perspectives in our societal institutions, and as there are differing cultures and societies there are differing camps of agreement. 

Like teenagers alter their dress and speech to stand apart, we go around in generational circles. My wife detested having to read Mark Twain in school and doesn't like my writing. What is serious reading to me is Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, because it makes one think about our role in the natural (the real) world. At the same time, I enjoy Shakespeare (especially Macbeth) because of the writing skill, but more so because running through it is humankind's subjective folly. Thoreau comes to mind:

“Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, —
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows” 

So, what's "serious reading" is how each individual interprets it. A student required to read something when they'd rather be doing something else has one view. An educator trying to get across what they and their societal system deem beneficial is another set of views. Someone that wishes humankind were intelligent enough on the whole to look at themselves from the outside in is yet another view. 

So maybe all this opining is writing practice? 



Olly Buckle said:


> We have learned to write differently, Emma; and the way we write suits our modern ways of thinking and speaking, that does not make it 'better'. The way they wrote was suited to their society, and in many cases is still very impressive today. I am unsure how many of today's writers will be considered worthy of study in 4-500 years like Shakespeare is; Tim Rice's musical 'librettos'? Woody Allen's comedy scripts? Really?



I would say that Olly's words show the most insight.


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## Patrick (Apr 3, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> I don't know what modern liberalism is.
> 
> I think I can.
> 
> ...



Emma, the expectations of readers change over time. Could you write something more suited for modernity? Of course. But why do you think that is writing better? It's just such an odd thing to say. Our understanding of grammar wouldn't meet the expectations of Hawthorne's generation, and so we'd be lesser writers. 

That sentence by Hawthorne is not particularly difficult; it is only obscured to our modern eyes because of its archaic punctuation.


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## aj47 (Apr 3, 2016)

The whole point of writing is to communicate something from writer to reader.  This principle wasn't really embraced previously and *that* is a qualitative difference in writing that can make it better.  Is everything written today better than anything ever written in the past?  Of course not.  But understanding the medium is important to imparting the message.  And we have that understanding in ways that we haven't in the past.  And as time goes forward, that understanding will only improve.


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 3, 2016)

Patrick said:


> That sentence by Hawthorne is not particularly difficult; it is only obscured to our modern eyes because of its archaic punctuation.



Hawthorne's punctuation is grammatically flawless (except maybe for that last phrase). He just uses the comma every place it should go. As more recent authors (Fitzgerald?) have taught us, reading can become easier if we leave some of those commas out. So now they are "optional". I think that's an improvement, not a fad.

Or it's just how I like to think about punctuation and grammar. I think Dicken's wrote sentences that are easier to understand than Hawthorne's, even though people were used to Hawthorne. So it doesn't seem fair to Dicken's to call it just a different style.

Anyway, if Hawthorne wrote in an archaic style that the people of day can't understand or appreciate, which is what you kind of said, why should anyone read him?


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## Reichelina (Apr 3, 2016)

I can't understand some of the classics.-->if that is what you mean by serious lit. 
I have to read them 7,000 times before I get a sentence. 
I deserve to die. 


As per Olly, they are still worth reading so I might try once again. Wish me luck. 


(I perfectly understand KJV though.)


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## Olly Buckle (Apr 4, 2016)

Hawthorne was 1800's, the peak of heavy, proscriptive, punctuation, but that sentence is not particularly complicated. Reading about Pepys in the 1600's I came across a letter he wrote to a captain who had been seen in London when he should have been with his ship. There was a sentence there that was a page and a half long, complete with sub clauses and sub sub clauses in parenthesis. Sea captains were renowned for being the ignorant lower end of the upper class in those days, yet it is clear from his reply that this one understood the letter perfectly. 
Elizabethan dandies reserved seats on the edge of the stage at Shakespeare's comedies and swap banter about the puns and jokes, they got them all  right, it is just to modern ears they require explanation.
Dickens was read aloud to the illiterate in instalments and was tremendously popular, people lined the quayside in New York to get the earliest news as to whether Little Dorrit had died, he was perfectly accessible to people of his generation. It is my belief he actually wrote to be read aloud and the illiterate were his target audience, Today's illiterate would have problems sure, but I think it would be easier to make the case that the audience has dumbed down rather than the authors have wised up, not that I really believe that either. It is just that habits of thinking have changed, just as everything always does change


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## ppsage (Apr 4, 2016)

I think a book like Rushdie's _Shalimar,_ which is as serious as a full-sized-lego-four-by-four at 3.15 AM on the top landing of the stairs, is a fairly contemporary equivalent to what people think of as the classics. It still takes careful reading, but the images and the lingo and the allusions are modern and most anybody can get them and so the humor and the excitement and the head-swirling mind-blows which mark classic long-fiction are a lot more accessible. It is in _Gutenberg's Galaxy_, I think right at the beginning, where McLuhan talks about Shakespeare commenting on the debilitating effects of the Elizabethan print-media revolution. If I remember right the passages are from Othello. Something very akin, topically, to what DFW does so often in _Infinite Jest, _another serious book that's not written archaically. And while it's doubtless truth that the books of Rushdie and Wallace have only been read by significantly less than a majority, they are still definitely successful commercially, by any measure.


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## dale (Apr 4, 2016)

LeX_Domina said:


> truth
> 
> if you wanna get all artsy? write a movie.
> 
> that's how it works now


that was a joke, right?


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## dale (Apr 4, 2016)

Patrick said:


> No we can't, and no you can't.
> 
> The problem with modern liberalism is that it is regressive, and this extends to its influence on the arts. We have a bunch of trendies telling us what is and isn't acceptable, but it's all intellectually bankrupt. If something is going to surpass Milton and Shakespeare, it's going to be written by somebody who is at least their equal intellectually. In other words, it''s going to be written by a brilliant writer who is streets ahead of other contemporary popular authors.
> 
> To me, these comments are like undergraduate art students saying their post post post postmodernist art is better than Constable, Turner, and Monet. I think these are masters who are not bettered by every modern art graduate because they paint in a particular style. The same thing is true of history's greatest writers. You are not better than Shakespeare because you know what minimalism is.



"modern liberalism" is all about abstraction. they love abstraction. they want to turn everything meaningful 
into the meaningless. that seems to be the only priority of the idiotic ideology. and this has everything to 
do with their perception of art and literature. they will dumb anything down they can. they will call the art
of literature "pretentious", simply to elevate crap writing. this is the perverted mind of the "modern liberal".


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## Kevin (Apr 4, 2016)

> And while it's doubtless truth that the books of Rushdie and Wallace have only been read by significantly less than a majority, they are still definitely successful commercially, by any measure.


That's sort of... hopeful. So I don't _have to_ write something Suzie Pop-tart. Yeah. I hope you're right, even if I never.


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## Kevin (Apr 4, 2016)

> if you wanna get all artsy? write a movie.
> 
> that's how it works now





> that was a joke, right?


That thought has occurred to me, considering 'maximum exposure' and Today's relative illiteracy . Nothing is simple, though. No guarantees on returns. The opposite, statistically.


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 4, 2016)

ppsage said:


> I think a book like Rushdie's _Shalimar,_ which is as serious as a full-sized-lego-four-by-four at 3.15 AM on the top landing of the stairs, is a fairly contemporary equivalent to what people think of as the classics. It still takes careful reading, but the images and the lingo and the allusions are modern and most anybody can get them and so the humor and the excitement and the head-swirling mind-blows which mark classic long-fiction are a lot more accessible....



When I start reading Shalimar, I see an author trying to impress me. Subjective?



> She presented herself as disciplined, groomed, nuanced, inward, irreligious, understated, calm.



That's a more complicated character than I ever had!

It is also a tell, maybe the largest one I have ever seen. It is also too much for the reader to remember. No serious writer writes this way.

In her first short interaction - one lewd comment in front of all of her neighbors -- she comes across as open, forward, brash, fearless, and playful. That's not a good fit, right? I lose confidence in the author. That's appropriate, right?



> This is what loss was, what death was: an escape into the luminous wave-forms, into the ineffable speed of the light-years and the parsecs, the eternally receding distances of the cosmos.



That's everything you say: a head swirling mind-blow. I cannot write like that. His verbal fluency is _incredible_. It even sounds profound at first.

It seems wrong. I don't think it was a good faith effort to describe what loss was like., it was just . . . aimless verbal fluency trying to look impressive?

Response? I am glad to hear different.


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## LeeC (Apr 4, 2016)

To tell the truth Emma I've never read Rushdie, but I see nothing wrong with your reaction. We all have varying reactions to different writers, and it suffices to agree to disagree. Not that I totally disagree with you, being more of a minimalist writer that kind of writing would bore me to death. 

What caught my eye in the AS was your seeming negative mention of "tell" which is a red flag to me. Seeing the whole of your comment though, calmed my blood pressure. I dislike how the societal establishment is always redefining what's best, like a bunch of teenagers establishing their own space. A writer I enjoy is Willem Lange, who has a 99.9% tell style, not to mention V. S. Naipaul's writing (a balanced mix) which in its simplicity is "serious" reading to me. I'll bet there's more than a few that would complain at having to read Miguel Street. 

What it boils down to is "serious" reading, or otherwise, is in the beholder's eye. I've had a number of people get back to me with how much they enjoyed my book, but for the most part there is apathy and even a little distain as I'm over the hill relative to the bulk of today's readership. 

One thing I've noticed in getting back to the people world is how we dawdle away time on the inconsequential ;-)

"_Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?_" ~ T. S. Eliot, The Rock, 1934


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## Bishop (Apr 4, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> When I start reading Shalimar, I see an author trying to impress me. Subjective?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That's a bold claim when speaking about one of the most celebrated authors of modern times. Similarly bold is saying that tells like that are somethings no "serious" writer would do. That's categorically incorrect. He's telling us how she presents herself, creating an overall image of what this character is trying to project. This tells us a lot more than just what the text is saying. More than anything, it tells us she intentionally presents herself a certain way, and in that way is possibly false about herself to others. That is more telling than the rest of the sentence.

One other thing--those adjectives all bleed together. It's not at all that much to remember; it presents a character who projects a straight, clean demeanor, but might not necessarily be like that in reality. We as the readers are meant to read more to find out more about the character.

Another thing to remember: there is no wrong or right. There's no "serious" method and "unserious" method. There's only writing, and everyone does it differently. I'd urge you to try to not look at writing so objectively. Just because a style doesn't work for you, doesn't mean it's wrong. I hate Nathaniel Hawthorne, but he didn't write "wrongly". He just wrote (timelessly) in a style I abhor. That's all there is to it.


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## LeX_Domina (Apr 4, 2016)

yes and no.

yes,in that it was a troll moment and no as in with today's various forms of mass media and the publishing industries being all about money like everything else.Often literary fiction becomes literary when it stands the test of time aka when _you_ the author actually dies.There is also the fact that there is a high chance it will be a movie...how many times was the great gatsby made a movie? fight club? dorian gray? a clockwork orange, cloud atlas,the color purple,beloved ,the diary of anne frank ,etc.I personally do NOT believe this to be true,but there is a certain cultural climate that dictates this.


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## Newman (Apr 5, 2016)

blazeofglory said:


> A piece of literature or also art is generally targeted at a few selected readers, written in their interests  based on their educational level with their class or genres in focus. It seems it is undemocratic. This is an aristocratic attitude.  The very foundation is shakily pillared and a time will come the target group or the cohort  in focus will be a lost generation. For the taste has changed. Post modernism, metanarrative, deconstructionism are some of the catchwords losing sheen in this age of the smart  phone or the internet. The serious reader these serious writers looking for is nowhere available, if any one in a thousand.  Writing for the mass or writing for the class is the motto?
> The flavor is  changing and the serious writer failing to flow with the stream of the new is playing a losing game



There are serious themes underlying pop culture stories.

It's a mistake to think that it's not "serious writing."

IMO


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## Patrick (Apr 5, 2016)

I sometimes wonder what I can get away with before I say it (sometimes), but I usually just go ahead anyway. I am not a fan of Rushdie; I think he's an average thinker who is incredibly overrated. Telling is a problem in Rushdie's writing. He waffles on and on for page after page of semi-literate metaphor about characters I don't care about. He does it every single time. He really writes very badly.

I agree that the list by Rushdie is a wasted sentence. There is a fundamental problem with the idea that somebody can present themselves as anything at all; this is not what real life is like. It's flawed because it isn't what people are like in real life; in real life people are just trying to hide things they're insecure about.

This next one is much worse. It's Rushdie showing off that he knows something about science, which is absolutely fine in itself, but the concept is fraught with difficulties.

_This is what loss was, what death was: an escape into the luminous wave-forms, into the ineffable speed of the light-years and the parsecs, the eternally receding distances of the cosmos._

An escape into the luminous wave-forms would determine that we're moving at the speed of light, and so the ineffable speed of the light years is not in fact ineffable here because you've just managed to transport us (mentally) to that very place. Why even attempt the metaphor if you believe it's ineffable? Again, you can see Rushdie's thought process running throughout this sentence. This is how it went: the unconsciousness of space is a good metaphor for death. Something about the distances of space expressed as lightyears so we can include that word parsecs, and if the reader is imagining moving as a luminous wave-form (we don't want to repeat 'light'), it could be as though everything were moving away from them as they shrink into all that black receding space. And because intelligent readers know that time is the measure of interactions between objects, it would now seem as though no time were passing at all.

And this next one is certainly the worst, vomit-inducingly bad. Why in the world am I imagining this guy as a rainbow-emitting phantom?
_
She saw him fracture into rainbow colours through the prism of her love.


_


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## InstituteMan (Apr 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> I agree that the list by Rushdie is a wasted sentence. There is a fundamental problem with the idea that somebody can present themselves as anything at all; this is not what real life is like. It's flawed because it isn't what people are like in real life; in real life people are just trying to hide things they're insecure about.



To be fair to Rushdie, and with the confession that I haven't read the book, I took the list of of how "she presented herself" as an indication that the character was flawed because she was trying to pretend to be something she wasn't and--given the traits listed--could never be. I also took her as a bit vain ("groomed") and a faux intellectual.

That may be a lot to read into one sentence. I have no idea if my reading of it is what Rushdie intended or how it has been taken, but I don't think a clumsy sentence expressing a conflicted bit of intent by a character is necessarily flawed.

I don't know if the possible depth and variance of analysis is what distinguishes "serious" literature from other writing, but the only useful distinction I can think of that serious literature (as I define it) must possess is some kind of nuance or subtext or higher meaning. Of course, lots of writers try to execute those objectives, and whether or not they succeed is in the eye and mind of the reader.


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## LeX_Domina (Apr 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> .
> 
> And this next one is certainly the worst, vomit-inducingly bad. Why in the world am I imagining this guy as a rainbow-emitting phantom?
> _
> ...



My God...that was published?! wtf...oh god no.See,I read my fiction out loud before I even move forward.That was  painful


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## Patrick (Apr 5, 2016)

InstituteMan said:


> To be fair to Rushdie, and with the confession that I haven't read the book, I took the list of of how "she presented herself" as an indication that the character was flawed because she was trying to pretend to be something she wasn't and--given the traits listed--could never be. I also took her as a bit vain ("groomed") and a faux intellectual.



And therefore it has no real insight. Who doesn't want to be disciplined, groomed, etc? And why would we be critical of somebody else who aspired to that?


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## InstituteMan (Apr 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> And therefore it has no real insight. Who doesn't want to be disciplined, groomed, etc? And why would we be critical of somebody else who aspired to that?



A large portion of the population cares not a fig for being any of those things. I'm related to a good number of them.


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## Patrick (Apr 5, 2016)

InstituteMan said:


> A large portion of the population cares not a fig for being any of those things. I'm related to a good number of them.



There are more important things in life, but we all know that being disciplined is better than undisciplined, and so on. How much energy we're willing to invest will differ from person to person.


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## aj47 (Apr 5, 2016)

Throughout the majority of history, literature has only been accessible to a few.  While the written word goes back thousands of years, public education is only a few hundred years old, and not even universal today. When and where most of the populace cannot read, the target market for authors is the highly educated stratum of society.  That market will be written for.  I think this is what people are referring to as literature--works targeted for that specialized audience.  And by that definition, literature always has been and always will be for a small subset of society.


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## Bishop (Apr 5, 2016)

Patrick said:


> And therefore it has no real insight. Who doesn't want to be disciplined, groomed, etc? And why would we be critical of somebody else who aspired to that?



Many, many people, in fact. And the list of adjectives being that long for this particular character gives the idea she puts a lot of effort and thought into presenting herself that way.



Patrick said:


> There are more important things in life, but we all know that being disciplined is better than undisciplined, and so on. How much energy we're willing to invest will differ from person to person.



There may be more important things in life _to you_. Being disciplined is better than undisciplined in _your _mind. The character clearly differs from you. And many, many people also think that being undisciplined is better than disciplined--or at the very least the thought of either doesn't enter their mind. Projecting onto the characters is precisely why this sentence exists: so you understand how she differs from the invisible "norm". Or in the case of some characters, doesn't differ.

Coming across as disciplined might be one of the most important things in her life. The most important thing in my mother-in-law's life is making sure everyone knows she's wealthy. She does everything to point out that her house is large, she lives in a great neighborhood, her children went to the finest schools, blah blah blah... I don't care about it. I think there's a lot more important things in life. But that's why we're two different people.

So no, I don't think it's a wasted sentence. It is telling of the character. Does it tell us more than we need to know? Maybe--I've not read the book, so I can't say. But it does still serve a purpose. Also, not all writing has to be incredibly dense. Many readers like a little extra flavor on the characters that might not be necessary to plot or theme. Trust me, I'm one of them. And while the opinion of a pop-piece-sci-fi-space-opera jockey might not mean much, I'd like to think I'm not alone.


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## Patrick (Apr 5, 2016)

Bishop said:


> Many, many people, in fact. And the list of adjectives being that long for this particular character gives the idea she puts a lot of effort and thought into presenting herself that way.
> 
> There may be more important things in life _to you_. Being disciplined is better than undisciplined in _your _mind. The character clearly differs from you. And many, many people also think that being undisciplined is better than disciplined--or at the very least the thought of either doesn't enter their mind. Projecting onto the characters is precisely why this sentence exists: so you understand how she differs from the invisible "norm". Or in the case of some characters, doesn't differ.
> 
> ...



It's a wasted sentence because I read and think, so what? She's presumably going to show these traits as the story unfolds, so we don't need these things to adumbrate her character.

It's scaffolding in his thinking that should have been removed once the edifice was built.

And no, there are definitely more important things in life; you can't be a good writer if you don't accept that, because the higher things are essential to meaningful literature. In fact, you demonstrate you do know, but you just want to make it subjective again. A self-defeating exercise.

What I want to know as a writer and a reader is why is this person's life so empty that they view these temporal, insignificant things as so important. That's where the real insight is, not just telling me here's this character, she cares about her appearance; she likes to be seen as cool rather than emotional, and so on. Zzzzz. I don't need to be told that because the character (who can never be reduced to a list of cliches) should emerge through the text the more I read. Instead, all I get is Salman Rushdie going through his abattoir of stylistic story killing, and there's no sense of an attempt to make this character interesting to another human being.


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## ppsage (Apr 5, 2016)

Crest-fallen, Shalimar the Clown becomes one of the original Muslim terrorists spawned in Kashmir, contesting with the Indians. He had fallen in impossible love with this Hindu girl everyone thinks is so vapid from an introductory eleven words. In desperation, she turns to an Alsatian underground hero of WWII who's now a wealthy U. S. diplomat who gets her to Hollywood where Shalimar's awful revenge eventually plays out. The book is divided in three for Hollywood, WWII  France and Kashmir. To judge it, on the basis of one, out-of-context, phrase, without insight, is the single greatest dis-service to serious literature I've been privileged to witness at this site. Try as we might, I don't see how it can ever be topped.


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## Patrick (Apr 5, 2016)

ppsage said:


> Crest-fallen, Shalimar the Clown becomes one of the original Muslim terrorists spawned in Kashmir, contesting with the Indians. He had fallen in impossible love with this Hindu girl everyone thinks is so vapid from an introductory eleven words. In desperation, she turns to an Alsatian underground hero of WWII who's now a wealthy U. S. diplomat who gets her to Hollywood where Shalimar's awful revenge eventually plays out. The book is divided in three for Hollywood, WWII  France and Kashmir. To judge it, on the basis of one, out-of-context, phrase, without insight, is the single greatest dis-service to serious literature I've been privileged to witness at this site. Try as we might, I don't see how it can ever be topped.



I'd still read it, tearing it apart however I wanted to, and then I'd pronounce judgement after some considerable thought. Don't mistake my frankness for closed mindedness. I've changed my mind about far too many things to ever be accused of that.

My opinion of his narrative style is not based on one or two sentences, and my criticism of those sentences will stand regardless of what I think of the rest of his writing. All of that being said, I could still enjoy the novel. I might read it one day, and if I find it as substantial as you claim, I'll have no problem hailing it a great piece of literature. It does sound like a very good concept.


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## InstituteMan (Apr 5, 2016)

Given how Rushdie has driven us to discussing the human condition, I guess his work qualifies as serious literature.

Maybe that's the criterion I have been groping for.


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 5, 2016)

InstituteMan said:


> To be fair to Rushdie, and with the confession that I haven't read the book, I took the list of of how "she presented herself" as an indication that the character was flawed because she was trying to pretend to be something she wasn't and--given the traits listed--could never be. I also took her as a bit vain ("groomed") and a faux intellectual.
> 
> That may be a lot to read into one sentence. I have no idea if my reading of it is what Rushdie intended or how it has been taken, but I don't think a clumsy sentence expressing a conflicted bit of intent by a character is necessarily flawed.


It seems like you are being too generous. I doubt Rushdie would attempt anything as simple or straightforward (or consistent) as what you describe.

I think, as written, it describes how she actually does present herself to others. It just doesn't fit a few pages later.

What she would like to be able to do is ask an almost total stranger in the elevator with her if he has done some crude sexual act, which I won't mention because it's too crude but it would be with another male. So her behavior is lewd, and she would like to be worse.

ppsage is right, don't judge the book on this. Read the start and then tell me anything Patrick said was wrong. Patrick didn't acknowledge the beauty of those phrases and the verbal fluency, he focused on the lack of meaning.


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## InstituteMan (Apr 5, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> It seems like you are being too generous. I doubt Rushdie would attempt anything as simple or straightforward (or consistent) as what you describe.



Could be. Such is the perils of critiquing a single sentence out of a novel.

That said, I do think that if there is such a thing as "serious" literature, as compared to just literature, perhaps the distinction comes down to the former stirring up conversations about the human condition (hopefully at the same time as entertaining the reader) while the former sticks to the entertaining. If that is the distinction, I don't think serious literature is for a select few to either read or write.


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## ppsage (Apr 5, 2016)

How Boonyi came to be the ironical and perverse person to whom Rushdie introduces us in the opening assassination section is very much at the heart of the novel. She starts out sweeter than butterflies, back in Kashmir. Much of the charm of _Shalimar_ lies in the miraculous character development he produces for the three protagonists, which only magnifies the intense action of an imaginative plot.

In my opinion, Rushdie has so far written two great novels, _Shalimar the Clown_ and _The Ground Beneath her Feet._ I'd say the fatwa unfortunately focused attention on one of his poorer efforts. Like Faulkner, it took him a while to get his story-telling skills up front. Like every serious novelist in English since Lawrence, the difficulty of justifying any meaning in modern life underlies his work thematically. But Rushdie is just an iceberg tip of contemporary, serious, long-fiction writers who are commercially successful. Richard Russo and John Irving seem to me to be today's equivalent of such prolific, classic, every-man authors as Dickens or Honorè de Balzac.


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 5, 2016)

InstituteMan said:


> Could be. Such is the perils of critiquing a single sentence out of a novel.
> 
> That said, I do think that if there is such a thing as "serious" literature, as compared to just literature, perhaps the distinction comes down to the former stirring up conversations about the human condition (hopefully at the same time as entertaining the reader) while the former sticks to the entertaining. If that is the distinction, I don't think serious literature is for a select few to either read or write.



Page 9 of Shalimar a character comes onstage and does a long monologue about her life and her philosophy of life. Example: (She had two husbands die.) "In my life men were like shoes. I had two of them and they both wore out. After than I learned to say you could go barefoot."

Is that count as speaking to the human condition? Everyone here could choose a random place in their WIP and have a character do that.

BTW, one of her husbands died in a war.


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## InstituteMan (Apr 5, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> Page 9 of Shalimar a character comes onstage and does a long monologue about her life and her philosophy of life. Example: (She had two husbands die.) "In my life men were like shoes. I had two of them and they both wore out. After than I learned to say you could go barefoot."
> 
> Is that count as speaking to the human condition? Everyone here could choose a random place in their WIP and have a character do that.
> 
> BTW, one of her husbands died in a war.



That's least a little clever, and definitely a comment on the human condition.


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## ppsage (Apr 5, 2016)

The role of the immigrant and their communities is important in all Rushdie's work (how could it be otherwise, if he's serious, given his experience?) and especially vital to the development of the story in _Shalimar_ and the introduction of this by the babushkas is not only timely and memorable, and, for many of us at least, evocative of the coming wartime European setting, but it's also positively hilarious to boot.


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 5, 2016)

ppsage said:


> The role of the immigrant and their communities is important in all Rushdie's work (how could it be otherwise, if he's serious, given his experience?) and especially vital to the development of the story in _Shalimar_ and the introduction of this by the babushkas is not only timely and memorable, and, for many of us at least, evocative of the coming wartime European setting, but it's also positively hilarious to boot.



Ah, I missed the humor completely. So her words were supposed to ironical and not speaking to the human condition? That would explain her describing a husband who died in the war as wearing out.

ppsage (or anyone), do you understand the vigorous changes in topic mid paragraph in the first section? I am very interested in how and why an author would do that for good effect.

Is he trying to portray the main character there as schizophrenic? Or maybe he is showing he's experimental and making the reading more of an interesting puzzle for the reader to solve. For example, one paragraph starts out talking about who she sleeps with, then has a description of her fathers assassination, then discusses the weather where she lives.


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## ppsage (Apr 5, 2016)

> ppsage (or anyone), do you understand... Is he trying to portray the main character there as schizophrenic? Or maybe he...



I'm not going to look but I highly doubt Rushdie much controls his language so coldly calculatingly as these specific take-away-interpretations suggest. I rather always supposed that he's just using a well honed, serious and studiously researched ear to tell his story in a way that sounds good to him. I can easily imagine him suggesting that so much deliberation about effect would impede rather than enhance his work. I rather suspect that a majority of serious authors would suggest thus, that, being prepared to write, they concentrate on voice and what feels proper.


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## Bishop (Apr 6, 2016)

Patrick said:


> And no, there are definitely more important things in life; you can't be a good writer if you don't accept that, because the higher things are essential to meaningful literature. In fact, you demonstrate you do know, but you just want to make it subjective again. A self-defeating exercise.



Again, to some people there are not. For many people, personal vanity is everything. Saying "there are more important things in life" is a generalization. It's like telling a starving child not to steal bread because it's more important to be a good person. The child doesn't give a leaping lizard, he just wants to eat. Sure, it may be true that stealing is wrong, but that character has a very different sense of morality and, obviously necessity. If a writer cannot understand that characters will have very different and complex motivations, moral compasses, priorities, etc., I worry that said writer will have dull, same-y characters with repetitious and uninteresting conflicts. Saying "there are more important things in life" about anything is a projection of your own priorities onto another person. 

One of the most important things in my life is having up-to-date computer equipment in my home. My wife begs to differ. That's a source of conflict in our marriage, a part of our story as a couple. If I had identical priorities as her, identical hierarchical structures for what's "important in life", our marriage would be conflict free, boring, probably even Stepfordian, if I can be so bold as to invent the term. No one would want to read it. But the story about the I.T. nerd with an obsession for computer gear marrying the school teacher Luddite with an obsession for paper books? That's actually kind of interesting. The clash of worlds, the opposites attract mentality... there's something there, I think.

So maybe, being unable to accept the idea that there's "more important things in life" makes me a bad writer. So be it. I'd rather be a bad writer with an interesting story than a good writer with a snore tale. Maybe my literature's not meaningful; that's fine, I'm not here to impress others. I am incredibly selfish as a writer. I have no overt drive to become published, no real necessity to have others read my books (with the exception of the purpose of beta reading, to improve my skills). I do this simply because I enjoy it, and I only write what I would want to read. In my case, that involves a lot of naked aliens and laser guns.

I suppose that's the key difference: at the end of the day, I could care less about literature. I have an English degree with a concentration in British Literature, and wrote an eighty page essay and novella as a capstone to that degree. It was, in the most boring sense of the term, literature. I abhor it, despite it receiving high praise from my university's evaluating faculty. When my personal reading shifted away from literary authors long dead and shifted to poppy authors, I found myself enjoying reading. I love pulp sci-fi, I love Harry Harrison and Robert Heinlein, I love Stephen King. It's more real to me. And, I think, to millions of others.

On the topic of this thread: serious literature is not for the select few for some intentional reason. It's for the select few because only a select few care about it. It fails to connect with a majority of readers, in an already dwindling art form. In my experience, what the writer's trying to say comes across to readers more clearly using what is often derided as a "pop" format. Say what you will about Harry Potter, the story is timeless and brought its themes to multiple generations of readers, crossing borders of age, culture, and even prompting people who never read books before to actually read. That's the power of "pop". Admittedly, for every Harry Potter, there's a Twilight, and for every Stephen King, there's a dozen E.L. James... but good, substantive popular literature has far more power to shape our current culture than any of the old dead white guys they force high school students to read. The themes within many of those novels are timeless, no doubt. But the cultures around them, within the literature, are alien to readers and difficult to understand for many. If a writer were looking for a way to spread a message, for real... writing with the same language and style as many of these old dead white men is going to fail to connect to a majority of today's audiences. And while I understand that audiences might mean little--hell, I don't even care much to _have _an audience--someone trying to tell a story across our culture is going to have a hard time when they write a book that necessitates a collegiate reading level on the part of the audience.

Why? Because at the end of the day, people would rather go see The Lion King than Hamlet. They'd rather read Harry Potter than _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_. They'd rather read _IT_ than _Frankenstein_. It speaks their language, on their level, within their culture, despite often having the same thematic presence. Do I think one is superior to the other? Honestly, no. Writing is writing, its value inherently comes from the reader. But does one version reach more readers? You bet. 



Patrick said:


> What I want to know as a writer and a reader is why is this person's life so empty that they view these temporal, insignificant things as so important.



At the very least, I'd say he titillated you into considering that. Sure, he might show her as disciplined and posh, but without this sentence, you as a reader might have thought that's how she is. With it, you know she's being false.


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## Terry D (Apr 6, 2016)

^ Very well said, Bish.


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## Patrick (Apr 6, 2016)

Bishop said:


> Again, to some people there are not. For many people, personal vanity is everything. Saying "there are more important things in life" is a generalization. It's like telling a starving child not to steal bread because it's more important to be a good person. The child doesn't give a leaping lizard, he just wants to eat. Sure, it may be true that stealing is wrong, but that character has a very different sense of morality and, obviously necessity. If a writer cannot understand that characters will have very different and complex motivations, moral compasses, priorities, etc., I worry that said writer will have dull, same-y characters with repetitious and uninteresting conflicts. Saying "there are more important things in life" about anything is a projection of your own priorities onto another person.



I think you missed the point, quite honestly. I have not once said all people share the same values in life, but that there are more important things in life than a person's vanity is objectively true. Your example of a a starving child demonstrates that feeding ourselves is more important than the colour of one's clothing, length of one's hair, etc. What else is more important? Love certainly. The fact somebody can have a skewed understanding of what is important in life does not make everything subjective; it just means they're wrong. As a writer, you better believe I am going to analyse what it is and what it was that led to that person being so superficial. That's where indight comes into play.



> One of the most important things in my life is having up-to-date computer equipment in my home. My wife begs to differ. That's a source of conflict in our marriage, a part of our story as a couple. If I had identical priorities as her, identical hierarchical structures for what's "important in life", our marriage would be conflict free, boring, probably even Stepfordian, if I can be so bold as to invent the term. No one would want to read it. But the story about the I.T. nerd with an obsession for computer gear marrying the school teacher Luddite with an obsession for paper books? That's actually kind of interesting. The clash of worlds, the opposites attract mentality... there's something there, I think.



OK, but I don't see what argument you're trying to make here. I can accept all of that.



> So maybe, being unable to accept the idea that there's "more important things in life" makes me a bad writer. So be it. I'd rather be a bad writer with an interesting story than a good writer with a snore tale. Maybe my literature's not meaningful; that's fine, I'm not here to impress others. I am incredibly selfish as a writer. I have no overt drive to become published, no real necessity to have others read my books (with the exception of the purpose of beta reading, to improve my skills). I do this simply because I enjoy it, and I only write what I would want to read. In my case, that involves a lot of naked aliens and laser guns.



Because you value technology does not mean you don't have an appreciation for the higher things. I don't know whether you do or not, but I feel fairly safe in assuming you do. There's nothing wrong with writing popular fiction. I too write what I like to read.



> I suppose that's the key difference: at the end of the day, I could care less about literature. I have an English degree with a concentration in British Literature, and wrote an eighty page essay and novella as a capstone to that degree. It was, in the most boring sense of the term, literature. I abhor it, despite it receiving high praise from my university's evaluating faculty. When my personal reading shifted away from literary authors long dead and shifted to poppy authors, I found myself enjoying reading. I love pulp sci-fi, I love Harry Harrison and Robert Heinlein, I love Stephen King. It's more real to me. And, I think, to millions of others.



It's up to you, isn't it? I can read commercial and literary fiction with no sense of resentment.



> On the topic of this thread: serious literature is not for the select few for some intentional reason. It's for the select few because only a select few care about it. It fails to connect with a majority of readers, in an already dwindling art form. In my experience, what the writer's trying to say comes across to readers more clearly using what is often derided as a "pop" format. Say what you will about Harry Potter, the story is timeless and brought its themes to multiple generations of readers, crossing borders of age, culture, and even prompting people who never read books before to actually read. That's the power of "pop". Admittedly, for every Harry Potter, there's a Twilight, and for every Stephen King, there's a dozen E.L. James... but good, substantive popular literature has far more power to shape our current culture than any of the old dead white guys they force high school students to read. The themes within many of those novels are timeless, no doubt. But the cultures around them, within the literature, are alien to readers and difficult to understand for many. If a writer were looking for a way to spread a message, for real... writing with the same language and style as many of these old dead white men is going to fail to connect to a majority of today's audiences. And while I understand that audiences might mean little--hell, I don't even care much to _have _an audience--someone trying to tell a story across our culture is going to have a hard time when they write a book that necessitates a collegiate reading level on the part of the audience.



I enjoy authors with large and small vocabularies. Again, I have no problem with Harry Potter and lots of other commercial fiction.



> Why? Because at the end of the day, people would rather go see The Lion King than Hamlet. They'd rather read Harry Potter than _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_. They'd rather read _IT_ than _Frankenstein_. It speaks their language, on their level, within their culture, despite often having the same thematic presence. Do I think one is superior to the other? Honestly, no. Writing is writing, its value inherently comes from the reader. But does one version reach more readers? You bet.



So? People would rather go to a Britney Spears performance than listen to an orchestra. It doesn't really mean anything, since most aspiring singers aren't going to be Britney Spears, and most aspiring writers of commercial fiction aren't going to be Stephen King.



> At the very least, I'd say he titillated you into considering that. Sure, he might show her as disciplined and posh, but without this sentence, you as a reader might have thought that's how she is. With it, you know she's being false.



Not really, because I didn't think she was vain, or many of the things others suggested in this thread, by reading the first few pages. I just understood she was an attractive young woman who was aware of her own power over men and that she was also under a weight of expectation. That list of how she presented herself to others wasn't necessary.


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## Bishop (Apr 6, 2016)

Patrick said:


> I think you missed the point, quite honestly. I have not once said all people share the same values in life, but that there are more important things in life than a person's vanity is objectively true. Your example of a a starving child demonstrates that feeding ourselves is more important than the colour of one's clothing, length of one's hair, etc. What else is more important? Love certainly. *The fact somebody can have a skewed understanding of what is important in life does not make everything subjective; it just means they're wrong.* As a writer, you better believe I am going to analyse what it is and what it was that led to that person being so superficial. That's where indight comes into play.



It's only skewed because you believe it's skewed. To them, it might perfectly normal and perfectly right. Why is your viewpoint correct and theirs incorrect? I'm not saying don't analyze why they're like that--on the contrary, explore it as much as you can. But be careful when you cross the border from analyzing into judgement.



Patrick said:


> So? People would rather go to a Britney Spears performance than listen to an orchestra. It doesn't really mean anything, since most aspiring singers aren't going to be Britney Spears, and most aspiring writers of commercial fiction aren't going to be Stephen King.



My point is that Britney Spears has more cultural influence in 2016 than Mozart can ever hope to. Britney impacts more lives than Beethoven. Britney Spears is a name you knew. Without Google (or any other web research) can you name a major symphonic composer working today, and five of his compositions? I'd be surprised. But me, I hate Britney Spears and yet I can still name three of her songs (Toxic, Oops I Did It Again, and Baby One More Time, if you were curious). Spears will be in music textbooks five generations from now as a major artist in the "classical pop" movement. Futurama made the joke that Sirmixalot was going to become "classical music" in three thousand years. I'd argue it's sooner than that. It's the music that defines our culture--like it or not, just as King is one of the authors that defines our generation, like it or not.


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## Patrick (Apr 6, 2016)

Bishop said:


> My point is that Britney Spears has more cultural influence in 2016 than Mozart can ever hope to. Britney impacts more lives than Beethoven. Britney Spears is a name you knew. Without Google (or any other web research) can you name a major symphonic composer working today, and five of his compositions? I'd be surprised. But me, I hate Britney Spears and yet I can still name three of her songs (Toxic, Oops I Did It Again, and Baby One More Time, if you were curious). Spears will be in music textbooks five generations from now as a major artist in the "classical pop" movement. Futurama made the joke that Sirmixalot was going to become "classical music" in three thousand years. I'd argue it's sooner than that. It's the music that defines our culture--like it or not, just as King is one of the authors that defines our generation, like it or not.



As I said before, I have no axe to grind with commercial fiction. People should write what they feel inclined to because most aspiring writers of commercial fiction will not be a Stephen King. But somebody might have the ability to write literary fiction that gives them a smaller but very dedicated readership. It would be silly to sacrifice that by trying to emulate Stephen King. If you want to write commercial fiction, write it; if you want to write literary fiction, write it.

Anyway, Amy Winehouse was much more talented that Britney Spears. ;-)


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## ppsage (Apr 6, 2016)

If 'serious literature' is to be 'for the select few,' and if one's definition of 'serious literature' indicates Russo & Rushdie & Wallace & Irving and dozens of others of their ilk, then the number of people constituting a 'select few' will necessarily be millions because sales figures say so. That's all I'm sayin'. I think this audience will numerically stand up well against 'popular literature' if one takes into account that hardly anyone likes ALL of 'popular literature.' It's broken up into a dozen or more audiences any one of which the 'serious literature' audience might easily equal. It's not really reasonable to match figures for 'serious literature' against all the rest of fiction, when the latter is really composed of distinct readerships. I would match the 'serious literature' readership against the 'naked alien' readership any day. This is especially true when one gets around to conceding that there are 'serious' writers lurking in every genre. When I come out of the genre phone booth, I am SF man. Stephenson, Gibson, Herbert & Robinson, among scads of others, create serious literature equally with authors of more 'literary' repute. 

When I stop to think on it, I expect 'serious literature' will take over world domination ... as soon as it gets rid of cat videos.


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 6, 2016)

ppsage said:


> I'm not going to look but I highly doubt Rushdie much controls his language so coldly calculatingly as these specific take-away-interpretations suggest. I rather always supposed that he's just using a well honed, serious and studiously researched ear to tell his story in a way that sounds good to him. I can easily imagine him suggesting that so much deliberation about effect would impede rather than enhance his work. I rather suspect that a majority of serious authors would suggest thus, that, being prepared to write, they concentrate on voice and what feels proper.



Wouldn't a serious author invite thought about his or her works?

In any case, there has to be some explanation of why he changed topics so vigorously and consistently in the first section. Perhaps he was just being experimental and had no other reason except that?

People like to solve problems, as long as they are not too hard or too easy, and maybe Rushdie is setting out problems for readers to solve. That would explain a lot: the jumping around in time, telling the story in parts, complicated grammar, etc. I would be willing to credit Rushdie with being a master at that genre.


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 10, 2016)

_Shalimar the Clown_ ends with the trained assassin having worked his way into her bedroom; she is waiting with bow and arrow.

Literally, that is the ending.

Normally an ending like this would make me so angry. Not here. I did not care about the characters (perhaps because they were so implausible and inconsistent). Despite the fact that every other book makes me feel like the characters are real, this left me feeling like they were fiction characters. Perhaps because of the gaping plot holes and fantasy elements.

Those are the facts. My opinion, I think we writers do ourselves a disservice to let this be called serious literature.


edited: Sorry! Not facts. Just what I think almost everyone would agree on if they studied the book.


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## GotLost (Apr 10, 2016)

Bishop said:


> My point is that Britney Spears has more cultural influence in 2016 than Mozart can ever hope to. Britney impacts more lives than Beethoven. Britney Spears is a name you knew. ...  But me, I hate Britney Spears and yet I can still name three of her songs (Toxic, Oops I Did It Again, and Baby One More Time, if you were curious).



Subjective. Sociologists call this the herd mentality for a reason - because like herd animals people have an innate need to "belong". Even if something is utter crap or someone is utterly talentless as long as they have a following, particularly of the "right" people, then that thing or person becomes the next best thing to sliced bread. Read up on the lip balm issue a couple weeks ago - causes bleeding of the lips, etc. / there's even a lawsuit - yet goofballs will still buy the product because Miss. Dickie celeb promotes it. To the average person "cool" people like Spears, West, Bieber, etc. because simply put other herd-minded humans like them too. Such behaviour was coined a few years ago - celebs been called "false gods" because people, by nature, have to idolize something.

However, the modern generations are also been called culturally inadequate. Some are also calling it more than a little dumb. After all, one can't tell me a John Wayne movie or the book Jaws was meant for people sipping cognac by the fire and dining off caviar, however, compare one of his flicks to a modern Hollywood or Jaws to a modern best seller and I'd find watching paint dry more entertaining than something modern.

As for this - though I can name some composers [as family do listen] I also *couldn't* name a Spears song when she first came out and I can't name a single one now. I can't name a West song, a Bieber song, a Selena Gomez, or any modern "singer" if my life depended upon it. Couldn't careless. Fad music like this comes and goes. Forever replaced by whatever hyped up "singer" comes along next. They're a dime a dozen. "Talented" for a couple years - forgotten like smoke on the wind a few years later.

The same applies to fad writers. Minute they stop producing - poof, gone. Vanished. Smokey go bye bye. Their hype is now someone else's and only devoted followers stick with. 


Thing is, in 50 years _*very few *_will be talking about these sorts of "artists". Do you remember all the "pop" bands of the 70s, 80s, 90s? The bands / singers that were REALLY talented are remembered. Mozart died 225 years ago, he's STILL popular to some. Beethoven died 190 years, still popular. Dickens - 146 years, still popular. Poe - 167 years ago, still popular.


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## escorial (Apr 10, 2016)

often in the charity shop i will find charles dickens and  james joyce books..now they either sell all the time or the same books stay on the shelf..i can never make up my mind


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## Patrick (Apr 10, 2016)

GotLost said:


> Thing is, in 50 years _*very few *_will be talking about these sorts of "artists". Do you remember all the "pop" bands of the 70s, 80s, 90s? The bands / singers that were REALLY talented are remembered. Mozart died 225 years ago, he's STILL popular to some. Beethoven died 190 years, still popular. Dickens - 146 years, still popular. Poe - 167 years ago, still popular.



I agree; talent is not only recognised but remembered. I would predict that Amy Winehouse will be remembered much more than Britney Spears. Why? Because Amy was a genius at what she did, while Britney Spears is a product.


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## bazz cargo (Apr 10, 2016)

Both Pliny the Elder and Younger, Shakespeare, Dickens and so on all wrote to entertain, yes there were messages within their work but none of them expected to become 'Literature.'  In my opinion the only serious literature written before booksellers invented the genre were religious texts.


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## Patrick (Apr 10, 2016)

bazz cargo said:


> Both Pliny the Elder and Younger, Shakespeare, Dickens and so on all wrote to entertain, yes there were messages within their work but none of them expected to become 'Literature.'  In my opinion the only serious literature written before booksellers invented the genre were religious texts.



They were serious about the craft; not every writer is. Every writer wants to entertain, but that doesn't put them all on the same level. People often citicise stuff that's way better than the stuff they praise (in terms of craftsmanship), but they're too ignorant to know why. Just read book reviews on amazon. There are some great books that people simply dismiss because they're over their head.


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## bazz cargo (Apr 10, 2016)

> *OP Patrick* There are some great books that people simply dismiss because they're over their head.


Thankfully. 

If there was just one style of writing it would be a boring world.


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## Patrick (Apr 10, 2016)

bazz cargo said:


> Thankfully.
> 
> If there was just one style of writing it would be a boring world.



I agree, but it isn't a good thing that people are so dismissive without making an effort.


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## bazz cargo (Apr 11, 2016)

Patrick me old mucker, I'm an ordinary pleb with a factory drone job. It surprises me when I find a co-worker who can actually read. 

One of my once in a few years reads is Moby Dick. The abridged version, philistine I know. The most read book in the factory? 50 Shades. 

In 100 years time 50 Shades could well be thought of as classic literature. I suspect a lot of readers would say Harry Potter already is.

Sometimes it takes a few drinks to get through the day.


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## Patrick (Apr 11, 2016)

bazz cargo said:


> Patrick me old mucker, I'm an ordinary pleb with a factory drone job. It surprises me when I find a co-worker who can actually read.
> 
> One of my once in a few years reads is Moby Dick. The abridged version, philistine I know. The most read book in the factory? 50 Shades.
> 
> ...



The great thing is, you don't have to be University educated to enjoy serious literature, because serious literature is not written for the elite; it is written to deepen and strike a chord with the common man's/woman's appreciation of the human condition. Stuff like 50 shades doesn't exactly encapsulate that, so I don't think it will ever be thought of as classic literature. It's also just badly written.

I don't read books to be entertained in the same way I would be at the cinema; if we traduce literature by using this mucky, titillating stuff as the standard, then of course anything can be considered classic literature. However, this is not in keeping with real standards of excellence. A book does not have to be of Ulyssean difficulty to be serious or excellent, and anybody can decide to be more literate if they want to appreciate the stuff that's currently too taxing for them. That is a humble and admirable attitude. We accept it as writers, so why don't we accept it as readers?


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 11, 2016)

Patrick said:


> The great thing is, you don't have to be University educated to enjoy serious literature, because serious literature is not written for the elite; it is written to deepen and strike a chord with the common man's/woman's appreciation of the human condition. Stuff like 50 shades doesn't exactly encapsulate that, so I don't think it will ever be thought of as classic literature. It's also just badly written.
> 
> I don't read books to be entertained in the same way I would be at the cinema; if we traduce literature by using this mucky, titillating stuff as the standard, then of course anything can be considered classic literature. However, this is not in keeping with real standards of excellence. A book does not have to be of Ulyssean difficulty to be serious or excellent, and anybody can decide to be more literate if they want to appreciate the stuff that's currently too taxing for them. That is a humble and admirable attitude. We accept it as writers, so why don't we accept it as readers?



The book _Speak _was about a new high-schooler, her attempted rape, and the aftermath, especially her silence. It was apparently very important to a lot of readers. (If you want, the writing is in places innovative in a way that we should be copying.) So it has everything it needs to count as a serious work.

What I _really _don't want us doing is us calling a book excellent just because it's hard to read. Or experimental in a random way. Or difficult to read because the words are out of date, or the ideas it addresses are irrelevant in today's world, or because they violated some of the basic principles of writing a book. Those don't make a book excellent, or even good.


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## Jack of all trades (Apr 11, 2016)

Patrick said:


> The great thing is, you don't have to be University educated to enjoy serious literature, because serious literature is not written for the elite; it is written to deepen and strike a chord with the common man's/woman's appreciation of the human condition. Stuff like 50 shades doesn't exactly encapsulate that, so I don't think it will ever be thought of as classic literature. It's also just badly written.
> 
> I don't read books to be entertained in the same way I would be at the cinema; if we traduce literature by using this mucky, titillating stuff as the standard, then of course anything can be considered classic literature. However, this is not in keeping with real standards of excellence. A book does not have to be of Ulyssean difficulty to be serious or excellent, and anybody can decide to be more literate if they want to appreciate the stuff that's currently too taxing for them. That is a humble and admirable attitude. We accept it as writers, so why don't we accept it as readers?



How do you define "serious literature"? Would Harry Potter qualify? Does Shakespeare's works? Hemingway's? Little Women, Great Expectations, All Quiet on the Western Front, or Anne of Green Gables? I'm trying to name all the stuff I had to read for school, and I know I'm missing things. The exception was Harry Potter. That was not something I read for fun. I'm just wondering what you think of those books and plays. Are they serious?


Ironically I enjoyed Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which was assigned as part of American History, more than most of the ones that were assigned as part of English classes.


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## Jack of all trades (Apr 11, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> The book _Speak _was about a new high-schooler, her attempted rape, and the aftermath, especially her silence. It was apparently very important to a lot of readers. (If you want, the writing is in places innovative in a way that we should be copying.) So it has everything it needs to count as a serious work.
> 
> What I _really _don't want us doing is us calling a book excellent just because it's hard to read. Or experimental in a random way. Or difficult to read because the words are out of date, or the ideas it addresses are irrelevant in today's world, or because they violated some of the basic principles of writing a book. Those don't make a book excellent, or even good.



I agree. I would have given you a "like", but your post didn't have that option for some reason.


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## David Gordon Burke (Apr 16, 2016)

Olly Buckle said:


> Maybe not quite 'by accident', rather the reasons for writing are contained within the literature, the reasons for writing the other sort are external to it.



Giving validation to the idea of 'Art for Art's sake.'  While a lot of people, regardless of artistic medium shun that notion, I'm much more inclined to shun the notion of art for money's sake.  (which of course is second cousin to Sex for money's sake and others ... an inbred clan of misfits)

David Gordon Burke


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