Not one word is wasted in this novel, but it is extremely violent, so I give caution.

In an unrelated topic, Harold Bloom wrote the following article:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers/

He writes, "THE DECISION to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life." He says that with this logic, the next year's award should go to Danielle Steel and the Nobel prize to JK Rowling.

Are we drawn to dumbed-down literature more today than before? Is the reading of Harry Potter better than not reading at all?

...interesting article (and admittedly, I just finished book 7 of HP)

Whether Stephen King's writing is worthy of literary merit is one thing. To dismiss an entire generation of writers because the don't measure up to Steinbeck or Melville is entirely another.

Mr. Bloom also seems to write off the value of other writers on yesteryear who wrote for the reading public and not the literary establishment, notably Charles Dickens and Edgar Allen Poe.

That being said, are we dumbing down the reading materials available today? Not hardly, though perhaps the "marketability" of a piece of writing plays a greater factor than it used to.

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Are we drawn to dumbed-down literature more today than before?

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Eehhhhh.... I don't see a huge difference between the 70's bestseller list and the 2000's bestseller list.

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If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?

It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

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It's plain daft to suggest that a book is bad because it does not drive people to read other books which are declared "good" simply because lit fans like them. We write books to tell stories. We do not write them to lead readers to other books. The idea that HP trains people to read SK is absurd--my kids loved HP but as far as I am aware, none of them have become fans of the horror genre.

I was made to read "literature" as a child--Shakespeare, Dickens, Kipling and Lewis Carroll. This "education" trained me to dislike them all intensely, still do. For me, most "literature" uses a writing style that takes forever to get to the point, and requires an understanding of arcane social history that I do not care to acquire. Carroll didn't even make sense. These were books that were written for their times, relevant then; today they're history, largely irrelevant unless one is a student of history. When I read Kipling I had to find out about India, and mongooses (mongeese?) and snakes--for what? Unbelievably boring for one interested in technology. Asimov and Clarke were more interesting and relevant to my interests.

I think that if kids like HP they're right--they like HP. It is not for Mr Bloom or anyone else to tell them they're wrong.

The world of "literature" has no right to declare itself more intelligent or mature than other genres. It isn't. It's just a taste--and at its worst, one that encourages an elite, arrogant, self-congratulatory and condescending attitude towards others.

Cheers,
Pat

[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited April 21, 2008).]

[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited April 21, 2008).]

Personally, I ignore it all. If Mr Bloom doesn't like Stephen King, I don't care; I'll put 'The Shining' next to 'Finnegan's Wake' on my bookshelf if I so desire. I don't honestly believe that literature is dumbing down – as halogen noted, the bestseller lists of the 70s (and, I dare say, the 60s and 50s too) weren't that different in intellectual content to now.

However, one thing that does concern me is the nature of publishing today. The majority of fiction is published by a handful of huge conglomerates, whose sole interest in the world of writing is financial. Consequently, the market seems to be shaped by these organisations' perceptions of what the market should be, and so we end up with a 'lowest common denominator' situation, where fiction is tailored for maximum sales, and the result is an increasingly homogenised 'product'. Of course, I'm not suggesting that all fiction is of this type, but there seems to me to be a worrying trend towards similarity (how many historical conspiracy/ancient mystery/puzzle-type thrillers have you seen on the bookstands since 'The Da Vinci Code', for example?) Similarly, many commentators have suggested that the increase in Creative Writing MA degrees (MFA, I think in the USA?) is adding to this homogenisation by breeding a generation of writers who all slavishly follow the same rules and formulae taught to them by their professors. I'm not sure if I subscribe to this argument, but I guess I'll find out soon enough – I'm starting my own Creative Writing MA in September!

Anyway, rant over :-)

Regards,

Paul

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The majority of fiction is published by a handful of huge conglomerates, whose sole interest in the world of writing is financial.

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I think more writers should realize that getting paid for your work is part of the "business" of writing. How can a publisher pay you if someone isn't paying them enough to not only pay you but keep in business? While I will agree that the "clone" style writings are a bit annoying, that happens in more than just books. Nirvana came out in the nineties, and before you knew it...there were a slew of similar sounding bands as well. I think this is actually has a side benefit. I would rather not see another HP book. I loved the books, but I like that it has an ending. For all those screaming "more", they have imitations to try and fill the gap. I don't want to read them, but they serve to move people on to other works (one day it might be mine).

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I think more writers should realize that getting paid for your work is part of the "business" of writing. How can a publisher pay you if someone isn't paying them enough to not only pay you but keep in business?

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I completely agree, and if we are serious as writers we have to embrace the business aspect, at least if we want to be published

My worry is that publishing will become so obssessed with the bottom line that nobody will dare take on a new writer who isn't churning out the latest 'clone', or who isn't already a 'celebrity' of some kind. The industry seems to be inceasingly concerned with short-term gains, which is fine for the profit margins of big coporations, but not so great for emerging writers who aren't likely to sell a million copies of their first novel. Sadly, the days of developing a career as a novelist seem to slipping into the past; if you can't write a bestseller straight out of the blocks, you're going to struggle to get established at all.

I'm almost certainly being overly pessimistic here (at least I hope I am!) but for those of us just starting out on our publishing career, things seem more difficult than ever before.

Cheers,

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The majority of fiction is published by a handful of huge conglomerates, whose sole interest in the world of writing is financial. Consequently, the market seems to be shaped by these organisations' perceptions of what the market should be, and so we end up with a 'lowest common denominator' situation, where fiction is tailored for maximum sales, and the result is an increasingly homogenised 'product'.

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I understand the concern. But I hope there are a few glimmers of hope. First, wasn't Bloomsbry comparatively small before it published HP? And isn't that partly the way of things--the smaller houses pick up the risky stuff that the large houses aren't sure of?

Also, I thought some of the large houses established extra imprints whose mission specifically is to take the more risky material--I think they understand that they cannot rely on established authors forever and that developing new authors is essential to their long-term survival.

Cheers,
Pat

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Cotton candy is also "different" than filet mignon. Only insanity or ignorance can excuse the notion that the former is as desirable for consumption as the latter.

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Thats an example of a comparison between two things that can be judged objectively for a certain purpose.

The physical purpose of eating is to nourish the body. It can be objectively determined that some things are more nourising to the body than others...and that information is true for more or less every last human being.

Art is different though. Its nature, and its purpose, is inherently subjective. People "consume" stories for different reasons, and its effect or quality or whatever is determined by each person, for each person, in terms of wether it fullfils the purpose they "consumed" it for or not.

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If there are no standards, and everything is mere preference, there's not much point to any of this reading or writing stuff beyond mere banal entertainment.

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The point lies in the purpose, and in the intent. Most stories are meant primarily to be entertainment...the next most common, and usually co existant purpose is to convey some message or idea.
Any given work is going to suceed in those purposes for some, and fail for others. Its subjective.

Some are made as works of "craft" according to whatever particular set of rules the writer chooses to try and follow. These can be judged objectively in the context of those criteria...but the criteria themselves are often little more than codified opinions.

And there's the heart of our disagreement. Art is meant to reflect truth or beauty. These things either exist independently of our perceptions of them, or they don't exist at all.

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Art is meant to reflect truth or beauty. These things either exist independently of our perceptions of them, or they don't exist at all.

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We're capable of creating beauty that didn't exist previously. Also, as has often been said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Things exist, and have value, on their own. Each person chooses wether they are beautiful to them or not.

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Art is either an expression of things that do not depend on the artist for their existence, or it's nothing at all. I like to hope that art is something; I therefore insist on judging it as good or bad, better or worse, to the extent my ability and perception allows.

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Yes, perception. You may percieve it as good, and someone else as bad, or vice versa. Who then is right?

No, we're not.

"You may perceive it as good, and someone else as bad, or vice versa. Who then is right?"

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No, we're not.

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I'm with Tolkien on this. I think we are, and I think its a big part of why we're here.

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The fact that I (or anyone else) cannot with perfect accuracy perceive or describe "good" is irrelevant to the issue of whether "good" exists objectively. That's like questioning the existence of your house on the grounds that you can't draw it accurately.

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My point is that "good" and "bad" art is subjective. You may love a given story, and someone else hate it. For them its bad, for you its good.

Objectively, its both either and neither. Art has value in itself. Each person then forms their personal, subjective opinions of it.

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The fact that I (or anyone else) cannot with perfect accuracy perceive or describe "good" is irrelevant to the issue of whether "good" exists objectively. That's like questioning the existence of your house on the grounds that you can't draw it accurately.

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Wow, that is pure poetry. I love that! Nicely put.

However, this: "We're capable of creating beauty that didn't exist previously."
No, we're not.

I'm not sure what you meant. And, I have to admit, at face value it looks a little off mark. For instance the beauty of the Sistine chapel didn't exist until it was built. Before that it was raw materials, nature, oils and bricks. Are you suggesting that the beauty was already inherent in these materials and all man can do is create a new synthesis of them, a new pattern to generate a new result? Maybe that's true, I don't know. But what I'm completely thrown by is what you meant, because it's pretty obvious that new art (never previously existing) from music to architecture is created all the time, with variable quality, but "beautiful" art is still created. And since the set of "beautiful" art that exists in the world is growing over time, we must be able to create new things, no?

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My point is that "good" and "bad" art is subjective. You may love a given story, and someone else hate it. For them its bad, for you its good.

Objectively, its both either and neither.

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Well, that's where we start down the sugarplum path of everybody is right and everything, inherently, is equal to everything else. If there is no inherent measure of quality than Shakespeare and my fifth grade poetry is exactly equal. "Different strokes for different folks."

I think J's point, and I agree with him if this is it, is that objectively there is some way to determine bad art from good art. Or, rather, good art from better art. It's just difficult when everybody's opinion gets in the way. But just because it's hard to be identify it, doesn't mean that, technically, such a measure doesn't exist.

Otherwise ask yourself why do people (as a large group) react favorably to art that has had a lot of work put into it, and also largely dislike art that has been slapped together?

If people's reaction to art is as random as you claim, no film studio would ever spend an extra million $ on a particularly glamorous helicopter shot, or better special effects. Because the box office results would just be totally random. Or perhaps even equally distributed no matter what was playing.

Stephen King can tell a story and get the reader so hooked that it becomes difficult for the reader to put it down. Stephen King also puts out a lot of straight and wordy garbage that is not worth reading, merely because he can put his name on the phone book and it'll be a bestseller. In a way, Stephen King is a victim of his success.

Stephen King is hardly the only popular writer to be scorned by the literary establishment. It's largely a case of writers doing important work that simply doesn't match up with what the literary establishment thinks is important. I cite Tolkien as an example---Edmund Wilson famously panned The Lord of the Rings and anyone who liked it, in a way that contradicted a position about the worth of a work that he had earlier established. This "literary divide" has been a feature of the culture commentary for the bulk of the last century---though there's some signs of a new generation closing the gap.

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Or, rather, good art from better art.

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This is a better way of putting it. Especially on the level of execution...one piece of art, especially writing, can be better than another on a technical level, but both still hve merit.

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Otherwise ask yourself why do people (as a large group) react favorably to art that has had a lot of work put into it, and also largely dislike art that has been slapped together?

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Yes, definitely. I didnt really make myself clear. I believe that all art that someone puts work, effort, thought and feeling into has value and merit, regardless of who calls it "bad" or "good." But works, especially one-person works that have little of these things in them, are probably the only ones I would be willing to call "bad" in any objective sense. And even then, they can still be "good" in bringing enjoyment to whoever may enjoy them.

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If people's reaction to art is as random as you claim, no film studio would ever spend an extra million $ on a particularly glamorous helicopter shot, or better special effects. Because the box office results would just be totally random. Or perhaps even equally distributed no matter what was playing.

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Ohh its definitely not random. I just dont believe that "good" and "bad" in the oft used senses of the word can be applied with objectivity to artforms. Like I said above, thats providing its a work that someone actually cared about and put work into. And the technical aspects, or it least some of them, can be somewhat objective.

Definitely not random though...and certainly, the success on a fianancial level of a work of art depends on many factors.

And yet many literary types dismissed...and some still do dismiss...his fictional works.

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Critics are nearly always wrong. Years ago, I went into the library and spent a few hours looking up reviews that came out when books that are now considered classics were first released. Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea was considered trite by one reviewer who noted that Hemingway hadn't dealt with a new theme in fifteen years. The novel Dune was considered decent enough, but one reviewer wondered how in the hell anyone ever got such a long novel published. And so it went. Not a single one of those novels that are now considered classics got anything other than a tepid review.

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and later...

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Even a good critic will have lapses in judgment. A few years ago there was a wonderful book published full of scathing reviews on novels that went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, or where the author went on to win a Nobel prize. The fact is that even great authors are often misunderstood.

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Critics are nearly always wrong.

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I don't know about that, since a critic is offering what amounts to his or her opinion.

The question is whether that reflects badly on the literature, or on our times. Some people believe that in order to be good, a book has to be ground-breaking, flawlessly written, and highly conceptual. If that is your definition, then certainly Stephen King and J.K. Rowling are dumbing literature down.

If instead, you, like me, judge literature on the job it sets out to do, Stephen King and J.K. Rowling are as worthy of praise as Cormac McCarthy. You see, I don't think theres anything wrong with writing a book aimed at entertaining. I don't think that you should have to feel guilty that your book has little character growth and no words longer then 4 syllables. If you set out to write a book that will be enjoyed by millions of people, not just english majors, and you succeed, you and your work are in no way morally inferior.

http://www.jrrvf.com/sda/critiques/The_Nation.html

I knew one brilliant Ph.D candidate in grad school who admitted having gone all the way through her advanced degrees without enjoying anything she read. For her, reading and writing had become a entirely intellectual exercises, intentionally divorced from the emotions that drew her to literature and creative writing in the first place. She and quite a few others considered it part of our training. Very, very weird.

Wilson's essay on Tolkien violates this theory...nor is it a unique violation, as Wilson wrote similar "reviews" of Lovecraft and Agatha Christie and others.

*****

Of course this attitude has lingered in the literary establishment. There have been several public polls, here and there, for "best book ever" or somesuch, where Lord of the Rings placed at or near the top---where the literary establishment condemned the polls, those who voted for LOTR, questioned the fairness of the vote or the accuracy of the count, all because their candidate didn't come out on top. (The literary establishment sounds like the Democratic Party in 2000.)

Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey credited this to the Great Literary Divide, where one school of literary writing strived for an artificial drawing-room "realism" in their works---and another, often First World War veterans, wrote in works reacting against that "realism." (I mention the First World War vets, as some of those who wrote believed they had come face to face with evil in the trenches, and wanted to deal with it in their writings.)