That's a ridiculous and easily disproven claim. I think you'll find after a moment's thought that there is no strong correlation between a book's "difficulty" and its quality; if there were, Foucault's Pendulum would have been even better if there were more lengthy, untranslated passages in it.
Good point. I'll clarify what I mean.
I think reading (and watching movies) can be pleasurable for several reasons, but I'll just talk about three. Fantasy, the shock of understanding, and provocation.
Stories can be pleasurable because they show us a better version our lives, or some dark aspect of ourselves that we prefer to avoid (but are titillated by seeing). This is fantasy; it happens in everything from Pride and Prejudice (e.g., Mr. Darcy) to Harry Potter (the chosen boy).
The thing about fantasy is, it's easy to generate. Kids are already tuned to fantasy. When a book generates pleasure through fantasy, its just latching on to something we do all the time anyways.
Now, the surprise of understanding: don't you love that feeling when you catch on to the style, patterns and themes of the story? That feeling of seeing how a character's trivial comment actually spirals out into a complete reappraisal of the whole story, or when you realize that the structure of the story itself completely undermines the "obvious" parts, or when you see how a writer is paying homage to past works?
That surprise of understanding needs to be learned, and it needs to be learned through reading. How many YA books use an unreliable narrator, for example? I doubt many at all, because its a technique people need to learn to recognize and understand. Kids and teens generally haven't had time to learn these things, and publishers know this.
Or, books can be pleasurable because they provoke new thoughts from us. One understands the technique the author is using, but sees some limitations in it, and thinks I can do better. So David Foster Wallace looks at William Faulkner, and tries to do better. Nobody is trying to do better than JK Rowling, unless "better" means more profit.
When I say harder is better, I mean that the great books demand that we pay attention. We can read them over and over again, each time re-appraising the story in light details or metaphorical connections we didn't see before. Or they provoke us into doing better.
Seeing those details and understanding how we could do better require work. It's hard. Fantasy requires us to do what we spend half of our days doing anyways.
So no, being hard does not make a book great. But it is very, very rare that an "easy" book is anything but mediocre.
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If there exist great books that are not hard, would that be sufficient to disprove your hypothesis or will they all be considered "rare exceptions?"
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quote:When I say harder is better, I mean that the great books demand that we pay attention. We can read them over and over again, each time re-appraising the story in light details or metaphorical connections we didn't see before. Or they provoke us into doing better.
Seeing those details and understanding how we could do better require work. It's hard.
Your qualifications for "hard" don't match my understanding of the word.
I agree: great books keep our attention. (I wouldn't use the word "demand"; I might use the word 'draw' or even 'entice'.) Great books reveal new insights when we re-read them. Great books can inspire us to change our behavior.
That doesn't make them "hard".
quote:Fantasy requires us to do what we spend half of our days doing anyways.
quote:The thing about fantasy is, it's easy to generate. Kids are already tuned to fantasy. When a book generates pleasure through fantasy, its just latching on to something we do all the time anyways.
Before I comment-- how versed are you in the genre of fantasy? What do you mean when you say the word "fantasy?"
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I am not sure if I agree with what you are stating. Just because a book is full of complex concepts and large words doesn't mean it's good. It has to have more than just that. It has to have depth, and feeling. A book can be "simple" and have that. But what is meant by demanding and simple anyway? You can say that 1984 is more complex than the Giver, but the themes are similar. The Giver gets across its theme of a disturbing dystopia just as effectively.
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I think that one of the points of (high) art is that it is subtle and complex, allowing the observer to draw their own conclusions. It doesn't pander or fall into heavy cliche (unless to prove a point).
High art is culture -- not merely escapism. That doesn't mean that there is no value in escapism. But escapism is not (generally) subtle. It isn't an impetus to self-realization. People don't ask what it means because the meaning is self-evident. What does Harry Potter mean?
Not all high art is enjoyable, but it is valuable. Have you ever trudged through David Copperfield? This massive tome isn't that enjoyable. I generally say that you often don't enjoy reading literature while you're reading it . . . the enjoyment comes from having read it. Posthumously. After the fact. When it changes you.
Some complex books are eminently readable -- though the audience doesn't readily understand. The Giver (a previous example) is a good example. Or Catcher in the Rye -- in this case, most high schoolers aren't really ready for the message.
Other complex books are difficult, in the way progressive rock is difficult for the casual listener. Lolita, for example. I'm not certain that they're more valuable. But as art, they are more able to explore and expound on an elaborate canvas that allows the reader to reflect and draw ephemeral conclusions. They are delicate and obtuse; they create ambiguity.
More difficult books can generally challenge the reader in ways that simpler books can't. It's this challenge in which we derive value, in which we can reflect.
I would suggest that there's no causal relationship between an artistic novel, a challenging novel, and an entertaining novel. A book can be all three. But "great" books are generally considered to be life changing -- therefore books written primarily for escapism are rarely selected as "great".
Some great books, in my opinion: Les Miserables The Beautiful and the Damned Stranger in a Strange Land Lolita The Picture of Dorian Grey The Count of Monte Cristo The Long Goodbye Fight Club The Sun Also Rises
Note: I would also suggest that the theme of The Giver is far different from that of 1984. It's not really a fair example. I'd more readily compare 1984 and Animal Farm.
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quote:the enjoyment comes from having read it. Posthumously.
I hope not! Unless, perhaps, you are suggesting a book-reader's religion, where your position in Heaven is higher, the more Great Works you've read? Posts: 10543 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I enjoyed Copperfield. Albeit a well-abridged version. It's long because Dickens was paid by the word, not because it serves any great literary or artistic purpose to be.
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hard is better. Except when it is not, which is usually the case, because the accessibility of a book and its themes is often in most degrees related to its quality, instead of the other way around.
To put it differently: the difficulty of a book is not a virtue. It is a necessary byproduct of the method of conveying comprehensive themes, which a writer must manage and constrain, much in the way an engine must manage the heat and stress unavoidably generated by its operation. You don't judge the quality of an engine based on how much heat it outputs; you attempt to mitigate heats, frictions, and stresses as much as is possible while maintaining the desired output. When we're talking about books and someone says "a harder work is better," it's analogous to if we were talking about engines and someone was saying "a hotter running engine is better" because they've noticed that engines designed to output stronger horsepower have produced more heat. No. It may be circumstantially related to the function of an increasingly more ambitious product, but to take that correlation further is fallacy.
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quote:Originally posted by Aros: Have you ever trudged through David Copperfield? This massive tome isn't that enjoyable.
Hey! I would never call my very enjoyable experience with David Copperfield 'trudging'!
quote:How great could a book that is specifically written for an audience that has minimal experience with reading be?
I think these are some of the best books. Accessibility is very very important, and almost always improves a book. (Although I can think of numerous examples of when a book goes out of its way to be accessible and suffers for it.)
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: hard is better. Except when it is not, which is usually the case, because the accessibility of a book and its themes is often in most degrees related to its quality, instead of the other way around.
To put it differently: the difficulty of a book is not a virtue. It is a necessary byproduct of the method of conveying comprehensive themes, which a writer must manage and constrain, much in the way an engine must manage the heat and stress unavoidably generated by its operation. You don't judge the quality of an engine based on how much heat it outputs; you attempt to mitigate heats, frictions, and stresses as much as is possible while maintaining the desired output. When we're talking about books and someone says "a harder work is better," it's analogous to if we were talking about engines and someone was saying "a hotter running engine is better." No. It may be circumstantially related to the function of an increasingly more ambitious product, but to take that correlation further is fallacy.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head.
I think books are better when they challenge me by having depth and complexity. But that doesn't mean I like it when the book is, in itself, challenging. If an author obfuscates themes to make it more of a challenge to understand, then I consider that bad writing. An author shouldn't deliberately make their work difficult to understand.
Sam got it right, though. In order to present comprehensive themes, the book will need to be more difficult. But the difficulty itself doesn't make it better.
It's the same thing with comedy, I think. I believe that Groucho Marx's joke, "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana" is one of the better jokes out there. It's short, it's easy to understand, but it has depth. It makes a commentary on time, plays with "flies" being a homophone, and has a degree of absurdity in that banana is an inherently funny word. (At least to me.) It's also, I think, why Arrested Development is so loved as a comedy. It's not hard to understand or even "get" the humor. But there's so many layers to the comedy that it's rewarding on repeated viewings.
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quote:Originally posted by Aros: More difficult books can generally challenge the reader in ways that simpler books can't. It's this challenge in which we derive value, in which we can reflect.
I think it's making a huge mistake to distill what can challenge a reader to something in such subjective terms. Every reader has a different experience with a work. Some people may get more out of something like the aforementioned The Giver than from 1984 or Animal Farm if they lack the contextual knowledge to understand the points being made in either of the latter works. Upon further readings, a person may continue to get more knowledge out of any of these works despite it being easy to designate one as being simpler than the other based on things like content and style (most oft hailed by academic or academic minded individuals).
For every individual, the experience with a book is defined by their knowledge and personal experience when first reading the work.
It could be argued that it is our own personal growth indepedent of fiction which upon reflection later increases the meaning of a work. After taking a number of history classes and having a greater understanding of history, I got more out of Animal Farm upon an additional reading than I did the first time. But this was because of a change in my life, not because of a change to the text which somehow made it more simple or more challenging.
So, I would make the suggestion that great fiction is great because of the way we respond to it in the singular moment of time in our lives when we read it, for each person individually. This is why so many people define different texts as being great. Because every work is going to be different if we approach it in a time in our lives which is significantly different than a previous encounter with it.
Works, whether simple or "complex," which appeal to some level of the human experience will more often be called great because they'll strike a chord with many different readers in different parts of life. To some extent, this can explain the universal appeal of even abridged works by writers like Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, or Shakespeare. It's not always the way something is written which makes it great or the density of the themes, it's what is written and how that can impact a reader.
I think things like theme and the like often are praised afterwards after having finished a work and made some emotional connection, whether negative or positive, to it.
The thing which makes Faulkner great isn't the complexity of his style or writing; the thing which makes Faulkner great is the way in which he's able to speak truths and humors of what it means to be human.
All in my opinion of course. Posts: 5979 | Registered: Dec 2004
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An easy example might be short stories. I think there are some absolutely brilliant short stories out there (and we could probably all come up with some) that are "Great." But they are not all hard or complex.
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I personally prefer Kurt Vonnegut's short fiction over his novels (as a rule, they seem to be more focused). But I think it'd be an uphill battle to make the argument his short fiction is any less challenging or dense than his novels, but the style and length generally make them simpler reads. Posts: 5979 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: When we're talking about books and someone says "a harder work is better,"...
I think it's worth pointing out that the original statement was switched around from what you have in quotes here. "The better something is, the harder it is" is a different statement with a different meaning, <edit> based on what Foust seems to be trying to convey.
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I think that much of the time it takes more skill to to write something seemingly simple and easy (yet complex and substantial), as opposed to something obviously complex and hard.
Simplicity is hard. It's even harder to make it seem easy.
An example: A lot of kids under 10 read Little Prince, and enjoy it a great deal. Parents read it to their 3-year old children. It's a really simple book, and easy to understand. Little Prince is also a piece of literary genius - It's very, very hard to write on that level.
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Perhaps it could be akin to climbing a mountain? Both the view and the sense of accomplishment of climbing Everest make it worthwhile. Is it "better" than climbing Mauna Kea in Hawaii? Both are huge mountains. Both have spectacular views. One is more difficult and more famous, yes, but does it posses more value?
I like comparing and contrasting Fitzgerald and Hemingway. They were friends, contemporaries. Fitzgerald was very complex. Hemingway was very simple. Ultimately, however, both were profound -- it was merely a question of style. Fitzgerald could provide nuance with his more complicated prose, and some ideas could be better fleshed out, but I don't know that one style was artistically "better" than the other. (Please note, however that I am excepting The Great Gatsby -- I am convinced that Fitzgerald wrote Gatsby in an attempt to more closely emulate Hemingway's clipped style.)
Comparing to film, there have been several great movies in the last few years that have been more accessible to the mass audience -- from Hugo to The Artist to the Batman films to Miyazaki. Are they better or worse than The Science of Sleep, The Fall, or The Tree of Life? Ultimately, the top four most cited best modern films -- The Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, and Back to the Future -- are eminently accessible.
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quote:Originally posted by Tuukka: I think that much of the time it takes more skill to to write something seemingly simple and easy (yet complex and substantial), as opposed to something obviously complex and hard.
Simplicity is hard. It's even harder to make it seem easy.
Blaise Pascal: "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." — I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.Posts: 12317 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Vadon: I believe that Groucho Marx's joke, "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana" is one of the better jokes out there. It's short, it's easy to understand, but it has depth. It makes a commentary on time, plays with "flies" being a homophone, and has a degree of absurdity in that banana is an inherently funny word. (At least to me.)
All true. It (or for simplicity, just half of it) is also an example of a sentence that can be parsed (and diagrammed) three different ways, which makes it both fun and great for teaching grammar/usage and parts of speech.
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Maybe I explained myself badly, so I'll nutshell it.
Books can be pleasurable because they offer us a better version of our own lives. More powerful, sexier, more exciting, or even more miserable. These are easy stories to tell.
Books can also be pleasurable when we catch a glimpse of their architecture. It takes practice to learn to recognize this. Or, they can be great because they give us something to measure ourselves against. It takes practice to see what is up with Pynchon, not so much with Rowling. Cormac McCarthy measures himself against William Faulkner; no one is measuring themselves against Suzanne Collins (except in terms of profit).
I'm not talking about hard for the sake of hard. Part of Shakespeare's difficulty comes from the King James Bibleness of it all -- that has nothing to do with what I'm saying. Length untranslated passages are also irrelevant.
With all that in mind:
Dabbler, what book do you have in mind?
quote:I agree: great books keep our attention. (I wouldn't use the word "demand"; I might use the word 'draw' or even 'entice'.) Great books reveal new insights when we re-read them. Great books can inspire us to change our behavior.
No, I don't mean they "hold" our attention. Jurassic Park held my attention just fine. I mean they demand it - the careful attention paid to Infinite Jest is repaid in a way that careful attention to Patriot Games is not.
quote:Before I comment-- how versed are you in the genre of fantasy? What do you mean when you say the word "fantasy?"
Seeing as I included Pride and Prejudice as an example. . . I just mean a story that has a better or much worse version of us in it. Mr. Darcy is a fantasy for the ladies (or at least a lot of the women I know, ymmv).
quote:1) Draw and keep the attention of the reader; 2) Reveal new insights on re-read; 3) Inspire change in the behavior of the reader
No, I disagree with your interpretations of 1 and 3.
1) Close attention is repaid, in the way that close attention to a mathematical problem is repaid. Both end in pleasure. I mean careful, analytic reading - not "heck yeah, dude's stabbing the other dude! Turn the page!"
3) Changes or challenges the thinking of the reader. It makes you want to write something in response, whether a critical essay or a novel of your own.
I should have read the whole thread, because now I see Samprimary explains it better than I did.
I don't mean to be equating "running hot" with quality. I was reacting to the common belief that cool engines are just as capable of being awesome.
Dabbler has the right of it as well. The title should be "The better something is, the harder it is".
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By that definition isn't all fiction fantasy and therefore easier to write and read? Posts: 5979 | Registered: Dec 2004
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Extra Credits makes the point that while you have older books that are definately classics and must reads that may be hard to understand or particularly dense; ie Lovecraft. Newer books are "easier" only so much in the sense that the "craft" of writing has evolved.
posted
Interestingly, there is already a list of Great Books and what qualifies. It was produced originally 60 years ago and a second edition created in 1990. Wiki is helpful here. Adler's criteria:
quote:the book has contemporary significance; that is, it has relevance to the problems and issues of our times; the book is inexhaustible; it can be read again and again with benefit; "This is an exacting criterion, an ideal that is fully attained by only a small number of the 511 works that we selected. It is approximated in varying degrees by the rest."[1] the book is relevant to a large number of the great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking individuals for the last 25 centuries.[2]
His list obviously missed the last 60+ years of books (and was clearly western-centric) but the second edition additions can be seen here. Of course now missing anything from the last 20+ years.
I do not imply that I am able to discern Great to any scholarly depth, but I would vote for the Little Prince and the Giving Tree as powerful but initially simple books.
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quote:1) Close attention is repaid, in the way that close attention to a mathematical problem is repaid.
You could not have found a worse example for me.
quote:3) Changes or challenges the thinking of the reader. It makes you want to write something in response, whether a critical essay or a novel of your own.
I had this reaction to the King/Straub collaboration Black House. But that book was the opposite of great; indeed, it actively undermined the duo's previous effort with the same character (The Talisman).
I've no doubt that going back and re-reading Black House would yield new insights into other works by King, especially since at the time that he was writing Black House, he was trying to tie all his works together through the Gunslinger series.
Given the symbolism and literary devices King and Straub use, it could be argued that Black House demands the attention of the reader in the exact way that you've been suggesting great books do.
But it is far, far, FAR from being a great book. It is, in fact, the worst book I have ever read. A large part of its lack of quality is the literary pretentiousness that drips from the text.
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As terrible as Black House is (and it is terrible), there's no way I'll accept the assertion that it's worse than Tommyknockers.Posts: 36488 | Registered: May 1999
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I think Scott's pretty much been speaking for me. Thanks Scott!
I probably like many books Foust would consider great (and a whole lot more he wouldn't!)
But I'm all but certain I can't stand many books he would consider great.
And I suspect that in many cases the extent to which a book meets Foust's criteria for greatness is directly related to how tediously pretentious I find that book to be.
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I probably like many books Foust would consider great (and a whole lot more he wouldn't!)
But I'm all but certain I can't stand many books he would consider great.
And I suspect that in many cases the extent to which a book meets Foust's criteria for greatness is directly related to how tediously pretentious I find that book to be.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: As terrible as Black House is (and it is terrible), there's no way I'll accept the assertion that it's worse than Tommyknockers.
I haven't read Tommyknockers.
quote: I would vote for the Little Prince and the Giving Tree as powerful but initially simple books.
I haven't read the Little Prince. I used to consider the Giving Tree a powerful book-- after reading it as an adult, I'm kind of mortified by the message.
Same with The Rainbow Fish.
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posted
The Giving Tree in any recent reading comes across, to me, as having a much more succinct theme with some similarities to how I've heard the work of Ayn Rand described (note: I haven't read any Rand myself). And I find that somehow hilarious.
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No, this isn't really true. Harder doesn't really mean better. You listen to Mozart and he's fairly simple in a way, but so compelling and GOOD. Something could be a cacophony of sound and not be as good. i think what matters more is the feeling behind it. There's not a perfect formula to art. It either appeals to you, or it doesn't. It's deeply individual.
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Haha. I'm glad you brought "great" books up dabbler. I'm currently enrolled in the Great Books College of Chicago and I haven't heard a single definition of a "great" book that anyone shared!
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I probably like many books Foust would consider great (and a whole lot more he wouldn't!)
But I'm all but certain I can't stand many books he would consider great.
And I suspect that in many cases the extent to which a book meets Foust's criteria for greatness is directly related to how tediously pretentious I find that book to be.
Agree completely.
Yeah, I think it's a sentiment shared by many SF fans. I've definitely seen OSC saying similar stuff in his articles before.
There's a reason we gravitate where we do. And for me, a big part of it is that a lot of the pretentiousness that comes with traditional literary fiction just hasn't penetrated very deeply into SF.
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quote:So no, being hard does not make a book great. But it is very, very rare that an "easy" book is anything but mediocre.
I disagree with your second statement for reasons that were said above.
There are many reasons to write and many different ways to achieve literary greatness, and not all even the worthiest of them necessarily require complexity. In fact, I would argue that approachiability and apparently or real simplicity is more of a challenging goal for a writer in a piece of meaningful literature.
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quote:In fact, I would argue that approachiability and apparently or real simplicity is more of a challenging goal for a writer in a piece of meaningful literature.
What's meaningful?
And what does pretentious mean?
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quote:To put it differently: the difficulty of a book is not a virtue. It is a necessary byproduct of the method of conveying comprehensive themes, which a writer must manage and constrain, much in the way an engine must manage the heat and stress unavoidably generated by its operation. You don't judge the quality of an engine based on how much heat it outputs; you attempt to mitigate heats, frictions, and stresses as much as is possible while maintaining the desired output. When we're talking about books and someone says "a harder work is better," it's analogous to if we were talking about engines and someone was saying "a hotter running engine is better" because they've noticed that engines designed to output stronger horsepower have produced more heat. No. It may be circumstantially related to the function of an increasingly more ambitious product, but to take that correlation further is fallacy.
I also want to agree with Sam here (great post). This gets to why I disagree with the sentiment, often expressed by Card and Card fans, that "literary" work is about pretension. It's not. It's about ambition, of which pretension can be a bad side-effect.
The right response to this is not for all authors to focus purely on "story-telling," as Card would have it, and forget about being "literary." Because sometimes there comes a book that succeeds as story-telling just as well as the best OSC novel, and also succeeds at being "literary." (Hyperion is the best example I can think of.)
These are the truly, truly great books. The ones that aren't "hard," that you can get through in a day (and will want to), but that are also ambitious as "literature," and succeed on that count as well.
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quote:To put it differently: the difficulty of a book is not a virtue. It is a necessary byproduct of the method of conveying comprehensive themes, which a writer must manage and constrain, much in the way an engine must manage the heat and stress unavoidably generated by its operation. You don't judge the quality of an engine based on how much heat it outputs; you attempt to mitigate heats, frictions, and stresses as much as is possible while maintaining the desired output. When we're talking about books and someone says "a harder work is better," it's analogous to if we were talking about engines and someone was saying "a hotter running engine is better" because they've noticed that engines designed to output stronger horsepower have produced more heat. No. It may be circumstantially related to the function of an increasingly more ambitious product, but to take that correlation further is fallacy.
I also want to agree with Sam here (great post). This gets to why I disagree with the sentiment, often expressed by Card and Card fans, that "literary" work is about pretension. It's not. It's about ambition, of which pretension can be a bad side-effect.
The right response to this is not for all authors to focus purely on "story-telling," as Card would have it, and forget about being "literary." Because sometimes there comes a book that succeeds as story-telling just as well as the best OSC novel, and also succeeds at being "literary." (Hyperion is the best example I can think of.)
These are the truly, truly great books. The ones that aren't "hard," that you can get through in a day (and will want to), but that are also ambitious as "literature," and succeed on that count as well.
Everyone's defining things their own way in this thread, which is understandable but can be confusing.
What characteristics would you call "literary," Destineer? I haven't read Hyperion, but I'm curious what elevated it in your eyes.
Foust, I'll give it a shot (though I'll admit that I think I'm stealing some of this from OSC)...
Pretentiousness is when the author is more interested in showing you how clever they are than in telling an interesting story.
That's still pretty vague, though. Best I can manage for now.
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quote: What characteristics would you call "literary," Destineer? I haven't read Hyperion, but I'm curious what elevated it in your eyes.
Mainly allusions and parallels to other works, and to bits of history. Reading Hyperion the first time was as exciting and fun as reading Ender's Game. Going back and re-reading Hyperion after reading Keats's poetry, I discovered a whole different level of depth.
As wonderful as Ender's Game is in terms of story-telling, there's not another book I can hand you and say, "Read this, then go back and re-read Ender's Game. You'll discover something new about it." I'm not saying a great book has to have that aspect, but it adds something--which is why I like Hyperion better.
quote: Pretentiousness is when the author is more interested in showing you how clever they are than in telling an interesting story.
One worry I have about this is that it imputes motive to the author. What can you say about the work itself (rather than the author's intentions in producing it) to tell us whether it's pretentious?
I'm not sure how I'd answer that question myself, by the way. I agree that pretentiousness is a problem with many books, and it does often seem to come from an attitude in the author like the one you describe.
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quote:Pretentiousness is when the author is more interested in showing you how clever they are than in telling an interesting story.
I say this is nothing other than anti-intellectualism. It's the same thing that makes one kid make fun of another for knowing the answers in class.
First, assuming the "story" is the most important part of any novel is kind of shallow. If story were the most important thing, remakes of classic movies wouldn't seem so hollow.
Second, what's wrong with being clever? What's wrong with someone say "hey, let's see how far I can push this technique, what new craziness I can up come up..." Why can't you enjoy another's sheer ability?
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posted
I don't have a problem with complexity but I have a problem with complexity being the only storytelling ranking system when it comes to quality.
Meaningfulness is the value of the writing as a cultural thing. Some stories are relatively obvious, like Dickens' A Tale of Two cities but it is culturally a heavy hitter because it employs what English majors call universal themes and a tragic setting. Likewise, Harry Potter is also a heavy hitter because it has mass appeal, even though it's relatively simple to understand-- much simpler than A Tale of Two Cities. Shakespeare's choice of plots are sometimes pretty thin, but his writing is great and elevates even the stupidest of stories to be culturally meaningful. The Man Who Planted Trees is a dead is a dead simple read and yet it is once again a very important work because it reads like a true story and it speaks to people in a simplistic and direct way-- similar to the way Shakespeare appeals if you strip away the language from Romeo and Juliet.
Each of these examples is meaningful and they are all very different. Complexity is one way to be a storyteller. To tell a story that is meaningful without frills or techniqes like unreliable narration or heavy use of cultural metaphorical reference is another way.
Both can be meaningful and significant, whether you understand every word first time or you never understand the story.
quote:Hugo
Oh god, if Hugo is good writing then I'm not in the right thread at all.
Posts: 8460 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Pretentiousness is when the author is more interested in showing you how clever they are than in telling an interesting story.
I say this is nothing other than anti-intellectualism. It's the same thing that makes one kid make fun of another for knowing the answers in class.
First, assuming the "story" is the most important part of any novel is kind of shallow. If story were the most important thing, remakes of classic movies wouldn't seem so hollow.
Second, what's wrong with being clever? What's wrong with someone say "hey, let's see how far I can push this technique, what new craziness I can up come up..." Why can't you enjoy another's sheer ability?
Painting the comment as "anti-intellectualism" seems to be a bit of a stretch. I'm not someone who seeks opportunities to engage in literary criticism. I find debates on whether the social interpretation of a piece is more valuable than authorial intent boring. Likewise, discussions of subjective and objective value in a text makes me want to pull what little is left of my hair out.
There's nothing wrong with being clever. There's nothing wrong with your wit being the centerpiece of your writing. I think the issue Dan was highlighting was one of two possible things--when your cleverness insists on itself or when your attempt at being clever fails at the expense of other redeeming qualities (like a good story).
On the first possibility, if I feel like I'm being belittled as a reader, that I am somehow less of a person than the author, I don't want to keep reading. I have enough problems in my life, do I really want a library filled with books that hate me? It may be true (and most often is) that the author is smarter than me, but that doesn't mean I need to be insulted by the book. Defenders of these works tell me that I just don't appreciate the wit, or I don't "get it." They tell me that I would love it, if only I understood it. The problem is that much of the time, I do get it. Why should it be that the "wit" of a piece makes it exclusive? I'd prefer to be invited to share in the cleverness. Don't mock me. Tease me. Let me have fun with your writing. I should respect your cleverness because your cleverness demands I respect it--and by extension, you. It shouldn't be that you tell me to respect your cleverness.
The second possibility is when they fail at being clever in the first place. I don't know if it's the correct application of the term, since I do tend to avoid these debates. But I have heard it described as "purple prose." The Wikipedia entry on the subject has some good examples of it. But to explain the issue as I see it, imagine if a comedy series tries to do a "very special episode" and the episode is a flop. This is more than a problem of having simply made a bad episode. They made it at the expense of what is valued in the show--that it's a comedy. (Assuming that the introduction of drama took away from the comedy.)
Neither possibility is what I'd consider to be anti-intellectual.
Posts: 1806 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Vadon: Painting the comment as "anti-intellectualism" seems to be a bit of a stretch. I'm not someone who seeks opportunities to engage in literary criticism. I find debates on whether the social interpretation of a piece is more valuable than authorial intent boring. Likewise, discussions of subjective and objective value in a text makes me want to pull what little is left of my hair out.
There's nothing wrong with being clever. There's nothing wrong with your wit being the centerpiece of your writing. I think the issue Dan was highlighting was one of two possible things--when your cleverness insists on itself or when your attempt at being clever fails at the expense of other redeeming qualities (like a good story).
I agree with all of this.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Foust: How many YA books use an unreliable narrator, for example? I doubt many at all, because its a technique people need to learn to recognize and understand.
Unreliable narrators are extremely common in YA. I would say they are more common than not, and in fact I use one in my YA novel. Many times an unreliable narrator is one of the charms that a YA novel holds for an adult reader, who is able, thanks to greater experience, to recognize when the narration doesn't match what's actually happening.
For a particularly acute example of a narrator that is unreliable and chronically dishonest, read Liar by Justine Larbalestier.
-o-
I don't think it's accurate to say that Orson Scott Card doesn't distinguish between books that have literary merit and books (or other entertainments) that do not. Read enough of his reviews and it's clear he does value thought-provoking works of entertainment.
Rather, I believe OSC thinks that a deeper book can have greater merit, but that university literature departments are especially poor judges of when a book has such merit, likely to both assign merit to a book that lacks it and discount merit in a book that has it. Honestly, I don't totally disagree with him.
In my mind, Ender's Game is literary. It makes me think about real-world moral dilemmas, it doesn't provide pat answers to those dilemmas, and it rewarded repeated reading right up until the point where I practically knew it by heart. I would say Speaker for the Dead is even better.
quote:Originally posted by Foust: [A]ssuming the "story" is the most important part of any novel is kind of shallow.
I don't know that it's the most important part, but I think it's a necessary first requirement. As far as I'm concerned as a consumer of fiction, if a book or a movie fails as a story, it fails entirely. No amount of profundity or poetic exercise can redeem it. If it succeeds as a story but fails to be deeper than that, well it's a successful story, and that's a good thing in its own right.
Posts: 13668 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Foust: [A]ssuming the "story" is the most important part of any novel is kind of shallow.
I don't know that it's the most important part, but I think it's a necessary first requirement. As far as I'm concerned as a consumer of fiction, if a book or a movie fails as a story, it fails entirely. No amount of profundity or poetic exercise can redeem it. If it succeeds as a story but fails to be deeper than that, well it's a successful story, and that's a good thing in its own right.
posted
I wouldn't say story is essential for me. I certainly don't go looking for a story when I read a poem. Sometimes I like to read fiction looking for the same things I find in good poetry (mainly evocative imagery and interesting associations). The very best novels tell a good story, but there are novels I've enjoyed that don't really tell much of a story.
The same goes twice over for movies. With a visual medium, again, story is one way to excel, but it's dispensable if the other parts are interesting enough. Mulholland Drive is a great example.
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