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Author Topic: Reading: Hard is Better?
SteveRogers
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quote:
Originally posted by Destineer:
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.

I think this can be true only to an extent. A lot of movies which are visually feasts are so lacking in story and substance they become practically indigestible. The most recent Zak Snyder film Sucker Punch is a good example. I went to see it with some friends for what we call a "bro-down," and the movie was certainly a buffet of spectacle. But the writing and story were so lacking it ultimately failed as a film. The same could be said for many Michael Bay films.

There needs to be a balance, and I think the same could be said for written fiction as well.

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Destineer
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I'm definitely not talking about Michael Bay movies!

One thing about film for me, more than any other medium, is that after watching a lot of movies in my life, I've started to crave variety. Movies that ditch the usual tools of narrative and replace them with something else can be a pleasure just because they're usually something fresh and new.

I imagine some people feel that way about books, after reading a lot of them.

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Destineer
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This is what I'm talking about. Something really different! Lynch is great for that.
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SteveRogers
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quote:
Originally posted by Destineer:
One thing about film for me, more than any other medium, is that after watching a lot of movies in my life, I've started to crave variety. Movies that ditch the usual tools of narrative and replace them with something else can be a pleasure just because they're usually something fresh and new.

Oh, most definitely. [Smile] In my personal life, I think I've gone in the opposite direction. I started out really enjoying things written in less than traditional ways (Chuck Palahniuk, Douglas Adams, and Kurt Vonnegut are some good examples), so I've found myself gravitating towards works written in more traditional structures lately. So, I can see how this can go both ways.
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Foust
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quote:
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.
(emphasis added)

Yes, well, if it is a matter of getting what you paid for, then whatever is the most fun is obviously the best. Therefore Jurassic Park is the best novel I've ever read, and As I Lay Dying was the worst.

You might say calling yourself a "consumer" is an incidental turn of phrase, but I do think that a lot of readers think of themselves as customers who are paying for an experience.

Consumers pay for a particular product. But a lot of writers aren't trying to create a particular kind of product - they're trying to create something new and strange, an answer to a past tradition, the attempt to found a new tradition, or the attempt to just make something that would stand entirely on its own.

quote:
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.
So "meaningful" is about the number of people that... find it meaningful? I'm not sure I follow your definition. Anyways, I can't see how your concept of meaningfulness could include someone like Samuel Beckett. Maybe he'd be perfectly happy to be labeled meaningless, but I do get the feeling that you are using meaningfulness in opposition to triviality.

quote:
Likewise, discussions of subjective and objective value in a text makes me want to pull what little is left of my hair out.
Me too, surprisingly - but I think there is a value in pointing out the distinction between awesomeness (a giant robot using a giant sword to stab another giant robot right in his giant face like in Transformers) and greatness (the sheer pointless beauty of Infinite Jest).

It seems like a lot of people are just willing to stop with awesomeness, and think any bit of art that is utterly unconcerned with being awesome is therefore pretentious.

I do think that's what people mean when they say "pretentious": not awesome.

quote:
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.
Ok, then quit reading. Or, you know, become a better reader. Do you really think Thomas Pynchon sat down at his typewriter and thought "Today, I will make Vadon feel stupid"? Dude, he wasn't thinking of you at all. He was thinking of ideas.
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SteveRogers
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You're suggesting someone should "become a better reader" essentially because they don't define great literature in the same way you do?
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Foust
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Just so no one says I'm saying they only like Michael Bay movies, I'll revamp my criticism of the term pretentious.

Kids start out by reading Dick and Jane. If a kid is only interested in reading Dick and Jane after a certain age, we think that's a little strange. They're supposed to graduate to Where the Wild Things Are. Eventually, if the kid enjoys reading, they'll move on to Harry Potter.

Each one involves a jump in skill and effort.

I think some adults hit a plateau, and then stay there the rest of their lives. Some people stop with Harry Potter, others stop with Jonathan Franzen. But they do stop; they never make a jump that is equivalent to the move from Dick and Jane to Harry Potter.

"Pretentious" is the term for books that would require a given reader to make that sort of jump.

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Foust
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quote:
Originally posted by SteveRogers:
You're suggesting someone should "become a better reader" essentially because they don't define great literature in the same way you do?

Vadon wasn't defining great literature, he was justifying his lack of interest in it.
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SteveRogers
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So, you're of the opinion that the word "pretentious" can never actually be applied to a book?

Edit:

The alleged justification for lack of interest seems like a definition for what doesn't qualify as "great" literature. Or that's how I read it at least.

[ April 30, 2012, 01:59 AM: Message edited by: SteveRogers ]

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Foust
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quote:
So, you're of the opinion that the word "pretentious" can never actually be applied to a book?
Never said that.
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SteveRogers
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Oh, I wasn't saying you did. It was a question. [Smile] You said you feel the word "pretentious" can be used to describe a work which would require a leap in difficulty which would potentially deter a reader. I was taking it to its logical extreme to see to where on that spectrum you referred.
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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by Foust:
Vadon wasn't defining great literature, he was justifying his lack of interest in it.

I don't believe that is accurate.
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Vadon
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quote:
Originally posted by Foust:
quote:
Originally posted by SteveRogers:
You're suggesting someone should "become a better reader" essentially because they don't define great literature in the same way you do?

Vadon wasn't defining great literature, he was justifying his lack of interest in it.
To be fair (to myself?), I was justifying my lack of interest in literary discussions. And I wasn't justifying it so much as asserting it--unless you count being bored or frustrated by them a form of justification.

As for whether I tried to define what makes a book great, I think it's fair to say I was. At least, in so far as I was trying to clarify Dan's position such that he's not confused with being anti-intellectual. It's entirely possible I misrepresented Dan and I would defer to his clarification, should he provide one.

That said, I do believe it's possible for a work to be pretentious. I also believe it's possible for a work to be both pretentious and great. But I contend that pretentiousness (perhaps as defined by Dan) does not contribute to the quality of a piece--it hinders it. I would further say that the suggestion I become a "better reader" exemplifies the very attitude I criticized. I love a challenge. I am passionate about self-improvement and expanding my horizons. If I encounter a piece that's too difficult for me to comprehend, I try to learn what is necessary such that I can understand it. But I like being challenged by the text, not by the author or people who tell me I'll be a "bad reader" if I don't enjoy it.

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Foust
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quote:
But I like being challenged by the text, not by the author or people who tell me I'll be a "bad reader" if I don't enjoy it.
Luckily, you're not reading a novel I've written.

I think if you really liked being challenged by books, you wouldn't have the reaction of "this author is making me feel stupid, I quit." It would be more along the lines of "this author is making me feel stupid, I should figure it out".

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SteveRogers
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I think a good writer can be capable of communicating new ideas without using content or style which by it's very nature belittles a reader by potentially alienating them.
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Foust
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quote:
I think a good writer can be capable of communicating new ideas without using content or style which by it's very nature belittles a reader by potentially alienating them.
A question begging extravaganza up in here.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
I do think that's what people mean when they say "pretentious": not awesome.
No. I mean Jonathan Franzen.

Or, heck, let's look at something more genre-appropriate, like The Magicians. Because there's a book that confuses "literary" with "pretentious," to the extent that it drapes pretentious signalling -- not actual meaningful insights, mind, but all the semiotic alerts that tell the reader "Hey, here's an insight!" -- over every tired trope and then gets called "literary" by the establishment. It's a book that is a conscious response to allegory that for whatever reason seems to think that the allegories to which it's responding don't contain enough meaning to be relevant.

Pretentious books, for me, are the ones that desperately wave their hands at you, trying to get your attention. "Look at this plastic bag waving in the wind! It's a symbol! Look at the initials of this guy's name! Look at how clever I, the writer, am attempting to be while adopting this trope and theme already thoroughly explored in genre fiction!"

You can often recognize the worst sort of "literary" book by its cover. Does it have a quote from the New Yorker on it? Does the blurb suggest that someone is dying of cancer while his or her spouse is contemplating an affair with someone who has AIDS (although AIDS was pretty '90s, now that I think about it, and the diseases have moved on.) Is the author being heralded as the next Faulkner? Is it about a Southern lawyer, but not actually about a legal case? Does everyone in it have the midlife crises you'd expect a fifty-something, slightly embittered writer to have?

Another example: Confederacy of Dunces. It's a book that anyone who's gone for an English degree will have read, but which everyone pretends isn' f**king terrible. Because it's terrible. It's a terrible, terrible, terrible book that fails on every single level of bookishness, but which somehow the "establishment" decided was "important" because it danced rather obviously and tritely over themes they cared about.

Or, heck, let me worry at authors I like. I've already mentioned Eco. Consider Pinchon, now. Or Joyce. Or Danielewski. Or Calvino. I really enjoy all of their books. Sometimes they're rewarding on a purely "puzzley" level, where I feel some pride in "solving" the novel; other times, I find myself admiring the intricacy of the construction. Every now and then, their obliqueness produces a turn of phrase that a more direct approach would not have generated. But at the end of the day, can I really say that any of their novels are "worth it," are really more meaningful? And I'm speaking here as somebody who had a whole semester on Ulysses, mind.

[ April 30, 2012, 07:30 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]

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Foust
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I would accept a lot of what Tom said as a legitimate use of the word pretentious - but it is clear that each of those things is a failure on the part of the author - recycling tropes while pretending not to, etc.

That being said, House of Leaves is both pretentious and awesome. Heidegger quoted in German? Faux Derrida speak? So awesome and so ridiculous.

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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:
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?
I enjoy a writer's sheer ability to the same extent I enjoy a musician's sheer ability, as a means, not an end. It can be a marvel to behold, but if I get no more out of it than a demonstration of virtuosity, I will quickly tire of it.

quote:
I think some adults hit a plateau, and then stay there the rest of their lives. Some people stop with Harry Potter, others stop with Jonathan Franzen. But they do stop; they never make a jump that is equivalent to the move from Dick and Jane to Harry Potter.

"Pretentious" is the term for books that would require a given reader to make that sort of jump.

I don't think so. It's quite possible to "get" a book, for it to not require a jump, and to still find it pretentious.
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SteveRogers
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quote:
Originally posted by Foust:
quote:
I think a good writer can be capable of communicating new ideas without using content or style which by it's very nature belittles a reader by potentially alienating them.
A question begging extravaganza up in here.
Maybe I should clarify. I think I'll do so borrowing a quote from Tom.

quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Pretentious books, for me, are the ones that desperately wave their hands at you, trying to get your attention. "Look at this plastic bag waving in the wind! It's a symbol! Look at the initials of this guy's name! Look at how clever I, the writer, am attempting to be while adopting this trope and theme already thoroughly explored in genre fiction!"

I was saying I feel a good writer can communicate new ideas without becoming a tool of their own style and content choices. If the content and style are, for lack of a better word, showboat-y, then it's likely the work will alienate a reader by the author's own choice to communicate them that way. How effectively can a writer communicate new ideas if no one reads their work or has a positive experience with a work?

[ April 30, 2012, 10:38 AM: Message edited by: SteveRogers ]

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Foust:
Heidegger quoted in German?

Foust, you need to edit your post. No good and decent forum can abide mention of Heidegger.
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Synesthesia
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:
I do think that's what people mean when they say "pretentious": not awesome.
No. I mean Jonathan Franzen.

Or, heck, let's look at something more genre-appropriate, like The Magicians. Because there's a book that confuses "literary" with "pretentious," to the extent that it drapes pretentious signalling -- not actual meaningful insights, mind, but all the semiotic alerts that tell the reader "Hey, here's an insight!" -- over every tired trope and then gets called "literary" by the establishment. It's a book that is a conscious response to allegory that for whatever reason seems to think that the allegories to which it's responding don't contain enough meaning to be relevant.

Pretentious books, for me, are the ones that desperately wave their hands at you, trying to get your attention. "Look at this plastic bag waving in the wind! It's a symbol! Look at the initials of this guy's name! Look at how clever I, the writer, am attempting to be while adopting this trope and theme already thoroughly explored in genre fiction!"

You can often recognize the worst sort of "literary" book by its cover. Does it have a quote from the New Yorker on it? Does the blurb suggest that someone is dying of cancer while his or her spouse is contemplating an affair with someone who has AIDS (although AIDS was pretty '90s, now that I think about it, and the diseases have moved on.) Is the author being heralded as the next Faulkner? Is it about a Southern lawyer, but not actually about a legal case? Does everyone in it have the midlife crises you'd expect a fifty-something, slightly embittered writer to have?


Wally Lamb books maybe? I never want to read him again. She's Come Undone was good the first time I read it but I read it several more times and realized it was a TERRIBLE book full of stereotypes and misery. Same with I know this much is true, which I tried to read recently only to get irritated by it.
I can't say I'm anti-intellectual, and sometimes I am deeply bugged by OSC ranting about the common man and elitists while at the same time being confused by it. I just want to read things that are good and don't bog me down in a swamp of misery.

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:

You can often recognize the worst sort of "literary" book by its cover. Does it have a quote from the New Yorker on it? Does the blurb suggest that someone is dying of cancer while his or her spouse is contemplating an affair with someone who has AIDS (although AIDS was pretty '90s, now that I think about it, and the diseases have moved on.) Is the author being heralded as the next Faulkner? Is it about a Southern lawyer, but not actually about a legal case? Does everyone in it have the midlife crises you'd expect a fifty-something, slightly embittered writer to have?

http://i.imgur.com/sc1Wh.png
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TomDavidson
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Sam, someday I'm going to need to buy you a beer. [Smile]
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SteveRogers
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:

You can often recognize the worst sort of "literary" book by its cover. Does it have a quote from the New Yorker on it? Does the blurb suggest that someone is dying of cancer while his or her spouse is contemplating an affair with someone who has AIDS (although AIDS was pretty '90s, now that I think about it, and the diseases have moved on.) Is the author being heralded as the next Faulkner? Is it about a Southern lawyer, but not actually about a legal case? Does everyone in it have the midlife crises you'd expect a fifty-something, slightly embittered writer to have?

http://i.imgur.com/sc1Wh.png
You know, I seem to remember hearing good things about that book from a friend of mine. [Big Grin]
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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
It's quite possible to "get" a book, for it to not require a jump, and to still find it pretentious.

Exactly.
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SteveRogers
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What's really pretentious is when a writer writes about a writer who writes pretentiously with the intention of being overly pretentious in an ironic statement regarding literary trends towards pretentiousness in books heralded by a literary elite. Then it's layer upon layer upon layer of pretention. With the intention of saying. . . something. But the message is so lost among the ironic pretention thus making the work itself pretentious despite the intentional attempt to be pretentious for the sake of pretention.

That's so meta.

[ April 30, 2012, 11:28 AM: Message edited by: SteveRogers ]

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Sam, someday I'm going to need to buy you a beer. [Smile]

Aww, thanks. Then I can tell you the story about how I almost literally defenestrated A Confederacy Of Dunces, but thought better of it because someone might see it outside, pick it up and read it, and I would not be able to live with myself. Wait, I just told you that story. Okay, instead I will tell you about central novel protagonist and southern lawyer and part-time writer Lance Paragon
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TomDavidson
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Lance Paragon? That's so retro! In a world filled with protagonists like Onwi Allmann and Will Bland, Lance Paragon stands out as a callback to a lost age of pure heroism. Unless it's meant ironically, of course.
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SteveRogers
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Another vague note on pretentious content, I often think of the film Synecdoche, New York written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. There's a lot of time in the film spent on imagery and metaphor and what have you. Ad nauseum however. Ultimately, the themes sort of beat the viewer over the head and greatly decrease the effectiveness of the actual narrative to the point the film becomes an ineffectual mess of half-baked images and unexplored story possibilities.

I suppose, on that note, I fall into the camp where I feel the writing (including things like theme and "cleverness") should work in service of the story and not vice versa.

I find my experience with Kaufman to tenderly toe this line between being clever and challenging to a point of almost trying too hard. I often can't decide whether to think of the man as a genius or as a hack wearing genius clothes.

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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:
I suppose, on that note, I fall into the camp where I feel the writing (including things like theme and "cleverness") should work in service of the story and not vice versa.
That's a good way of putting it.
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Icarus
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quote:
Originally posted by Destineer:
I wouldn't say story is essential for me. . . . Sometimes I like to read fiction looking for the same things I find in good poetry (mainly evocative imagery and interesting associations). . . . 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.

I find that fascinating. I can't identify with it at all, but I appreciate your perspective.

For myself, narrative is such a crucial part of, well, everything. It's the basis of my enjoyment of sports. Heck, I find theme park rides lacking if the story is generally incoherent (eg., Universal Studios).

-o-

quote:
Originally posted by Foust:
Yes, well, if it is a matter of getting what you paid for, then whatever is the most fun is obviously the best. Therefore Jurassic Park is the best novel I've ever read, and As I Lay Dying was the worst.

You might say calling yourself a "consumer" is an incidental turn of phrase, but I do think that a lot of readers think of themselves as customers who are paying for an experience.(emphasis added)

I did not call myself a customer; that was your word. I called myself a consumer, and, more importantly, I supplied the word with an object. Thus I was not using consumer as economic shorthand of "one who pays for things," but rather to mean "one who absorbs fiction." The turn of phrase was not used incidentally.

quote:
But a lot of writers aren't trying to create a particular kind of product - they're trying to create something new and strange, an answer to a past tradition, the attempt to found a new tradition, or the attempt to just make something that would stand entirely on its own.
Fair enough, which was why I made a point of stating that my definition of artistic success or failure was personal:

quote:
As far as I'm concerned as a consumer of fiction, . . . (emphasis added)
See? Not incidental at all. A work may have achieved what the artist wanted, but in my personal paradigm it may nevertheless be a failure. If the artist succeeded at something I deem secondary while failing at something I consider central to the experience, then I deem the work a failure.

quote:
"Pretentious" is the term for books that would require a given reader to make that sort of jump.
I disagree. Tom has already answered this point pretty well in my opinion. When I call something pretentious, I don't mean I didn't understand it. It may or may not be true that I didn't understand it; the two concepts are orthogonal. What I mean by "pretentious" was that I found the creator's attempt to demonstrate his or her intelligence tedious.

I enjoy witnessing mastery, but I do not enjoy witnessing somebody showing off. If a basketball player has to make some crazy double-clutch backhanded play to make a shot, I think that's awesome. If the player makes the same maneuvers and gyrations while unopposed on a fast break, I find it show-offy and annoying. The difference? Whether the mastery was used in the service of some greater purpose than just making me admire the performer. Which, in the case of fiction, brings me back to . . . story.

quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Another example: Confederacy of Dunces. It's a book that anyone who's gone for an English degree will have read, but which everyone pretends isn' f**king terrible. Because it's terrible. It's a terrible, terrible, terrible book that fails on every single level of bookishness, but which somehow the "establishment" decided was "important" because it danced rather obviously and tritely over themes they cared about.

I . . . I think I love you.
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Icarus
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Incidentally, I think A Confederacy of Dunces, ironically enough, is so highly regarded precisely because of narrative. Not its own internal narrative, which is crap of of course, but the surrounding meta-narrative of the genius who, finding the world unwilling to appreciate his masterwork, commits suicide only for his mother to champion the work into publication, placing it before the eyes of a world that, all-too-late, appreciates the value of what is now lost.

The misunderstood, unappreciated hero. We'll miss him when he's gone. It's a phenomenal story. Hell, it was a hit for Don McLean.

Even when want it to be otherwise, most of us are narrative junkies.

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SteveRogers
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quote:
I enjoy witnessing mastery, but I do not enjoy witnessing somebody showing off. If a basketball player has to make some crazy double-clutch backhanded play to make a shot, I think that's awesome. If the player makes the same maneuvers and gyrations while unopposed on a fast break, I find it show-offy and annoying. The difference? Whether the mastery was used in the service of some greater purpose than just making me admire the performer. Which, in the case of fiction, brings me back to . . . story.
This is my opinion on the matter as well.

Edit:

Just because a writer is capable of writing something which is stylistically challenging or unnecessarily difficult to navigate doesn't make it the best possible way to communicate that writer's themes or ideas.

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kmbboots
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quote:
Originally posted by Foust:

That being said, House of Leaves is both pretentious and awesome. Heidegger quoted in German? Faux Derrida speak? So awesome and so ridiculous.

To what purpose?
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Lance Paragon? That's so retro! In a world filled with protagonists like Onwi Allmann and Will Bland, Lance Paragon stands out as a callback to a lost age of pure heroism. Unless it's meant ironically, of course.

I .. i don't know. i don't know how to unironically make an ironic unironic ironic novel with an ironic callback to lost age of pure heroism who may instead be unironic retro, which might make it ironic?
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mr_porteiro_head
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Reading what Icarus has said about writing here makes me want to read his writing.
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Dan_Frank
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quote:
Originally posted by Destineer:
I'm definitely not talking about Michael Bay movies!

But why aren't you? (More below)

quote:
Originally posted by Destineer:
One thing about film for me, more than any other medium, is that after watching a lot of movies in my life, I've started to crave variety. Movies that ditch the usual tools of narrative and replace them with something else can be a pleasure just because they're usually something fresh and new.

I imagine some people feel that way about books, after reading a lot of them.

You (and maybe I'm conflating your point and Foust's, but I'm pretty sure what I have to say applies to both you and Foust) established that story/narrative/etc. doesn't have to be the sole or primary purpose of a work of fiction, right? If it's suitably fresh or new or challenging or something then it's good, even if the story is nonexistent or incoherent crap.

So, you can't dismiss Michael Bay movies on the same grounds that, say, I or probably Icarus/Tom/Steve/etc. might dismiss them... that is, the terrible story. Because story can be secondary!

If that's the case, though, then the best reason I can think of that you're so quick to dismiss Michael Bay movies and their ilk is that they are wildly popular (there are hundreds like them), so they're no longer "fresh and new."

If Michael Bay movies were unpopular to most people, and very rare, then I imagine you'd say "Oh man, the story is terrible but this is so fresh and new!" and Foust would say "Who cares about the story? Bay was doing something so much more than that. All the plebes who don't like his films just don't get it."

So, there but for the grace of the average movie-watcher go you?

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Dan_Frank
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quote:
Originally posted by Icarus:

I enjoy witnessing mastery, but I do not enjoy witnessing somebody showing off. If a basketball player has to make some crazy double-clutch backhanded play to make a shot, I think that's awesome. If the player makes the same maneuvers and gyrations while unopposed on a fast break, I find it show-offy and annoying. The difference? Whether the mastery was used in the service of some greater purpose than just making me admire the performer. Which, in the case of fiction, brings me back to . . . story.

I think it's worse than that, Icarus. Let me repost something from last page...

quote:
Originally posted by Foust:

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?

Dismissing story and venerating "cleverness" like this seems to me more akin to someone who's got their touchdown victory dance down to an art form... but never bothers to actually play football.

You do them too much credit when you say it's "mastery used to make you admire the performer," because that assumes there's actual mastery.

How can you call it mastery when they eschew the most essential element of creating a work of fiction? Is a lifeguard who can't swim but looks great in a speedo a "master?" How about a blacksmith who can't even make a horseshoe but knows how to get a really nice fire going?

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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:
How about a blacksmith who can't even make a horseshoe but knows how to get a really nice fire going?
Actually, managing the forge is an essential element of smithing, and one of the first things apprentices learn.
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SteveRogers
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quote:
Originally posted by Foust:
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.

I think the reason remakes generally seem hollow IS because they're just a story which has already been told rehashed again. In fact, I don't really understand this original statement at all.

Edit:

Some remakes seem hollow because they're the same stories retold. Whereas some remakes succeed because they take the original story in a new direction. If anything, that supports the importance of story in this example.

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Dan_Frank
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Yeah, I know MPH. My partner does a lot of metalworking. I was more thinking a fire in general, not specifically managing a good forge fire (which doesn't have a lot in common with, say, a camp fire, at least as far as I've heard. Is that wrong?)

In any event, I also included that in an attempt to allow that some of the skills Foust is so fond of might actually serve a good writer well when creating a real work of fiction (one with a story)... but taken in isolation the skill has little to do with "good writing" (or "good smithing")

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Samprimary
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quote:
Is a lifeguard who can't swim but looks great in a speedo a "master?"
Is a contemporary artist who can't draw or do anything more complicated than a squiggle on an otherwise empty canvas or a cube of orange plastic on an otherwise empty white table (entitled: "Mal traduit dans un navigateur pour mettre sur quelque chose pour le faire paraître plus branché: Cycle of the Knowing of sisyphean-worldSuicide") but looks great in an Armani outfit at his own neo-symbolic performance piece premiere a master?

wait a minute why am I not doing this for a living

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Icarus
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
Reading what Icarus has said about writing here makes me want to read his writing.

[Blushing]

Go write to the publishers and tell them they don't have enough borderline YA/MG novels with boy protagonists! [Smile]

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Aros
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quote:
Originally posted by Dan_Frank:


If that's the case, though, then the best reason I can think of that you're so quick to dismiss Michael Bay movies and their ilk is that they are wildly popular (there are hundreds like them), so they're no longer "fresh and new."

If Michael Bay movies were unpopular to most people, and very rare, then I imagine you'd say "Oh man, the story is terrible but this is so fresh and new!" and Foust would say "Who cares about the story? Bay was doing something so much more than that. All the plebes who don't like his films just don't get it."

So, there but for the grace of the average movie-watcher go you?

I see where you're going with this. I am somewhat in the same vein -- I consider myself the ultimate consumer. My time is limited, so I don't rewatch anything (television, film), replay anything, nor reread anything. It's a huge world, and I can't get to a lot of the interesting indie stuff.

That said, I love a lot of media / medium that can be considered "bad". Some films may not take alienate a portion of the audience (Scott Pilgrim), have a rediculous premise (Shoot 'em Up), are schlocky (Repo: The Genetic Opera), are rather slow (The Fall), or focus too heavily on action (Kill Bill). The unifying factor, however, is that -- taken holistically -- they still retain value.

Michael Bay and the Transformers are a good example. I don't think that these movies are bad because the story is terrible (and Kurtzman and Orci are great screenwriters). It's more than that, as the first and third movie didn't have the worst story (as clunky as certain lines / story elements were). It's the fact that they are made to be a product more than a movie, and are thus disingenuous. Moreover, they are SO blatantly disingenuous, they are difficult to watch. We could talk further about the fact that they don't respect source material, that the action is too clunky with shakycam, etc, but the truth is the only respect in which they succeed is that they have some humor and enormous action set pieces. And that isn't enough.

I think it's the same with any art. If you ask me my top 50 movies, I'm going to include some titles that (to you) are really flawed, real stinkers. If you ask my top 10, I'll have to omit some of the movies I loved (that have major flaws), but there may be a few with problems.

Flawed art, while not always on our top ten lists, is beloved despite its problems. Then again, how many people would put Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure on their top ten list? <awkwardly raises hand>

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Icarus:
quote:
Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
Reading what Icarus has said about writing here makes me want to read his writing.

[Blushing]

Go write to the publishers and tell them they don't have enough borderline YA/MG novels with boy protagonists! [Smile]

I think the problem is more that they do, but they could stand to be more, say, icarus-written. That way they might stand out more against the hordes of bald mary sues and their various psycho-metaphor dreamboat attachments.
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Icarus
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*laugh*

You're too kind! [Smile]

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mr_porteiro_head
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Is MG the category "below" YA?
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Dan_Frank
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Yeah, "Middle-Grade" I believe.
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Dan_Frank
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Is a lifeguard who can't swim but looks great in a speedo a "master?"
Is a contemporary artist who can't draw or do anything more complicated than a squiggle on an otherwise empty canvas or a cube of orange plastic on an otherwise empty white table (entitled: "Mal traduit dans un navigateur pour mettre sur quelque chose pour le faire paraître plus branché: Cycle of the Knowing of sisyphean-worldSuicide") but looks great in an Armani outfit at his own neo-symbolic performance piece premiere a master?

wait a minute why am I not doing this for a living

You are everything that is wrong with modern art. Or, you want to be, which is almost as bad. [Razz]

You know I realized in reference to my comments above, that one might say: "X author could write good story too, they just chose not to! They were more interested in showing their cleverness by writing Y and Z."

Which is the equivalent of saying "No no, that lifeguard could swim out there and save that person, but they chose not to because they just applied a new coat of oil and they want to let us admire the glare off their abs!"

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