So, why does crap literature sell/get published?

[Kyriakos]

So I finally got around to reading the rest of the thread, and the OP is basically another neckbeardy, misplaced cultural-elitism post that warrants an eye roll.

Are there a lot of bad books published? Probably! Just like there are lots of bad video games published, bad movies produced, bad songs records and distributed, etc. There are plenty of examples of "crap" media, if that's where you want to look. Not everything needs to be highbrow works of art, and thankfully, we let different folks determine what is "good" or not. I imagine that what a lot of you guys will say are great books, I think will suck. And the other way around!

The more important, and more interesting question, I think, is whether we have a system that prohibits works of artistic merit from being created, and whether a regular consumer cannot find "good" work. There is probably more truth to the former than there is with music, video games and the like (I don't think I can speak credibly to film), but there are still lots of excellent books, journals and short stories being produced, and I think I'd need some real convincing that somehow, a person wanting to find them could not.

So i am called 'neckbeardy', and furthermore by you, downtown? Better have a look at the mirror again

 

[aelf]

Failedd art is indeed still art. Just art that failed to reach its audience (whatever audience they intended it for), and therefore was ineffective at being a form of communication. Which, again, is what e essence of art is.

This line about "essence" throws me off again. If communication is "the essence of art" and a piece of work fails to communicate effectively, does that mean the work is missing that essence? Does that make it not art or bad art?

Also, is all this just your opinion, or are you actually basing it off something (i.e. citation needed)?

Note that audience doesn't have to be broad. You just have to have people in mind.

What if the audience in mind doesn't actually exist?

 

[gay_Aleks]

So i am called 'neckbeardy', and furthermore by you, downtown? Better have a look at the mirror again

Man, you sure ain't helping your case.

 

[Hygro]

I don't think I understand you.

What about Harry Potter makes you think it applies more than for any other literature?

If the reader can't identify with any of the protagonists in a story, not many people are going to find it interesting are they?

I know that's the principal reason for me being turned off a narrative.

And it's in fact the main reason I don't particularly like Harry Potter. It has almost zero relevance to my life.

(Mind you, my experience of secondary education was dire, to say the least. And I'd not have thanked you for putting me in a boarding school. Not to mention the obvious fact that I've had zero experience of "magic".)

(Still, I feel obliged to point out once again that my personal opinion on Harry Potter is of no significance at all. Anyone enjoying it has me envious of their enjoyment.)

It helped that I was frequently the same age or close to it for each book release. Wanting to escape and learn magic seemed like the best outcome.

To give a counter example, I just read Slaughterhouse Five. One of the best novels I have read. I didn't have to project the story onto my feelings like I was immersed in its world to love it. Totally different experience.

 

[Kyriakos]

Haven't read HP, but i have read the first chapter (very small anyway) of ASOIAF (Game of Thrones in the tv series), and i found it to be very plain/empty. IIRC Tolkien was not significantly less empty/plain, but this seemed even worse. It is not due to it being 'fantasy' either, cause i regard a number of works by Dunsany as very good and interesting.
is coming.

 

[Evie]

This line about "essence" throws me off again. If communication is "the essence of art" and a piece of work fails to communicate effectively, does that mean the work is missing that essence? Does that make it not art or bad art?

Also, is all this just your opinion, or are you actually basing it off something (i.e. citation needed)?

What authority is there that could potentially be cited here? Did some deity reveal themselves, and as the Eleventh Commandment write down "Thou shalt define art as follow?"

My definition of art, like everyone else's, is my opinion, and I stand by it, because quite frankly the only opinions that have been proposed as alternatives so far are all about making art into this exclusive "cool kids*" club that excludes the people who dare to reach out and make people dream instead of making them think ; to reject what you don't like or don't find satisfying and thus validate your own dislikes.

Now, if someone has a broader definition of art to propose, because they find mine too narrow, I'd certainly listen. But anyone who's just trying to argue that the definition of art should be narrowed down because (insert novel) cannot possibly be art? Yawn.

*Not actually cool.

 

[Kyriakos]

Due to the nature of the human intellect things tend to be interconnected, at least to some notable degree. It is not unusual for some people to claim that math is also about making people dream or think. Some even call it an "art".
In my view a good art work should make the reader/observer/etc at least feel something interesting to him/her. This isn't always very tied to the original artist's conception, but in my view given an audience which has seen enough art it tends to form a correlation, despite the audience always reinterpreting the work of art anyway (cause no two humans are the same mentally).

As for literary art, i like the conclusion by Pessoa, noted in the past by me in this forum:

"The good poet writes as he is feeling. The average poet writes as he thinks that he is feeling. And the bad poet writes as he thinks that he should have been feeling".

(some degree of intelligence is also needed, of course. But that is another can of dune melange-producing worms).

 

[Borachio]

It helped that I was frequently the same age or close to it for each book release. Wanting to escape and learn magic seemed like the best outcome.

To give a counter example, I just read Slaughterhouse Five. One of the best novels I have read. I didn't have to project the story onto my feelings like I was immersed in its world to love it. Totally different experience.

What is it with Slaughterhouse Five? I read that and did quite enjoy it. But some people seem to really like it. "One of the best novels I've read" seems so strange to me, but not untypical. Why is Vonnegut rated so highly?

So it goes.

 

[aelf]

What authority is there that could potentially be cited here? Did some deity reveal themselves, and as the Eleventh Commandment write down "Thou shalt define art as follow?"

My definition of art, like everyone else's, is my opinion, and I stand by it, because quite frankly the only opinions that have been proposed as alternatives so far are all about making art into this exclusive "cool kids*" club that excludes the people who dare to reach out and make people dream instead of making them think ; to reject what you don't like or don't find satisfying and thus validate your own dislikes.

Now, if someone has a broader definition of art to propose, because they find mine too narrow, I'd certainly listen. But anyone who's just trying to argue that the definition of art should be narrowed down because (insert novel) cannot possibly be art? Yawn.

*Not actually cool.

I think you are confusing being as inclusive as possible with anti-elitism. Being inclusive also means accepting that there are narrower definitions of art that are not anti-elitist.

There are good reasons to believe in narrower definitions of art. Aesthetics deal precisely with this matter. There is no problem if individuals or critics choose to believe narrower definitions of art. You would only have a problem if people in positions of authority, those with the ability to decide what people can or cannot experience, are not inclusive in their approach towards art.

 

[luiz]

Out of curiosity, what do you consider to be a good example of young adult/children's literature? Not trolling here.

All the books I read as a kid, of course!

Treasure Island, the various Sherlock Holmes books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn... All of those are proper juvenile literature.

Edit:
And since you are kind of Brazilian when your kids reach adolescence you could give them Menino de Engenho, O Coronel e o Lobisomem, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas and several other wonderful Brazilian books. There are so many truly fantastic books out there that Harry Potter is at best a massive waste of time.

 

[Traitorfish]

What is it with Slaughterhouse Five? I read that and did quite enjoy it. But some people seem to really like it. "One of the best novels I've read" seems so strange to me, but not untypical. Why is Vonnegut rated so highly?

I think it's a matter of how convincingly you're taken along for the ride. The novel is essentially the story of a veteran going through a nervous breakdown, and all the time-skipping and space-stuff are flashbacks and psychotic episodes. Yet somehow Vonnegut writers in a way which allows the reader to buy into Billy Pilgrim's side of things, to accept that, sure, this guy is unstuck in time and is talking to aliens and whatever, and to some extent you're buying into this story as a defence against the horror of the war parts, just like Pilgrim, so when that all unwinds around the fire-bombing of Dresden occurs and you're just left with a lot of dead people, it really hits you in the gut.

It's a bit like Catch-22, I guess, in that there's a similar laying of tragedy and farce, until it all unwinds at the end and you're just left with the tragedy, but in a way which is somehow both much more bizarre and much more brutal.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Literature can be just as subject to overhyping as movies or television. I bet all of us have read books or seen movies that we heard too much about beforehand. For me, it was Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle. After years of hearing of it, I thought it was kind of 'eh.'

 

[Borachio]

Haven't read HP, but i have read the first chapter (very small anyway) of ASOIAF (Game of Thrones in the tv series), and i found it to be very plain/empty. IIRC Tolkien was not significantly less empty/plain, but this seemed even worse. It is not due to it being 'fantasy' either, cause i regard a number of works by Dunsany as very good and interesting.
is coming.

Game of Thrones is, for me, like that. Plain and empty writing*. Yet I have persisted with it. Along with plenty of skim reading.

There are one or two of the basic plot lines which have held my interest.

But mainly it's just unappealing character after unappealing character, who each do loads of unappealing things and then get the chop in as many different ways as Martin has managed to dream up.

*come to think of it, this is my principal gripe with Vonnegut too. I guess I hold what I consider "style" to be possibly as important as content. Some things I can enjoy for the way they're written as much as for what they say. Which may mean I'm an intrinsically superficial kind of person.

On the other hand, I've enjoyed a lot of Philip K Dick as much as anything, and his style is decidedly second rate, imo.

 

[luiz]

Game of Thrones is, for me, like that. Plain and empty writing. Yet I have persisted with it. Along with plenty of skim reading.

There are one or two of the basic plot lines which have held my interest.

But mainly it's just unappealing character after unappealing character, who do loads of unappealing things and then get the chop in as many different ways as Martin has managed to dream up.

Yep. And to be fair even though I said earlier reading such books is a "waste of time", because there are countless wonderful books that we will inevitably die without reading, truth is I read cheap literature as much as the next guy while waiting flight connections or things like that. It can be fun and distracting. I'm not a fan of GoT and others alike, because I find them excessively ridiculous and childish, but I do read cheap detective novels all the time.

 

[Borachio]

See, I've never managed to swallow many detective novels. I've read a few. But in nearly all of them, I find myself thinking, so this guy has killed so and so, and the police are after him and blah de blah... do I care? No! I don't.

I did enjoy Raymond Chandler, though. But mainly for the dated feel of his books as much as anything.

 

[luiz]

Yeah detective novels are a guilty pleasure of mine. I've probably been through all of Simenon's and Rex Stout's books, and I've read quite a few of inferior quality as well.

But warrior-princesses and sorcerers trying to take over a fictitious continent with the help of dragons is just... too much. I don't think I could read such book and keep a straight face. I've watched a few episodes while in the company of people who like the show and they're alright. Not good but not terrible either. But it's not my cup of tea.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Tried to read some of the Dr. Quaresma detective stories, by Fernando Pessoa. They just don't seem very engaging :\ Besides, since Pessoa was more than just a recluse, it is easy to see crude mistakes in his views on characters who by profession have to be wordly.
But maybe it is the Greek translation which is a problem too, cause the language in The Book of Disquiet didn't seem appealing to me either.

Not that i read any other detective story. Not even ACD's. Only some stuff by Borges, but there the focus is not really on detective work

 

[Evie]

I think you are confusing being as inclusive as possible with anti-elitism. Being inclusive also means accepting that there are narrower definitions of art that are not anti-elitist.

There are good reasons to believe in narrower definitions of art. Aesthetics deal precisely with this matter. There is no problem if individuals or critics choose to believe narrower definitions of art. You would only have a problem if people in positions of authority, those with the ability to decide what people can or cannot experience, are not inclusive in their approach towards art.

The critics are in position to influence and convince people ; that is a position of power.
This influence creates social pressure, and peer pressure, discouraging artists from working on some works, because they will know that these works won't be taken seriously, will be disparaged by their peers and by the critics, ignored, etc.

Yes, people are entitled to their opinions. INcluding being entitled to their opinion about other people's opinions.

 

[Zelig]

But warrior-princesses and sorcerers trying to take over a fictitious continent with the help of dragons is just... too much. I don't think I could read such book and keep a straight face. I've watched a few episodes while in the company of people who like the show and they're alright. Not good but not terrible either. But it's not my cup of tea.

Well fiction needs some reasonable mix of realism and interesting things. Girls on HBO has done well critically, but when I watch it I see boring characters with boring lives and boring problems that I just can't bring myself to care about.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well fiction needs some reasonable mix of realism and interesting things. Girls on HBO has done well critically, but when I watch it I see boring characters with boring lives and boring problems that I just can't bring myself to care about.

Despite differences from reader to reader, it is highly likely that some settings/characters are far more able to cause interest/be meaningful. A sorcerer with a white beard vs a dragon is unlikely to pass as serious storytelling, while some patient imagining dragons killing people is more of a setting with ties to extremes of reality.

That said, such differences can never be enough to actually cater to all or even most people, so there is a largish audience for fantasy writing of the wizard/dragon type too. Probably a lot larger than for bleak delusional-based horror realism Personally i don't read for 'escapism', so am not mindful of that.