Which Book Are You Reading Now? Volume XII

[yung.carl.jung]

Me neither, because I dont think such a thing exists.

HIGH LITERATURE DOESNT EXIS-------

By "high literature" do you mean literary fiction?

Because literary fiction is the worst. It is a gigantic, growing, steaming, fetid, burning pile of fermented rat droppings. This is true in every language, but hardest to escape in English because of the so-called MFA Problem.

what is literary fiction besides a useless buzzword? why does it rustle you so much? literary fiction is a genre invented to set novels apart from genre fiction. if a work calls itself literary fiction, by that action it expects to be treated as having more literary merit. thats all there is to it. its a little masturbatory, not more not less

pretty much any classic can be defined as literary fiction, matter of fact any fiction that isnt genre fiction would be literary fiction, because it is a dichotomy. the illiad is literary fiction, as is don quixote, brothers karamazov, 1984 and faust.

it is similarly useless to other labels with the same intent: IDM as opposed to EDM (our music is smart, not like this david guetta garbage!). but in the real world, those labels actually are useful. turns out most music that goes under the label of EDM really does sound like a wet fart in a closed room. turns out most genre fiction really is written for a specific target audience, always follows the same rules and really is mind-numbingly boring.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well i was just reacting to takhi (τάκη) re puzo and the godfather. That isnt high literature; scope, lit merit or otherwise.
Some fictional works are better than others; ussually the test of time reflects that. Though some of those are mostly read by very specific readers (and/or inquiring adolescents).
Eg i am bored by joyce, and gave up his ulysses at chapter 6 or something like that. I never liked the ts elliot wasteland poem either, despite some people claiming it is so great.
That said, there is some difference between poe and s. King, or whatever poser and pre 60s borges

 

[Dachs]

what is literary fiction besides a useless buzzword? why does it rustle you so much? literary fiction is a genre invented to set novels apart from genre fiction. if a work calls itself literary fiction, by that action it expects to be treated as having more literary merit. thats all there is to it. its a little masturbatory, not more not less

pretty much any classic can be defined as literary fiction, matter of fact any fiction that isnt genre fiction would be literary fiction, because it is a dichotomy. the illiad is literary fiction, as is don quixote, brothers karamazov, 1984 and faust.

it is similarly useless to other labels with the same intent: IDM as opposed to EDM (our music is smart, not like this david guetta garbage!). but in the real world, those labels actually are useful. turns out most music that goes under the label of EDM really does sound like a wet fart in a closed room. turns out most genre fiction really is written for a specific target audience, always follows the same rules and really is mind-numbingly boring.

I get more annoyed about buzzwords and pretentiousness than I do about many other things. It's a character flaw. Sometimes the "pretentiousness" thing get a little hypocritical, but I try to work on that.

I also definitely overstated the extent of my dislike of literary fiction because, honestly, it was fun to type. I do dislike the concept of literary fiction, but not nearly as much as I gave off in the quoted post. Anyway.

Like you say, literary fiction is explicit about its pretensions. That is the only thing that sets it apart, and that is why it's kinda ridiculous.

For what it's worth, I think that because the concept of "literary fiction" was basically made up by modern self-serious writers and critics, it's not particularly useful to retroactively shove older works into the category. That just plays the game of the modern literary-fiction people: presume that the main dividing line between literary fiction and genre fiction lies at whether the book has any literary merit, and then claim all the works with literary merit for "literary fiction" regardless of whether those works had anything to do with the genre debate.

So calling the distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction a dichotomy doesn't really work for me. I'm aware of the people who claim that literary fiction is just another genre with its own frequently-hacky conventions. Some come from inside, some from outside. I'm really not well enough equipped to talk about that (and honestly, I lose interest in discussions about categorization easily). Seems like there's a nonzero amount of validity to it, but also seems like a bit of "I know you are, but what am I?"

I'm definitely not dropping some kind of Myers-esque scorched-earth take here, or anything. I was just having too much fun with the insult to accurately represent my own views.

 

[Kyriakos]

'literary fiction' isnt an insult; nor is it pretentious. This nonsense made me trip over my velvet sofa and now can't find my monocle on the persian carpet.

Btw: hardly any classic lit came from lit professors or linguists.

 

[Ajidica]

As someone who has never knowingly read "literary fiction"*, could someone tell me what it is and what makes it so bad besides being created by and for the MFA community?

*Arguably the closest I've come to reading "highbrow" fiction is Lord of the Rings, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and Dune.

 

[Takhisis]

The degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Many of those degree holders go on to write literary fiction.

Criticisms of the - patently obvious to an observer with even the meanest intelligence - godawful state of American literary fiction in the last several decades often connect it to the explosion in awards of MFAs over that time period. The critics argue that the way these people are taught glorifies a form of writing that is not popular among anybody except 1) the people who produce it and 2) critics of literary fiction. It is rarely taught in schools or absorbed into the popular consciousness. This is not because it is too good for plebes, but because it is terrible.

There are many stereotypes of modern literary fiction and I frankly would be wading into far deeper waters than I'm comfortable with if I were to pass them along. Many of those stereotypes, though, have real provenances and can be traced back to creative writing professors.

Well, I don't read much of what would appear to be this ‘modern American literary fiction’. The closest might be the novelisations of the latest instalment of the WoW Idiot/Excuse Plot expansion and I couldn't get more than a third of the way through before giving up. I might have spoiled myself by reading Michael Grant and Ivan Bunin and Gogol and Mann and Borges and all those who might really qualify as high literature.
The last (and most recently written) 'Murican non-technical literature I remember having read was The Catcher in the Rye, about four years ago.

The question deep beneath this legislation is "why would anyone in their right mind return to such a godforsaken wasteland?" But then again, they're Scots, so probably scarred from the outset.

Take into account the fact that the protagonists of Trainspotting at least get to have fun.

Btw: hardly any classic lit came from lit professors or linguists.

Lord of the Rings

^

 

[Kyriakos]

Tolkin most certainly isnt high literature, Τάκη
Imo the only epic fantasy that is arguably classic lit are stories by lord dunsany*. (Btw, stuff like the odyssey are just not part of the epic fantasy genre).

* And at least some german poems, like goethe's erlkoenig and heine's lorelei. There are various satires/fables which may be high lit but aren't really epic fantasy.

Also, not all ancient stuff are high lit either. At least some of the hellenistic era romances are logically termed as an era analogue of pop/penny fiction (eg the aethiopika, by heliodoros).

 

[Arakhor]

19th Century literature generally fills my definition of classic literature - Arthur Conan Doyle, Alexandre Dumas, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen et al. I do not claim that all these writers are universally good.

 

[Kyriakos]

Almost none of them is regarded as high lit, afaik. I mean... In high lit you at least need some degree of insight/literary merit. Doyle (for example) is if anything one who has zero aspiration re style, poeticism or any other intention that goes beyond the surface - and iirc dumas is even worse in that respect, let alone a plagiarist and user of ghost-writers (iirc for the latter, but surely so for the former).
A question is if an author like wilkie collins can be said to be high lit. I think it is difficult to say he is, but at the same time he did have impressive plot-creating abilities.

 

[Takhisis]

Hey, you said ‘a classic’, not ‘high literature’.

 

[Cutlass]

I just really have no idea what high literature is beyond 'high' literature, which is talentless people writing verbose drivel.

It's stuff you're supposed to claim you like in order to be pretentious.

 

[Kyriakos]

Sorry, in greek those terms tend to mean the same...
Btw, 'classic' is ultimately derived by the classes system in the 5th century bc (iirc), and started being used as a synecdoche for anything golden-era like

 

[JohannaK]

There is this quote, attributed to Oscar Wilde, that says there's only two kinds of literature: good litersture, and bad literature. Whether it is high(brow) or not has little to do with it.

At this point we can say that classic is the same as canonic: a corpus that academia has deemed worth talking about. Much of it is good, much of it is bad, much of it has been forgotten in time and much more has been purposefully excluded from it.

It is a useful category insofar as these are most usually well-written, but it is worthless as a category to help determine your taste.

 

[Cutlass]

As someone who has never knowingly read "literary fiction"*, could someone tell me what it is and what makes it so bad besides being created by and for the MFA community?

*Arguably the closest I've come to reading "highbrow" fiction is Lord of the Rings, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and Dune.

You should read Moby Dick. Great story. But the author never used one word where twelve would do the same job.

 

[Takhisis]

Down to James Clavell's Gai-Jin for some light holiday reading.

Sorry, in greek those terms tend to mean the same...
Btw, 'classic' is ultimately derived by the classes system in the 5th century bc (iirc), and started being used as a synecdoche for anything golden-era like

Not quite. It's later in time, referring to the upstart Romans:

classic: From French classique, from Latin classicus (“relating to the classes of Roman citizenry, especially the highest”), from classis​

And then applied to the Græco-Roman civilisation.

You should read Moby Dick. Great story. But the author never used one word where twelve would do the same job.

I never could finish it, it got too verbose.

 

[Takhisis]

Are there any really good 'villain protagonist' novels in fantasy or sci-fi? Path of Destruction and Darth Plagueis in the Stars Wars EU are some of my favorite books ever.

(TVTropes has kind of let me down here.)

This article is about film, but it might change your perspective on some books:
https://www.indy100.com/article/mov...-rose-titanic-simba-dumbledore-batman-8697031

 

[Dachs]

Also, not all ancient stuff are high lit either. At least some of the hellenistic era romances are logically termed as an era analogue of pop/penny fiction (eg the aethiopika, by heliodoros).

Daphnis kai Khloe has more interesting characterization anyway

 

[EnglishEdward]

Finished last night:

A Slip of the Keyboard

by the late and great

Terence David John Pratchett

which was both auto-biographical and humorous.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Fay Weldon came up with her own classification system,

In the nineties, moved by the new GOO (‘GOOd read’) classification in Camden public libraries, I devised my own classification scheme as follows.

Good-good books – the best of contemporary literary novels, plus classics which were best-sellers in their day and have withstood the passage of time: all engaging with the intellect, if ‘difficult’.

Bad-good books – pretentious and dreadfully boring, yet taken seriously by the occasional reviewer (usually a friend of the author) and funded by the Arts Council.

Good-bad books – intensely readable, unpretentious and seldom reviewed.

Bad-bad books – worthy only to be hurled into the corner or dropped in the bath.

 

[cardgame]

I prefer the high and low system. I enjoy both, of course. And some works can be enjoyed in either fashion.