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Kvlt! posted:It is absolutely possible to read literature whilst taking into consideration the social/political climate of the times in which it was written. Even middle schoolers do it when they read Huckleberry Finn. To say otherwise is simply untrue. Of course Middle Schoolers do it. Its a juvenile form of reading. Treating a text as a historical document is to lock it behind a glass case and refuse it the opportunity to have meaning. If you are going to allow someone to tell you the kind of reading you should give a text you shouldn't bother reading in the first place chernobyl kinsman posted:condemning writers of the past for failing to live up to (a particular subset of) the ideals of the present is staggeringly dumb mel No one said anything about condemning writers. We are condemning works. The writer doesn't matter and text is always a contemporary, not historical, document. If the text has elements that are troubling to the modern reader, that must be wrestled with. There is no point in trying to read a book under an imagined idea of the past.
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Jan 12, 2018 04:11
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Mel Mudkiper posted:If the text has elements that are troubling to the modern reader, that must be wrestled with. There is no point in trying to read a book under an imagined idea of the past. The original guy was talking about not reading the books at all because they're 'problematic' though
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Jan 12, 2018 04:26
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A human heart posted:The original guy was talking about not reading the books at all because they're 'problematic' though yeah, but not wanting to read something because you know it will offend you as a contemporary reader is not anti-intellectual or unreasonable. It doesn't matter if something was appropriate at the time if its inappropriate for you as the reader.
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Jan 12, 2018 04:29
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I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, I knew it was going to be racist and sexist, but what I was asking was if people were finding it so problematic it is hard to read. If it is as bad as Tolkien, I wouldn't mind at all. But some Lovecraft stories are hard to read, especially when the dark evil is a clear metaphor for the horror of race mixing. I'm glad to see it was (relatively) progressive, I just feel that God-emperor Confederate soldier might cause people to pause to check over potential bad racist themes.
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Jan 12, 2018 04:37
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, I knew it was going to be racist and sexist, but what I was asking was if people were finding it so problematic it is hard to read. If it is as bad as Tolkien, I wouldn't mind at all. But some Lovecraft stories are hard to read, especially when the dark evil is a clear metaphor for the horror of race mixing. I'm glad to see it was (relatively) progressive, I just feel that God-emperor Confederate soldier might cause people to pause to check over potential bad racist themes. The main issue is that Burroughs in all of his writings is that he is obsessed with the idea of the white European as the inherent master of all civilizations
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Jan 12, 2018 04:39
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, I knew it was going to be racist and sexist, but what I was asking was if people were finding it so problematic it is hard to read. If it is as bad as Tolkien, I wouldn't mind at all. But some Lovecraft stories are hard to read, especially when the dark evil is a clear metaphor for the horror of race mixing. I'm glad to see it was (relatively) progressive, I just feel that God-emperor Confederate soldier might cause people to pause to check over potential bad racist themes. Mel Mudkiper posted:The main issue is that Burroughs in all of his writings is that he is obsessed with the idea of the white European as the inherent master of all civilizations Yeah, it's racist, definitely worse and more in-your-face than Tolkien, but at least in intention less overtly racist than Lovecraft. What I'd suggest is downloading the first book A Princess of Mars as a free ebook (it's out of copyright and on Gutenberg) and seeing if you like it or if it's too much for you.
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Jan 12, 2018 05:02
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ulmont posted:I'm fine with that. New books come out all the time, after all. But Clarissa MacDougall...  My dad introduced me to John Carter, Tarzan, and EE Smith so I have a soft spot for them
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Jan 12, 2018 17:57
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i've been reading through the 4 classic chinese novels - is there any particularly iconic classic korean literature?
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Jan 12, 2018 21:19
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VileLL posted:i've been reading through the 4 classic chinese novels - is there any particularly iconic classic korean literature? It's 20th century so I don't know if it's necessarily a "classic" yet but this is generally regarded as one of the strongest novels dealing with Japanese occupation and the Korean family structure in the era: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Generations-Yom-Sang-Seop/dp/097785762X I'm sure there are others but this is the only one I have any familiarity with, I'm way better versed in early 20th Century Chinese lit (Pa Chin, Lu Xun) I have a lot of bias towards history and culture leaning novels though.
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Jan 13, 2018 04:54
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funkybottoms posted:Bluebeard, then Breakfast of Champions Finally got done with something else, sat down and read Bluebeard. I really like it. I’ll be adding BoC to the list for certain. Thanks again for the suggestions.
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Jan 16, 2018 01:59
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Rolo posted:Finally got done with something else, sat down and read Bluebeard. I really like it. Awesome! If there is such a thing as an underrated Vonnegut novel, it's Bluebeard.
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Jan 16, 2018 14:00
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Astoria was a slick history of a early attempt to make a settlement/trade empire, state and or country in 1810 It's pants making GBS threads terrifying what people put up with and how much civility and kindness can change history.
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Jan 17, 2018 06:02
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chernobyl kinsman posted:condemning writers of the past for failing to live up to (a particular subset of) the ideals of the present is staggeringly dumb mel A person of color might not really be able to agree. A book that views them as inferior isn't going to appear as something that is missing "a particular set of ideals". It will just seem like a book that tells them they're inferior. I am an American citizen who is not viewed as traditionally white. I can tell you that from my personal experience, I would view a book with clear prejudice toward non-whites as something demeaning. I understand you're saying that we should look past the racism since it's a product of its time, but that's not exactly easy for people who have been or continue to be victims of racism. It's the reason I've soured on Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft. I would say that it's staggeringly dumb to be appalled at people condemning a writer of the past for being racist simply because they're from the past.
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Jan 17, 2018 18:59
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The Science Fiction and Fantasy thread has been going on and on about LBJ and all his antics for a while, so I want to know more. Recommend me a good book about LBJ, hopefully one that has all of his eccentricities on display.
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Jan 18, 2018 03:57
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USMC_Karl posted:. Recommend me a good book about LBJ, hopefully one that has all of his eccentricities on display. Is that really what he called his hog? Eccentricities?
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Jan 18, 2018 04:29
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Undersold posted:I would say that it's staggeringly dumb to be appalled at people condemning a writer of the past for being racist simply because they're from the past. nah if you can't approach a work on its own terms and in something like its own context that's a failure on your part. if, say, 'it's mean about muslims' is an obstacle to your reading the song of Roland that's on you
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Jan 18, 2018 05:16
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I hate this pseudo intellectual idea that you have to give a book a pass for its poo poo just because it's from the past. It's so loving dumb.
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Jan 18, 2018 06:35
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I think it goes beyond pseudo intellectual, I think it's probably a strawman, might be an ad hominem and is almost certainly the dunning Krueger effect.
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Jan 18, 2018 06:42
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All the different Bible's out there are pretty hosed up but let's hear it out! Lovekraft was a racist, he was a great writer despite his racisim. I really wish he wasn't a racist.
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Jan 18, 2018 06:43
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chernobyl kinsman posted:nah if you can't approach a work on its own terms and in something like its own context that's a failure on your part. if, say, 'it's mean about muslims' is an obstacle to your reading the song of Roland that's on you the text doesn't set the terms, the reader does
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Jan 18, 2018 13:40
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Junkie Disease posted:Lovekraft was a racist, he was a great writer despite his racisim. I really wish he wasn't a racist. Being overly verbose doesn't mean "great", it means he had access to a thesaurus and not an editor. Lovecraft's popular because he was an eccentric weirdo who wrote "I saw something so strange it made me crazy" about a hundred times. The popularity is in the content, not the writing. He's a bad writer, decent story-teller. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 13:47
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USMC_Karl posted:The Science Fiction and Fantasy thread has been going on and on about LBJ and all his antics for a while, so I want to know more. Recommend me a good book about LBJ, hopefully one that has all of his eccentricities on display. If you can set a few months aside, Robert Caro's multi-volume LBJ bio is the definitive one.
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Jan 18, 2018 14:52
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I was looking for sci-fi/spec-fic about people living at different scales. Ringworld is an example, but even better was Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel, a story about living in a building containing every possible 400 page book that can be made from alphabetical characters. Another example would be Surface Tension by James Blish, a story about microscopic aquatic humanoids having to invent ships that can carry them from one puddle to another. I recall another story about European explorers finding the Americas to be uninhabited in the West, only later to discover the inhabited version to the East of Asia. It turned out that the same continents kept repeating forever in all four directions. I thought that Riverworld looked interesting. It’s a series of books about every person ever born waking up next to a never-ending river. But it seems to be about the narrator encountering characters like Joan of Arc and Mark Twain, and that sounds a bit hokey, but maybe someone might recommend that anyways.
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Jan 18, 2018 15:49
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Larry Niven and Borges mentioned in the same breath
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Jan 18, 2018 16:03
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Franchescanado posted:Being overly verbose doesn't mean "great", it means he had access to a thesaurus and not an editor. Lovecraft's popular because he was an eccentric weirdo who wrote "I saw something so strange it made me crazy" about a hundred times. The popularity is in the content, not the writing. He's a bad writer, decent story-teller. Yeah his impact was so small
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Jan 18, 2018 16:48
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Junkie Disease posted:Yeah his impact was so small I said nothing about his impact or persistence as a figure for genre-fiction, I said his prose was lovely. People that imitated Lovecraft imitate his ideas or his monsters or his concept of true fear driving someone insane. No one imitates his writing style, unless it's a purposeful pastiche of his over-written style.
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Jan 18, 2018 16:49
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So he can only be great if his writing is better not the content or his impact
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Jan 18, 2018 16:52
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I'd argue that Lovecraft's purple prose does what he wants it to do. It suits the topics of his fiction and it fit the target market perfectly given that all his stuff was initially published in cheap pulp magazines. It's "good" prose in the same way that a McDonald's hamburger is a "good" hamburger: it isn't what anyone thinks they want, but it does its job and it sells.
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Jan 18, 2018 16:53
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Junkie Disease posted:So he can only be great if his writing is better not the content or his impact Correct. People can be good at telling stories but bad at writing prose. This is pretty common in genre fiction, especially horror. No one reads Lovecraft and says "Wow, his sentence structure is succinct." They say "Hey neat, this guy's painter friend paints real monsters, spooooky". Great writers are able to tell interesting stories with interesting prose. The fact that Lovecraft basically had 3 story ideas that he repeated a hundred times doesn't make him great. No matter how much you like him, the dude was enamored with over-written redundant prose. That he used his prose to talk about how great white people are and how monstrous minorities were makes it even more of a slog. So, in my opinion, he's not a great writer. If you wanna debate this further, PM me.
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Jan 18, 2018 17:01
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I'd agree to that but he became wildly successful while staying a weirdo so he's like a totem to nerds but he's due some respect
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Jan 18, 2018 17:03
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Junkie Disease posted:I'd agree to that but he became wildly successful while staying a weirdo so he's like a totem to nerds but he's due some respect He wasn't successful until years after he was dead. He was popular with other writers, mainly because he wrote letters all the drat time. He's a totem to nerds because they like his influence but haven't actually read him. Just like nerds love Dante's Inferno because of movies and videogames, but haven't actually read the drat thing. I'm a big horror fan. I appreciate Lovecraft's influence because it's inspired some of the best filmmakers, authors and artists to create amazing things. However, he's still a lovely writer with lovely opinions and a lovely life-style. If you can get past that, then yeah, he's got some decent stories, like Pickman's Model, The Colour Out of Space, and Dreams In The Witch House. But whenever someone asks "Should I read Lovecraft?", I tell them to instead read Poe, Blackwood, Machen, Barker, Ligotti, etc. That said, HP Lovecraft's complete works are free, and there's a neat collection that has all of his stories that have been turned into films, so if people still want to read him, that's where I point them.
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Jan 18, 2018 17:17
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Phyzzle posted:I was looking for sci-fi/spec-fic about people living at different scales. Ringworld is an example, but even better was Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel, a story about living in a building containing every possible 400 page book that can be made from alphabetical characters. Another example would be Surface Tension by James Blish, a story about microscopic aquatic humanoids having to invent ships that can carry them from one puddle to another. A lot of the fun in Riverworld is seeing how PJF throws historical figures together. The main protagonists are Sir Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) and Samuel Clemens, while the antagonists include King John of England and Hermann Goering. If that's not something you'd like it's probably not for you. Like a lot of series, it does fall off at the end and I didn't find the ending satisfying, but it was a fun read otherwise. (As a side note, PJF was a genealogy buff -- he was the originator of the Wold Newton genealogy -- and he once wrote a Riverworld short story where every character was one of his own ancestors.)
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Jan 18, 2018 17:29
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Selachian posted:A lot of the fun in Riverworld is seeing how PJF throws historical figures together. The main protagonists are Sir Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) and Samuel Clemens, while the antagonists include King John of England and Hermann Goering. If that's not something you'd like it's probably not for you. Like a lot of series, it does fall off at the end and I didn't find the ending satisfying, but it was a fun read otherwise.
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Jan 18, 2018 17:33
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Larry Niven and Borges mentioned in the same breath Fortunately, "Better" was also in the same breath.
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Jan 18, 2018 17:45
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Junkie Disease posted:I'd agree to that but he became wildly successful while staying a weirdo so he's like a totem to nerds but he's due some respect It's okay to enjoy lovecraft while recognizing that he's objectively a bad writer Mel Mudkiper posted:the text doesn't set the terms, the reader does yeah obvs but if your terms require that past texts adhere to modern viewpoints and thus preclude you from reading the overwhelming majority of western literature they're bad terms
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Jan 18, 2018 18:49
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chernobyl kinsman posted:yeah obvs but if your terms require that past texts adhere to modern viewpoints and thus preclude you from reading the overwhelming majority of western literature they're bad terms Canonization is not permanent. Literature reflects the values of a society, not defines them. A text becoming repulsive as society advances is not a bad thing. To think we must pardon a work for its offenses due to time is to render the text inorganic. You cannot shut off a reader's subjectivity for the sake of history.
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Jan 18, 2018 19:21
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Junkie Disease posted:So he can only be great if his writing is better not the content or his impact laffo
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Jan 18, 2018 19:51
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Canonization is not permanent. Literature reflects the values of a society, not defines them. A text becoming repulsive as society advances is not a bad thing. To think we must pardon a work for its offenses due to time is to render the text inorganic. You cannot shut off a reader's subjectivity for the sake of history. I'm not talking about the canon, which isn't an idea which I have particular use for. I'm saying that a work's repulsiveness (or attractiveness) to specific modern sensibilities ought not to be conflated with its value or merit as a work. To do so is to self-impose crushing cultural and intellectual limitations and is just an inverted form of Victorian-style Puritanism
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Jan 18, 2018 20:58
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chernobyl kinsman posted:I'm not talking about the canon, which isn't an idea which I have particular use for. I'm saying that a work's repulsiveness (or attractiveness) to specific modern sensibilities ought not to be conflated with its value or merit as a work. To do so is to self-impose crushing cultural and intellectual limitations and is just an inverted form of Victorian-style Puritanism There are multiple indices of merit though. For example, as above, Lovecraft has a lot of merit when you're examining the development of horror as a genre, negative merit when you're looking at racial issues in American fiction, and (again as above) questionable merit when looking at prose style. In short all y'all making good points tho
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Jan 18, 2018 21:01
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:There are multiple indices of merit though. For example, as above, Lovecraft has a lot of merit when you're examining the development of horror as a genre, negative merit when you're looking at racial issues in American fiction, and (again as above) questionable merit when looking at prose style. sure yes but making "congruency with my personal values at this particular moment in history" into a make-or-break merit judgment is, again, crushingly limiting and, again, a form of Victorian-style Puritanism. I'm not saying these issues aren't worth engaging with critically but if they're your chief yardstick then you're deeply Impoverished chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 21:06
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