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I saw that CineD argument you had. Genius luminary thought compared to the kinds of ideas about art people have confronted me with on other sites.
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Nov 2, 2023 00:06
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whats the argument, crosspost imo
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Nov 2, 2023 00:09
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When I say challenging I mean things outside of a narrow comfort zone, not difficult necessarily. Like someone who basically only reads fantasy novels picking up, say, Moby-Dick on someone's recommendation. A lot of people will stick very hard to what they know and are just sort of certain that they will be bored by "the classics." It's not that the book is hard to read or understand, but that it presents a challenge to someone's wheelhouse ("why would I read a book about whaling?") Heath fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 00:24
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derp posted:whats the argument, crosspost imo https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4020963&pagenumber=294&perpage=40&userid=0#post535647702 I still don't know what the gently caress
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Nov 2, 2023 03:33
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derp posted:does anyone here read because it's challenging, or hard? i feel like people do it because, its fun, we love it, its beautiful, inspiring, whatever. maybe sound like the crazy gym rat who works out because they love it... maybe it's hard at first? i dont know. If I don't like a book i put it down and move on, I don't find myself 'working' at something 'challenging'. I agree very much with the sentiment of your post but these kinds of phrasings just seem to work against the idea of reading good books. Like, i'm not sitting here sweating and getting a headache, im having a great time I love doing things because it's hard. I'm also a gym rat though. More importantly if people are so intimidated by works seeming "hard" they're both liable to drop anything harder than average and will stay entirely in their comfort zone which is the exact place people should try to never be.
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Nov 2, 2023 03:36
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Gaius Marius posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4020963&pagenumber=294&perpage=40&userid=0#post535647702 This really just seems like a disagreement on the exact meaning or I guess categorization of obscurantist/“intentionally illegible”. The poster you are debating even read and seems to have enjoyed Pale Fire but just thinks it’s fairly straightforward? That’s a far cry from “appealing to a sort mediocrity”. Like if they had been like “yes good example, Pale Fire is unreadable overly complex nonsense that should have been simplified for the masses” I would understand your point, but it seems like they think the exact opposite of that
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Nov 2, 2023 04:28
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Arguing that Pale Fire is not complex is an incoherent argument. He tried to goal post shift from Complex to Illegible, you don't need to give him credit he was wrong from the first post until the last. Gaius Marius fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 04:35
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derp posted:does anyone here read because it's challenging, or hard? Honestly, it depends on my mood, my energy level, etc. I do enjoy reading to challenge myself. But, like, I've been there and I've done that and I've got the t shirt, and there's not much short of Joyce or Pynchon or some Nabokov that's really gonna throw me for a hard loop -- and with stuff at that level I *can* handle them, just it's a matter of reading with a concordance or online reference or annotated edition and that takes a lot of time and energy, which I usually don't have due to work, family, etc. So most of the time when I'm reading it's a lunch break or a few snatched hours and for those I prefer either a wizard book or a detective book, ideally both. There are a few authors I have literally stacked up on my bedside in my "someday" pile. Proust I love but the prose is like a lullaby and I always drift off to sleep reading him do i still havent finished swanns way despite many attempts. Cormac McCarthy frightens me and I find his stuff difficult to read in the way horror movies are difficult to watch, not an intellectual challenge but an emotional one. Someday when I have more time and more bandwidth.
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Nov 2, 2023 04:42
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I didn’t read it as arguing that Pale Fire is not complex, and even if that was the argument they clearly weren’t doing that to castigate Nabokov, who they called the greatest modern author
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Nov 2, 2023 04:45
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Gaius Marius posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4020963&pagenumber=294&perpage=40&userid=0#post535647702 i think they were just reacting to the idea that it's good to be difficult to understand in and of itself, which no one really presented and i would say doesn't really exist (or barely does). you were arguing that it's good to challenge yourself and to make art that is likely to challenge the reader, because that opens up space for expression and communication impossible without those challenges. It didn't seem like you were ever having the same argument as one another. anyway i think these forums of course have lots of threads where any unorthodox or rigorous or even particularly careful analysis is rejected in favor of a lot of low content posts, but not more than in the past and there are lots of other threads/forums (and in general I'd say cined is one of them) where it's common to see people write seriously and carefully. these days i really only read one or two threads in here and nmd, the basketball threads, cined, and a smattering of other sports threads so I guess I couldn't say very accurately what it's like elsewhere.
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Nov 2, 2023 04:55
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This morning I got into a tussle with people who think the main character needs to be a moral person in order to be able to engage the audience's sympathy. I wish that thinking artifice and difficulty are not desirable traits was the worst opinion on fiction I ran into.
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Nov 2, 2023 05:17
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derp posted:does anyone here read because it's challenging, or hard? i feel like people do it because, its fun, we love it, its beautiful, inspiring, whatever. maybe sound like the crazy gym rat who works out because they love it... maybe it's hard at first? i dont know. If I don't like a book i put it down and move on, I don't find myself 'working' at something 'challenging'. I agree very much with the sentiment of your post but these kinds of phrasings just seem to work against the idea of reading good books. Like, i'm not sitting here sweating and getting a headache, im having a great time same. i also love going to the gym, but i don't like it because it's difficult to work out, it's because it feels nice and makes me look more like i want to look and all the rewarding aspects of it. i don't have whatever it is that people talk about when they say they want to overcome or challenge themselves, books are just good imo.
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Nov 2, 2023 06:07
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There are differing kinds of obscurantism. There's 'putting in a thing you might not expect the audience to know/care about without advance knowledge', there's 'putting in a thing and then covering your tracks sufficiently so that audience can't know about it', there's 'putting in a thing nobody knows about, not even you', ... at the end of the day all of these are more or less legitimate strategies for artists, and i'd wager any film that guy cared to mention includes one of those kinds of obscurantism. Art is always obscuring its origin as a lie anyway
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Nov 2, 2023 12:04
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All English prose, not just fiction, tends towards poo poo compared to tastes in civilized cultures. Then you have someone like Spillane who 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 12:15
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I hope I'm not anti-intellectual, but these days I'm pretty to admit that obscure or superficially "difficult" literature isn't really for me. I like ambiguities and challenges in, say, morality or character. But I'm not up for really wild stylistic adventures, or, in particular, what I would call virtuosity for its own sake. Somebody like Joyce is a mixed bag for me. Pynchon, honestly, I find insufferable. It's all puzzles and clever-cleverness, but emotionally pretty shallow and adolescent, imo. Each to their own, though, and I can't certainly argue that obscurity and difficulty of various kinds aren't legitimate artistic tools. There is a certain type who takes a kind of macho pleasure in seeking out the longest, hardest, most obscure and incomprehensible books, and "conquering" them. They talk about it like slogging across an exhausting mountain range. Which I would happily do! But in literature, no thanks - it's just not my kind of thing. Dumb opinion alert. Faulkner is obviously a genius, but some of his difficulty does feel a bit like a put-on, like an artificial barrier imposed to seem impressive, or to make the story more worthwhile because you have to work to sort it out in your head. There's maybe a kind of macho element to that as well. Personally, I think the material is impressive enough in its own right, and sometimes I wish he would present it a bit more straightforwardly. I really don't think it would diminish the power of it. But that's just me.
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Nov 2, 2023 12:28
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There is something to be said for pushing yourself. Like, Jane Austen is an immensely rewarding, entertaining writer, but you *have* to put in the research work or read with an annotated edition to understand three fourths of what she's talking about because her culture is so far removed from our own. Absolutely worth doing and there's always joy in learning new things and stretching your brain but not something I have time for very often these days.
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Nov 2, 2023 12:58
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Lobster Henry posted:. I think there are some stories, some of his, let's say less masterful works, where he falls into this; there's certainly an argument that after a certain point obscurantism is its own failure and if the author isn't communicating that's on the author not the reader. At Faulkner's best though the difficulty is an intended part of reading the works and helps communicate what the characters are going through. In The Sound and the Fury the reader is made to feel the sound and the fury and the confusion and the difficulty for a reason. It isn't just obscurantism for the sake of it, there's a thematic and emotional point to it all. Finnegan's Wake OTOH might as well be automatic writing Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 13:03
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Lobster Henry posted:There is a certain type who takes a kind of macho pleasure in seeking out the longest, hardest, most obscure and incomprehensible books, and "conquering" them. They talk about it like slogging across an exhausting mountain range. Which I would happily do! But in literature, no thanks - it's just not my kind of thing. I would say this certain type has the wrong attitude toward literature and art in general. I don't believe art exists to be mastered or "conquered" by the viewer. It is impossible to know a work completely and correctly whether it's physical art, or literature or whatever. The most common advice to reading Gravitys Rainbow around here is specifically to not try to understand it all, but instead allow the words to conjure images in your mind and then explore your emotional response to those images. In that respect I've been able to get a lot of enjoyment and meaning out of books like Gravitys Rainbow despite having only the faintest clue as to what's going on. It's definitely an approach that doesn't come naturally to a lot of ppl tho and I think a lot of anti-intellectualism comes from a misunderstanding that art appreciation requires understanding of the subject matter (tho a little helps I suppose)
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Nov 2, 2023 13:19
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This got lost in the middle of whatever that all just was and I didn't hear any response to it re: Russian Literary Masterworks. Has anyone read Pasternak that can compare it to the others?McSpankWich posted:Just finished Doctor Zhivago and I have to say it was rough. I had a hard time at the beginning because going in I didn't realize that Russian naming conventions attached relationship/status to the names like Japenese does. So I was extremely confused by that, along with why everyone was always being referred to by full name. Once I figured that out though it was much less confusing, but there so very long sections of story that were diatribes on various philosophical, religious, and political subjects, some of which ended up impacting the course of the whole story and others that were seemingly irrelevant in the scope of the book as a whole.
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Nov 2, 2023 14:14
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Ok whew. I've read zhivago and watched the movie and I kinda agree the movie is better, not because the book was bad but because David Lean was a goddam genius and his heavy hand stamps the film like a brand. There is definitely a common devastatory feel shared by most Russian authors (even Nabokov) and Zhivago may have it the most heavily. Tolstoy I'd say start with his short stories. Solzhenitsyn I've only read Gulag Archipelago. Dostoyevsky I haven’t read in decades. You might want to try Master and Margarita or maybe Roadside Picnic.
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Nov 2, 2023 14:26
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McSpankWich posted:This got lost in the middle of whatever that all just was and I didn't hear any response to it re: Russian Literary Masterworks. Has anyone read Pasternak that can compare it to the others? Dr Zhivago's very positive reception is tied up with cold war politics. The earlier Russians are unbeatable. Highly recommend Eugene Onegin as an accessible work of classical Russian lit that's stood the test of time.
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Nov 2, 2023 14:33
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Speaking of which, there's a new translation of Bros. Karamazov on shelves now. I've promised myself I won't buy it, because I don't need another one. RON HOWARD: In fact he had already bought it.
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Nov 2, 2023 14:41
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I've not read the novel Eugene Onegin, but I have seen a performance of the Tchaikovsky Opera and it was excellent.
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Nov 2, 2023 14:57
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Lobster Henry posted:Pynchon, honestly, I find insufferable. It's all puzzles and clever-cleverness, but emotionally pretty shallow and adolescent, imo. if you think pynchon is emotionally shallow i would recommend reading mason and dixon. it's one of the most genuine stories of fraternal love i've read
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Nov 2, 2023 17:38
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Just read A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck. Didn't realize the author was a Mormon. Won't be making that mistake again.
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Nov 2, 2023 18:18
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thehoodie posted:if you think pynchon is emotionally shallow i would recommend reading mason and dixon. it's one of the most genuine stories of fraternal love i've read I should. I’ve heard people say that mason & Dixon is the one that changed their minds, and it’s Pynchon for people who don’t ordinarily like Pynchon. But I’ve already given him three chances and life is short!! Maybe someday though.
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Nov 2, 2023 18:32
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Lobster Henry posted:I should. I’ve heard people say that mason & Dixon is the one that changed their minds, and it’s Pynchon for people who don’t ordinarily like Pynchon. But I’ve already given him three chances and life is short!! Maybe someday though. It's also one of his funniest novels, but in a more earnest way than his typical dark humor. Not to mention it's the best pastiche of the colonial English prose style I've ever read.
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Nov 2, 2023 18:36
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mdemone posted:It's also one of his funniest novels, but in a more earnest way than his typical dark humor. Not to mention it's the best pastiche of the colonial English prose style I've ever read. sot-weed factor gives it a challenge but they are both fantastic
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Nov 2, 2023 18:37
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Returning to good books and not Pynchon (who is bad), I recently enjoyed The Corner That Held Them, a 1948 novel by Sylvia Townsend Warner about life in a medieval nunnery over a long-ish stretch of time. Various historical events intrude more or less obliquely, including the Black Death and the Peasants' Rebellion, but for the most part its a pretty low-key slice-of-life novel which ambles along. The stakes are everyday, unimportant things like happiness, love, and job satisfaction. Someone on Goodreads kind of beautifully described it as a bunch of characters who come to the verge of being protagonists in a novel with strong character arcs and significant changes, and then lapse back into their everyday mediocre bubbling along. The person on Goodreads phrased it better. Anyway, it is a good book. I'm also most of the way through CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, the last George Saunders collection on my list. Christ, some of these stories pack a punch! He is so good at exploiting the gap between, like, chirpy euphemistic HR-speak and the human suffering of degrading labour or loss of income. And (I guess its his Buddhist side) at conveying how we are all trapped in little, pathetic, self-absorbed cycles of our own ever-recurring anxieties and ridiculous hopes and dreams, and how hard it is to break out into moments of genuine empathy and connection.
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Nov 2, 2023 18:40
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derp posted:does anyone here read because it's challenging, or hard? me
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Nov 2, 2023 18:42
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I’m not trying to do math homework or solve a riddle while reading. But take A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing as an example. While it is “hard” to get used to, once it clicks, the thought fragment prose delivers a far different experience of reading than “simply” full sentences. It felt many steps closer to experiencing the story first-hand.
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Nov 2, 2023 20:05
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re: Mason & Dixon, yeah, I think I am halfway through Pynchon's stuff and M&D is his best. It starts out being juvenile and a sort of a comedy of errors but gets more profound and emotional as it goes on. I thought the ending was wonderful and sad too. I'm currently reading through Solenoid and I gotta give props to whoever recommended ITT bc it is an incredible book. The prose is maximalist, dizzying, and strangely beautiful at times while being very accessible at the same time. Whoever likes Kafka and Borges will probably also like this one.
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Nov 2, 2023 21:01
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There's also some incredibly stirring emotional scenes in Against the Day, mostly involving the Chums of Chance. Lew Basnights intro and Kit's literal near descent into fascism as well.
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Nov 2, 2023 21:28
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heck yeah, Solenoid was a ride. also read Blinding, if you havent already
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Nov 2, 2023 21:43
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Gaius Marius posted:There's also some incredibly stirring emotional scenes in Against the Day, mostly involving the Chums of Chance. Lew Basnights intro and Kit's literal near descent into fascism as well. Even the pastiche novels are really good at stirring emotion in the way that each would require. I've said this before but Pynchon is the greatest mimic in the language. Is there an era-style of American literature that he didn't do?
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Nov 2, 2023 21:52
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derp posted:does anyone here read because it's challenging, or hard? i feel like people do it because, its fun, we love it, its beautiful, inspiring, whatever. maybe sound like the crazy gym rat who works out because they love it... maybe it's hard at first? i dont know. If I don't like a book i put it down and move on, I don't find myself 'working' at something 'challenging'. I agree very much with the sentiment of your post but these kinds of phrasings just seem to work against the idea of reading good books. Like, i'm not sitting here sweating and getting a headache, im having a great time i read authors like krasznahorkai and joyce etc because i enjoy that their works are challenging and demanding of me as a reader.
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Nov 2, 2023 22:24
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ulvir posted:i read authors like krasznahorkai and joyce etc because i enjoy that their works are challenging and demanding of me as a reader. Now there's two guys what should've had a podcast
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Nov 2, 2023 22:32
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rngd in the womb posted:I'm currently reading through Solenoid and I gotta give props to whoever recommended ITT bc it is an incredible book. The prose is maximalist, dizzying, and strangely beautiful at times while being very accessible at the same time. Whoever likes Kafka and Borges will probably also like this one. e: Maybe I ought to give it another shot when I find it easier to concentrate. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 22:38
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what was it about blinding that you didn't like? i loved blinding and loved solenoid even more, it is kind of 'more of the same' style wise, but entirely different subject matter e: now i see your edit, 'feverish' is a good way to put it, might be more of the same in that regard, then
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Nov 2, 2023 22:43
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It's two things, really: one, constant wrestling with the text to get some semblance of meaning out of it, two, the constant feel that I don't "get it" and missed something important. You can probably tell I don't read much Literature. e: Well, thanks, I think I'll just try giving Blinding another shot in the future. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 22:45
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