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BananaNutkins posted:To find fantasy that is also "literature" is rare. The last time it really happened was Tolkien, whose work had such a thematic depth that it stepped outside the genre. That can't happen again by doing the exact same thing Tolkien did, which is what people have been trying to do for 70 years. For the record, I like Tolkien a lot, just wouldn't hold him as "the last time fantasy was literature" - but then we can argue about what we really consider literature and that's something better suited for the childfucking thread and no way I'm setting my firtual foot in there again.
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Sep 4, 2017 15:48
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BananaNutkins posted:To find fantasy that is also "literature" is rare. The last time it really happened was Tolkien, whose work had such a thematic depth that it stepped outside the genre. 
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Sep 4, 2017 15:50
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BananaNutkins posted:Use of Weapons by Ian M. Banks. Excellent scifi right here
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Sep 4, 2017 16:10
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The only people who care about whether or not fantasy is literature and if so what are examples are people trying to impress the likes of BotL, which if I can make a political reference outside the D&D containment zone, is like Clinton trying to appeal to suburban Republicans.
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Sep 4, 2017 16:59
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Did you actually just compare people to Hillary Clinton in a bid to win them over against me. Clearly you are possessed of an unending well of good sense.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:10
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No, I'm saying it's a pointless endeavor and a counterproductive waste of effort, that's all. Just because I like some wizard books doesn't mean I'm against you.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:14
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Actually it's pretty good to overcome a juvenile taste in wizard books. Your last posts have been weird whining about the Western Canon.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:16
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Actually it's pretty good to overcome a juvenile taste in wizard books. Your last posts have been weird whining about the Western Canon. Posting "thou must bask in the superiority of lord Harold Bloom's Western Canon™" in a literary discussion as a final word is just goofy. It's as boring as trying to own someone when talking about movies by going "You might have heard of a little list called Roger Ebert's Great Movies  "It's so silly and smug that I'm assuming that like I said, that it's a fakepost to rile up the masses who hate Rothfuss but think Jim Butcher is fine. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Sep 4, 2017 |
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Sep 4, 2017 17:25
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:If you think genre fiction is good, why are you in this thread where it's regularly savaged? Are you just stupid? I'm in this thread because it keeps getting reported I just read waaay more of this thread than I wanted to trying to figure out why it's generating like more than half of all the reports I get, and while I was reading it, it somehow got even worse I think these guys get it: SpacePig posted:It's a really stupid argument . . . with the dynamic of a lovely adult yelling at a child for not enjoying a thing correctly. Solice Kirsk posted:I change my mind. I don't wanna drink with either of you. HIJK posted:
Please stop the personal slapfighting, it's getting tedious. Stop and think: is your post about a book, or is it about a poster? This is the forum for discussion of books.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:32
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ZombieLenin posted:I prefer making GBS threads on Rothfuss for being a misogynist and an rear end in a top hat who uses his fiction to live out his teenage sex fantasies and espouse his deep found commitment to the position that women enjoy being dominated and need saved. Rothfuss is a guy who writes out his ~*liberated cool girl who appreciates a man for his brain*~ sex fantasies while wearing a "this is what a feminist looks like" shirt. He's the type of dude who has Jezebel columns about him, like one of those guys in Portland who organizes feminist meetings and then gropes the attendees.
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Sep 4, 2017 20:21
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Lightning Lord posted:Rothfuss is a guy who writes out his ~*liberated cool girl who appreciates a man for his brain*~ sex fantasies while wearing a "this is what a feminist looks like" shirt. He's the type of dude who has Jezebel columns about him, like one of those guys in Portland who organizes feminist meetings and then gropes the attendees. 
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Sep 4, 2017 21:05
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Rothfuss is a perfectly normal guy who eats hobos and buries their remains in his back yard. 
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Sep 5, 2017 03:19
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Evil Fluffy posted:Rothfuss is a perfectly normal guy who eats hobos and buries their remains in his back yard. Do you not!? asking for a friend
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Sep 5, 2017 03:54
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M_Gargantua posted:Do you not!? Uh, no? Cremation is the preferred home corpse disposal solution.
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Sep 5, 2017 04:21
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I prefer head in a fish tank myself.
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Sep 5, 2017 04:52
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Pigs will digest everything in a human body except tooth enamel. So you'll have to fish those out afterwards.
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Sep 5, 2017 05:04
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I don't think I can fit a pig in my fish tank.
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Sep 5, 2017 05:28
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Atlas Hugged posted:I don't think I can fit a pig in my fish tank. Live interestingly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_pig
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Sep 5, 2017 06:06
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BananaNutkins posted:To find fantasy that is also "literature" is rare. The last time it really happened was Tolkien, whose work had such a thematic depth that it stepped outside the genre. That can't happen again by doing the exact same thing Tolkien did, which is what people have been trying to do for 70 years. I sort of wonder what "literary" fantasy would look like these days. I've been out of the game a while--I published a fantasy story out of grad school, then got a "real" job and stopped reading and writing for far too long--but the closest thing I can think of right now is probably Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It owes a lot to a specific literary tradition (Regency novels) for its tone and voice, and I think it works pretty hard to use its fantastical elements for thematic resonance rather than just pure spectacle. It's certainly a fun book, and also really funny, but it's also dense and ultimately more interested in its characters and themes than its high concept. At least as far as fantasy published in the 21st century goes, it's one of the few books I'm aware of that reaches outside of its genre, has something to say, and says that thing with more subtlety than the usual baseball bat approach of genre fiction with a Message™. But I mention that I've been out of the game a while because I don't have as sharp a nose anymore for what really makes something "literary," and I'm increasingly uncertain that term has any real value at all. It's not like we have any other easy shorthand for dividing between fiction that is primarily about entertainment and fiction that either does something more or just plain something else. Either way, discussion about genre fiction and whether it can (or should even try to) be Important or Literary is something I enjoy. We've really spent a long time defining "fantasy" in Western fiction by how much a work reminds us of Tolkien that we need a bunch of sub-genres, or to call certain things something other than fantasy, just to make sure books that aren't about elves don't get lumped in with the ones that are. It's no surprise that science fiction has had an easier time exploring varied settings, concepts, and ideas than fantasy. (Am I contributing to making GBS threads up this thread by posting about things that aren't Patrick Rothfuss, or is this at this point the catch-all "talk about genre fiction" thread so that the SF/F thread can be more about recommendations and specific books?) Harrow fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Sep 5, 2017 |
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Sep 5, 2017 15:53
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Thing is, "literary" fantasy usually isn't marketed as fantasy. Ishiguro's Buried Giant wasn't and that's got wizards, werewolves and dragons. I've read a theory somewhere around here that genre distictions are more of a matter of marketing than content; seems to fit. If you want to look for "literary" fantasy, you'll probably want to dig into "literature" as well; there's good amount of magic in there. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Sep 5, 2017 |
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Sep 5, 2017 16:18
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anilEhilated posted:Thing is, "literary" fantasy usually isn't marketed as fantasy. Ishiguro's Buried Giant wasn't and that's got wizards, werewolves and dragons. Yeah, I agree completely. Hell, I've seen Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell in the Literature section more often than the Fantasy/Science Fiction section at bookstores. Buried Giant certainly isn't the first time for Ishiguro, either--Never Let Me Go is science fiction, but marketed as literature. It's not helped by reviews like this one from Salon, titled "Dragons aside, Ishiguro’s 'Buried Giant' is not a fantasy novel", which take an extremely narrow view of what actually falls within the genre. It ends up being self-perpetuating: if "fantasy" means trashy fiction that apes Tolkien, then something with fantastical subject matter that isn't either Tolkien fanfiction or a vampire/werewolf/wizard mystery novel set in <insert modern city here>, then it must be a genre other than fantasy.
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Sep 5, 2017 16:42
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Buried Giant is absolutely fantasy, but it's also a fantastic literary novel. It just makes fantasy a part of its setting. And its high concepts are about war, occupation, and marriage, not a lovely comic book prophecy. Ishiguro is fantastic and everyone should read The Buried Giant if they want an example of literary fantasy.
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Sep 5, 2017 17:03
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The distinction is meaningless for anything but rationalizing that this book is good and can't therefore be fantasy, which is bad and isn't read by serious adults. Defining literature by any nebulous artistic value is a fool's errant unless you don't mind glaring holes in your definition.
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Sep 5, 2017 17:21
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Junkozeyne posted:The distinction is meaningless for anything but rationalizing that this book is good and can't therefore be fantasy, which is bad and isn't read by serious adults. Defining literature by any nebulous artistic value is a fool's errant unless you don't mind glaring holes in your definition. this is word salad
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Sep 5, 2017 17:25
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I just finished a three year genre fiction program, and even the people with PHDs in the subject will tell you that arguing about what differentiates genre fiction from literature is a pointless distinction. I am so tired of that stupid argument.
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Sep 5, 2017 17:33
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...’it would be very unwise to grant pardons of this kind in the first days of your Papacy.’ The Pope turned to him and replied: ‘You don’t understand the matter as much as I do. Men like Benvenuto, who are unique as far as their art is concerned, are not to be subjected to the law – especially not him, for I know what good cause he had.’ So my safe-conduct was made out and I began to serve the Pope at once, and was treated with great favour. The Latino Juvenale whom I mentioned sought me out and commissioned me to make the Pope’s coinage. This provoked all my enemies, and they began trying to obstruct me.  Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) was an Italian goldsmith and sculptor, and in his provocative autobiography, he is a peerless artist, resourceful adventurer, great genius, valiant soldier and officer, avenger of his brother, swordsman, poet, lover, murderer, entrepreneur, dabbler in sorcery, refugee from law, prisoner, castellan, ever-righteous in feuds, indomitable rival, favourite of dukes, friend to kings, servant to popes, envy of all the world, and reluctant flutist. Above all else, Cellini is irrepressibly self-conceited, and his rancour cuts through a diverse cross-section of the Italy of the High Renaissance. Any modern reader will likely recognize Cellini as an unrepentant narcissist with little emotional depth, but it may difficult to decide whether to ascribe Cellini’s faults to his own or personality, or the turbulent time in which he lived. He is, by his own admission or claim, a repeated and remorseless murderer, but we cannot say if we should blame Cellini for his disregard for human life or the fractious and and violent period of history that encouraged such callousness. And of course there’s still the matter of how much we can trust his word on his life. But whether or not Cellini’s adventures are all true is rather irrelevant, because even if they are, we know that his world-view is. The repetitive accounts of slights and malevolence that spur no deeper reflection on his part paint him as psychologically shallow, as he can invent no reason for anyone to oppose him but vindictive jealousy The milieu of his life is richly varied yet also immensely monotonous, populated by either adoring followers and patrons, or inferior rivals. Cellini, implicitly, claims to possess genius and charisma that endears princes and prelates to shower him with their endless, benevolent grace, and is always ready to report how they affirmed him against reproofs and jealousy. But even at his most outrageous, there’s a certain comfortingly mundane banality to Cellini’s character, prose, and world that grants it authenticity. Cellini’s autobiography is thus at times invigorating and at times tiresome. One is reminded of the biographies of Cellini’s contemporary author Giorgio Vasari, who provides repetitive narratives of artisan-heroes with little genuine insight into their art (Cellini marks Vasari down as something a blowhard, of course). Cellini’s literary skills are doubtful, but he has provided with an unintentionally penetrating portrait of narcissism.  BananaNutkins posted:I just finished a three year genre fiction program, and even the people with PHDs in the subject will tell you that arguing about what differentiates genre fiction from literature is a pointless distinction. Generally speaking, its perceptible in the effort spent on the relevant TvTropes pages. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Oct 4, 2017 |
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Sep 5, 2017 17:46
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The bad writing in fantasy is a feature, not a bug.
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Sep 5, 2017 18:39
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There's a weird disconnect between the more strident enthusiasts of popular genre literature and artistic literature that just isn't present in any other medium, or at least that's what I've seen. A gulf that just can't seem to be crossed.
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Sep 5, 2017 22:11
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porfiria posted:The bad writing in fantasy is a feature, not a bug. Not a bug, by design.
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Sep 5, 2017 22:59
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ZombieLenin posted:Not a bug, by design. How Kafkaesque.
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Sep 6, 2017 03:08
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Lightning Lord posted:There's a weird disconnect between the more strident enthusiasts of popular genre literature and artistic literature that just isn't present in any other medium, or at least that's what I've seen. A gulf that just can't seem to be crossed. The reason for this, I suspect, is that literature is the "easiest" form of art in that most anybody with a computer (or typewriter) can sit down and hack out a work of literature. But music, cinema, painting, etc., can demand extensive training and resources. The demands of project management can guarantee that there's more genuine craftsmanship involved. Artists in other mediums are better able to pool their talents together, and are mire likely to be familiar with the "higher" forms of their mediums because of their education. Thus there's no similar gulf in quality between "popular" and "artistic" works in other mediums. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Sep 6, 2017 |
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Sep 6, 2017 04:57
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The reason for this, I suspect, is that literature is the "easiest" form of art in that most anybody with a computer (or typewriter) can sit down and hack out a work of literature. But music, cinema, painting, etc., can demand extensive training and resources. They demands of resources and project management that guaranteeing that there's more genuine craftsmanship involved. Well, that and with almost any other art form it's a matter of seconds for the layman to see whether the artist is any good or not. There's a substantial investment for readers to figure out if the writer is good, unless they've trained themselves to notices certain cues that signal an unskilled writer. And I'm not talking about basic grammar and simple spell check. Sentence length variation, thematic depth, use of metaphor, balance of description, action, narration, internal thought...These are all things that the reader cannot see simply by glancing at a book. You hear the first ten seconds Mozart and you know an expert composed it. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Sep 6, 2017 |
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Sep 6, 2017 05:51
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BananaNutkins posted:Well, that and with almost any other art form it's a matter of seconds for the layman to see whether the artist is any good or not. that's not really true at all, what about all the lay people who can't tell if abstract paintings are good or bad? or like contemporary academic music?
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Sep 6, 2017 07:27
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A human heart posted:that's not really true at all, what about all the lay people who can't tell if abstract paintings are good or bad? or like contemporary academic music? Barring abstract art, you know when you hear a good pop song that the person who designed it knew what they were doing.
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Sep 6, 2017 09:09
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You can also with popular fantasy or crime novels that the authors are good at what they are doing, writing popular novels. That doesn't say anything about their overall quality though, same as with pop songs or superhero movies or other dumb television formats.
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Sep 6, 2017 10:25
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The phrase you're thinking of is 'financially successful'.
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Sep 6, 2017 10:30
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anilEhilated posted:I've read a theory somewhere around here that genre distictions are more of a matter of marketing than content; seems to fit. If you want to look for "literary" fantasy, you'll probably want to dig into "literature" as well; there's good amount of magic in there. This is basically where I fall,with the additional codicil that a book can belong to a "genre" and still be "literary" or "high art" (however you define that). See, e.g., Raymond Chandler's essay "The Simple Art of Murder": quote:
http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/chandlerart.html Lightning Lord posted:There's a weird disconnect between the more strident enthusiasts of popular genre literature and artistic literature that just isn't present in any other medium, or at least that's what I've seen. A gulf that just can't seem to be crossed. The "high art" / "low art" distinction is present in other mediums (classical music vs. popular music, for example) it's just gotten broken down a lot more most other places. A big part of it is that "good writing" is defined differently depending on the purpose of the writing. If you follow Strunk and White's Elements of Style religiously your writing will end up at about 4th grade reading level, not because you're a dumb fourth grader, but because your writing is so clear that even a fourth grader can grasp it. That's one kind of good writing. On the other hand, it isn't the only kind of good writing, and prose style is just one aspect of novel-writing and arguably one of the less important. Way I see it, there's something to learn from almost anything I can read; a book with a bad prose style might still have interesting characterization, and a book with bad prose style and bad characterization can at least teach me something about how to avoid bad prose and bad characterization; if I can't learn from a books' virtues, I can learn from its mistakes. The important thing therefore is just to keep reading . . . and it's easier for people to do that if they're reading books they enjoy. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Sep 6, 2017 |
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Sep 6, 2017 12:40
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OK, someone please tell me what makes a book either "literature" or "genre writings." Is it the perceived talent that went into making it? Does it become literature when academics declare it to be so? I honestly don't know.
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Sep 6, 2017 14:58
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Solice Kirsk posted:OK, someone please tell me what makes a book either "literature" or "genre writings." Is it the perceived talent that went into making it? Does it become literature when academics declare it to be so? I honestly don't know. If it's in the "literature" section at Barnes & Noble and/or has a Flesch-Kincaid readability score above the graduate level, it's littrachaw. If it has a wizard, raygun, or detective in it, it's genre.
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Sep 6, 2017 15:12
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Sherlock Holmes is genre trash? MY LIFE IS A LIE
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