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Franchescanado posted:Shouldn't readers be capable of both perspectives? Yes. I meant to advocate that if it wasn't clear.
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Jun 6, 2018 21:26
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Franchescanado posted:But some of the satire has become stronger, in my opinion. For instance, Gladney's (self-created) obsession with Hitler and Nazism. He created the Hitler program, it's not like he was hired for the job. He went out of his way to make a place at the school he worked for to make a career of studying him. Partially it's his way of idolizing power and influence, and he completely ignores that it was only used for evil selfish purposes (in fact, he's more interested in Hitler's relationship with his mom than the Holocaust). He reads Mein Kampf during dinner instead of interacting with his family. His entire career is based on obsessing over an evil person who accomplished many things, but Gladney is stuck in a cycle of teaching the same things every day, every year, to similar faces who don't give a poo poo. Right, this stuff is great in the Youtube era. Gladney's back-and-forth with Murray where they compare Hitler and Elvis is great, it's this weird idea that it doesn't matter why someone is famous, the fame is the reason for itself. We're obsessed with fame regardless of what it springs from. It's the same thing with the Most Photographed Barn in America. It doesn't matter what the barn did, it's entirely about how crowds kind of propagate on themselves. The barn's popular because it's popular, which is pretty much every jump-cutting tween that's making insane ad revenue before they can even smoke. The point is that it's still empty, even when you think you got what you wanted. There wouldn't be a story if it was "guy gets the American dream and it's just as fantastic as he expected and he never wanted for anything again." Squashing Machine fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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Jun 6, 2018 21:26
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Sham bam bamina! posted:You called him "deeply offensive" and unsympathetic earlier. Now he's merely boring and does what anyone would in his shoes? Eh, you're kinda eliding the difference between comments I meant to refer to the author and comments referring to the protagonist, but that's probably my fault for lack of clarity anyway. That said . . . sure? I'll own that. Reactions fall on a spectrum. Things can be both offensive and boring simultaneously. "unsympathetic" and "boring" aren't that far apart, and yeah, blasé privilege is pretty offensive ?  It's not the privilege qua privilege so much as the blasé part that irritates me though, I think. Austen's characters are privileged but they own it and never pretend they're anything else, and the struggle to maintain or gain privilege is part of what drives the novel. Gladney just seems to assume that being a white male university professor is the world's default setting. Franchescanado posted:But some of the satire has become stronger, in my opinion. For instance, Gladney's (self-created) obsession with Hitler and Nazism. He created the Hitler program, it's not like he was hired for the job. He went out of his way to make a place at the school he worked for to make a career of studying him. Partially it's his way of idolizing power and influence, and he completely ignores that it was only used for evil selfish purposes (in fact, he's more interested in Hitler's relationship with his mom than the Holocaust). He reads Mein Kampf during dinner instead of interacting with his family. His entire career is based on obsessing over an evil person who accomplished many things, but Gladney is stuck in a cycle of teaching the same things every day, every year, to similar faces who don't give a poo poo. yeah, those are fair points. Like I said, the book is not bad. It even has moments of brilliance.
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Jun 6, 2018 21:27
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Eh, you're kinda eliding the difference between comments I meant to refer to the author and comments referring to the protagonist, but that's probably my fault for lack of clarity anyway. 
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Jun 6, 2018 21:28
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Sham bam bamina! posted:If Jack Gladney is at fault for taking his job for granted because that type of job will become harder to hold onto decades later, you might as well say that Nikolai in Anna Karenina is at fault for not getting himself vaccinated against tuberculosis. No, but at the same time you cannot ask a reader to experience the novel in the era it was written instead of as a modern person. The reader has no responsibility to meet the novel on its own terms. If a character becomes unsympathetic from the perspective of a different generation, that is not the fault of the reader.
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Jun 6, 2018 21:29
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WASDF posted:Yes. I meant to advocate that if it wasn't clear. The majority of TBB posters seem adamant about never leaving the safe zone of their narrow perspectives, let alone considering multiple contexts for the book they're reading.
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Jun 6, 2018 21:29
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Franchescanado posted:The majority of TBB posters seem adamant about never leaving the safe zone of their narrow perspectives, let alone considering multiple contexts for the book they're reading. why should I consider other perspectives when mine is the right one?
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Jun 6, 2018 21:31
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Mel Mudkiper posted:The reader has no responsibility to meet the novel on its own terms. Edit: Not that any of this is really relevant to the discussion anymore, but you weren't looking at the point I was actually making. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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Jun 6, 2018 21:34
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Mel Mudkiper posted:why should I consider other perspectives when mine is the right one? That wasn't a personal shot at anyone, just an observation of TBB.
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Jun 6, 2018 21:35
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Mel Mudkiper posted:why should I consider other perspectives when mine is the right one? BRB getting this tattooed on my spine
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Jun 6, 2018 21:37
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the real white noise is all of these loving posts
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Jun 6, 2018 21:55
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Just a quick aside, considering Roth died recently and I haven't read any of his stuff, has his work aged better than Delilo's? If so, which would be one to read?
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Jun 6, 2018 22:04
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Furious Lobster posted:Just a quick aside, considering Roth died recently and I haven't read any of his stuff, has his work aged better than Delilo's? If so, which would be one to read? Roth wrote a book about a white-passing professor of black descent who gets ironically oustered for accidentally using an anti-black slur, which means he has official Canceled status in 2018. This just so happens to coincide with his actual life being also canceled
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Jun 6, 2018 22:12
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Sham bam bamina! posted:How is understanding the conditions of the period in which a book is set equivalent to what you're talking about? Acknowledging that the academic job market was different in the 1980s or that the tuberculosis vaccine wasn't yet invented in the 1870s is not a value judgement. It seems like you are suggesting a starving person cannot dislike reading about a person who is tired of eating at the nearby restaurants because the character is from a place and context with lots of food
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Jun 6, 2018 22:17
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Mel Mudkiper posted:It seems like you are suggesting a starving person cannot dislike reading about a person who is tired of eating at the nearby restaurants because the character is from a place and context with lots of food They can, but it's a pretty lovely place to start your criticism from. And, obviously, these books were widely purchased and read by large swathes of the population, poor included. Maybe it's wish-fulfillment, maybe it's the same impulse that makes people wave at the President's limo, or maybe it's because these characters are depicted navigating problems of life and existence that are relevant even outside their individual caste.
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Jun 6, 2018 22:29
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Mel Mudkiper posted:It seems like you are suggesting a starving person cannot dislike reading about a person who is tired of eating at the nearby restaurants because the character is from a place and context with lots of food
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Jun 6, 2018 22:31
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Squashing Machine posted:They can, but it's a pretty lovely place to start your criticism from. Subject positioning* is the only place to start criticism from, otherwise you are deceiving yourself and others *- I would use the term subjectivity here but most people misunderstand what it means so I elected for this alternative term. Sham bam bamina! posted:That makes sense. I had misunderstood what you and Hieronymous Alloy were getting at. Still think that outright offense is a bridge too far from that point. No worries
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Jun 6, 2018 22:35
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Squashing Machine posted:or maybe it's because these characters are depicted navigating problems of life and existence that are relevant even outside their individual caste.
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Jun 6, 2018 22:39
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Sham bam bamina! posted:ding ding ding I feel like the universal human experience argument is always used to defend the hegemonic perspective but never less represented perspectives
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Jun 6, 2018 22:43
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Subject positioning* is the only place to start criticism from, otherwise you are deceiving yourself and others If the sum whole of your criticism is "this character is better-off than I am, which means their experiences are completely irrelevant to my life, and quite offensive, actually," then yeah, that's pretty laughable. You're walking back the entire purpose of literature being about the commonality of human experience and our shared humanity. It's Brave New World caste poo poo, just inverted.
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Jun 6, 2018 22:45
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Squashing Machine posted:If the sum whole of your criticism is "this character is better-off than I am, which means their experiences are completely irrelevant to my life, and quite offensive, actually," . It's a good thing no one is arguing this
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Jun 6, 2018 22:46
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I feel like the universal human experience argument is always used to defend the hegemonic perspective but never less represented perspectives The human experience is the aim of literature and the entire reason to read from people who don't share your culture or class. It shows that there are commonalities that make us more alike than we are different. Unless, you don't actually believe that to be true, in which case it's just propaganda to keep us happy with the status quo, which is a really grim way of looking at books, man.
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Jun 6, 2018 22:49
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Squashing Machine posted:The human experience is the aim of literature and the entire reason to read from people who don't share your culture or class. It shows that there are commonalities that make us more alike than we are different. Paging Dr. Eagleton EDIT: Like I don't even agree with Terry Eagleton but hoo boy he would have something to say about that quote Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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Jun 6, 2018 22:53
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Paging Dr. Eagleton What do you think the point of literature is, then? Just another weapon in the culture wars? Are you really that jaded?
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Jun 6, 2018 22:57
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Squashing Machine posted:What do you think the point of literature is, then? Just another weapon in the culture wars? Are you really that jaded? Literature is about exploring the multitudinous nature of human experience, not the reduction of it to a set of arbitrary and hegemonic "universals"
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Jun 6, 2018 22:58
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Literature is about exploring the multitudinous nature of human experience, not the reduction of it to a set of arbitrary and hegemonic "universals" Community. Identity. Stability. Got it.
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Jun 6, 2018 23:00
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I feel like the universal human experience argument is always used to defend the hegemonic perspective but never less represented perspectives Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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Jun 6, 2018 23:02
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Sham bam bamina! posted:"The universal human experience argument", as if it's some stock arguing trope and not a valid appraisal of what people write about. Its something that comes up a lot when arguing about hegemonic perspectives. Its the classic bias white men have where they assume books by white men speak to "universal" experiences while books by non-white men speak instead to "Identity" Its the Sam Harris fallacy. I am not saying you are doing it, but any time I hear about "universal" anything in regards to literature I get nervous. And in general, I do reject the notion that the moral outcome of art is to uncover "commonality" or "universal truth" because A. I don't think universal truth exists and B. Commonality is often dictated and weaponized by those with the greatest amount of social power. Sham bam bamina! posted:Both Anna Karenina (if you'll forgive my bringing it up again) and Invisible Man deal with the questions of defining personal and national identity, whether it's affluent Russians or impoverished Blacks who are trying to work out their answers. If you, presumably not a Native American, read Reservation Blues and give a poo poo about the people in it, how is there not some universal character there? I think the point of art to expand our limited scope of subjective human experience. If you can empathize and connect with elements of an experience or struggle, that is a good thing. However, I do not think that connection speaks to anything "universal" as much as it is a bridging of subject positioning and experience. In summary, art should build empathy not by convincing you that everyone has a shared universal experience at the core of their being, but by showing you that the human experience is vast and dynamic.
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Jun 6, 2018 23:10
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Mel Mudkiper posted:In summary, art should build empathy not by convincing you that everyone has a shared universal experience at the core of their being, but by showing you that the human experience is vast and dynamic. Mel Mudkiper posted:the human experience is vast and dynamic. Mel Mudkiper posted:the human experience
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Jun 6, 2018 23:11
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I feel like the universal human experience argument is always used to defend the hegemonic perspective but never less represented perspectives James Baldwin posted:You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.
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Jun 6, 2018 23:12
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Sham bam bamina! posted:That definite article is my point. Humanity is a universal identity. Humanity is a universal identity but in reading literature we come to understand that the elements we consider universal to the human experience are often subjective My point is that the human experience cannot be reduced to a set of universals, but instead an endlessly complex series of interlocking subjective experiences
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Jun 6, 2018 23:15
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Of course he's quoting from the biggest hegemons there are. Even Baldwin is in on it. We all know you can never really understand someone who is different from you, you can only pretend to.
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Jun 6, 2018 23:22
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drat this is a tasty meltdown
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Jun 6, 2018 23:25
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Humanity is a universal identity but in reading literature we come to understand that the elements we consider universal to the human experience are often subjective
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Jun 6, 2018 23:26
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Jun 6, 2018 23:26
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fridge corn posted:drat this is a tasty meltdown I am not even sure who is supposed to be melting down here Sham bam bamina! posted:Then why even bother differentiating the categories of "hegemonic" and "marginalized" perspectives if every perspective represents only itself? If black people can have something in common, why can't people at large? What does the word "human" even mean if you won't allow yourself to use "human" as a set? Human doesn't actually mean anything inherently, which is the point. All labels are ultimately arbitrary, and because of that wholly subject to deconstruction. There is nothing inherent in any category, because it is built on the weak foundation of language.
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Jun 6, 2018 23:27
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I am not even sure who is supposed to be melting down here hint: it's the guy who got really mad when someone said his favourite book is bad
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Jun 6, 2018 23:28
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Humanity is a universal identity but in reading literature we come to understand that the elements we consider universal to the human experience are often subjective I just bask in the empathy, and feel something kind of cosmic about things like DEATH and LOVE. That's all...
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Jun 6, 2018 23:28
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The one book about an idle rich white guy that I want to read but haven't got around to is A Rebours by Huysmans
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Jun 6, 2018 23:28
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Clearly Mel has academic daddy issues
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