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The more i read this thread the more i think people are discussing entirely different things when talking about the same books. I mean when someone talks about the linguistic significance of the text and other person talks about feelings elicited it's was never a dialogue to begin. I think Mel and some other posters are, between the snark, significantly more versed in what constitutes a thorough analysis of a book, and try to use this as method of demonstrating their thesis about genre books. I personally like some of insights expressed,even when i disagree with them, but as a method of converting non-believers i think it crashes into a wall. I'm not in a position to argue, due to my poor english and non-existent literary studies, but it has been a fun ride. Please continue eviscerating these (some good) books.
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Jul 24, 2018 16:33
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Kefahuchi_son!!! posted:I think Mel and some other posters are, between the snark, significantly more versed in what constitutes a thorough analysis of a book, and try to use this as method of demonstrating their thesis about genre books. Bingo quote:but as a method of converting non-believers i think it crashes into a wall. For me its not so much about converting people as much as it is exposing the emptiness behind the whole idea that the only reason genre writers aren't respected is because those drat snooty academic critics refuse to acknowledge it. My basic premise is, if you want to be literature, you are going to be treated like literature and be deconstructed and analyzed for all your component elements and significance. If I was trying to convert anyone to believe anything, it is that academic criticism is not going "this book is good, this book is bad." As I have said before, I believe at my intellectual core that all text is simply text, and no more or less deserving of analysis than anything else. Its one of the reasons Neurosis' response to my criticism about his prose was so frustrating. Because I found fault with his prose doesn't mean I found fault with the novel. It doesn't even mean I was reviewing every element of the novel. Just because I was analyzing the prose negatively doesn't mean I also have to mentioned the themes or characterization or whatever as well, because that isn't what I was focusing on. The tools you use as a critic for any given reading of a singular text change that reading. If I were to speak of Hemingway in terms of poetry and craft, i would endlessly sing his praises. If I were analyzing it in terms of feminism or gender theory, I would be considerably less laudatory. There is no such thing as the single holistic "true" reading of a novel. I think Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans want "literary" recognition mostly because of a personal sense of insecurity. They don't like feeling as if their favorite works are secondary to "real" literature. And I completely understand that. However, there seems to be this misconception that "literary" works in academia are treated as holy relics and locked away behind a glass case where they can never be criticized. Its why that one fellow earlier made such a big stink out of the fact I thought Fitzgerald had bad prose. He didn't seem to realize that because someone is seen as a great "literary" writer it doesn't mean all negativity about them is now haram. And this is why critiquing Sci-Fi and Fantasy is so tiresome. When you treat the text how genre fans want it to be treated, they get all defensive because any non-laudatory comment is seen as reinforcing their own sense of inferiority. Criticism is a dissection of a work, and if you are not comfortable with seeing the guts of your favorite books, do not seek it.
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Jul 24, 2018 16:55
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Mel Mudkiper posted:My basic premise is, if you want to be literature, you are going to be treated like literature and be deconstructed and analyzed for all your component elements and significance. 
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Jul 24, 2018 17:26
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Uh, sci-fi and fantasy writers Deconstruct their genres all the time. I know you are making a joke, but it still made me so angry I involuntarily clenched my fist for a second
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Jul 24, 2018 17:35
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I think Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans want "literary" recognition mostly because of a personal sense of insecurity. They don't like feeling as if their favorite works are secondary to "real" literature. It always feels like this, and I think it's part of the common assumption that because a book is "literary" it's somehow "better" that is often reinforced by our teachers growing up. So to compensate people say look, this genre book is just as good as literary works!!!, in some attempt to get approval from a different group. Then whenever it gets critiqued people get mad and offended at the results, this gets even more muddied when said person is indifferent to aspects that are getting critiqued.
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Jul 24, 2018 17:50
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I think it's largely a historical legacy of the pulp era. Fifty years ago, yeah, critics neglected talking about SF & F and the pulp press. Today it's all grist for the mill, there are a zillion PHd's on John Carter and Conan and Lovecraft, so it's more a historical narrative than a present reality.
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Jul 24, 2018 17:57
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think it's largely a historical legacy of the pulp era. Fifty years ago, yeah, critics neglected talking about SF & F and the pulp press. yeah hell when I teach students how to search for classes the ENGL department is crowded with ENG200 Harry Potter courses and others
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Jul 24, 2018 18:16
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So tell me Mrs. Lincoln aside from that how was the play?
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Jul 24, 2018 18:33
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Do we consider Verne and Stapledon to be sci-fi? They're older than the modern conception of the genre, but they're still clear historical analogues in the same sense Peake may or may not be "fantasy" in the modern genre conception, but obviously influenced it. I think a writeup on Last and First Men would be kinda interesting, though I don't know if I have the time to get to it. It's both good and bad in very different ways from later stuff.Mel Mudkiper posted:I think Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans want "literary" recognition mostly because of a personal sense of insecurity. They don't like feeling as if their favorite works are secondary to "real" literature. And I completely understand that. However, there seems to be this misconception that "literary" works in academia are treated as holy relics and locked away behind a glass case where they can never be criticized. Its why that one fellow earlier made such a big stink out of the fact I thought Fitzgerald had bad prose. He didn't seem to realize that because someone is seen as a great "literary" writer it doesn't mean all negativity about them is now haram.
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Jul 24, 2018 19:07
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Mel Mudkiper posted:
See also: "video games as art"
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Jul 24, 2018 20:05
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Tim Burns Effect posted:See also: "video games as art"
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Jul 24, 2018 20:21
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Myst is every bit the equal of Invisible Cities. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jul 24, 2018 |
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Jul 24, 2018 20:36
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Tim Burns Effect posted:See also: "video games as art" Spec Ops: The Line is little more than a trite retelling of Apocalypse Now, dumbed down for Call of Duty players and using shock imagery and memes (WAR CRIMES BRO! UR STILL A GOOD PERSOM!) to distract from both this and the even greater sin of it's gameplay being a budget Gears of War clone.
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Jul 24, 2018 21:02
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anilEhilated posted:So what is the Dark Souls of literature? Any Dark Souls-like literature? Hey everyone! I've tried to find a good source for 'Souls-like' literature, without a ton of success. Then I thought I would bring it to the most helpful group of Souls fans I know! Some elements that I think it may have (feel free to include others):
-  The Book of the New Sun - Malazan Book of the Fallen - Ash: A Secret History - The First Law - Mythago Wood - Beyond Redemption Any suggestions are welcome, thanks!
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Jul 24, 2018 21:21
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Mel Mudkiper posted:yeah hell when I teach students how to search for classes the ENGL department is crowded with ENG200 Harry Potter courses and others Yup. Sure, fifty or sixty years ago, authors like Vonnegut wanted to avoid the "sci fi" label for fear of having their work "ghetto-ized" and published only in the pulp press. (I'd argue this is why Kilgore Trout is an unsuccessful pulp author in most of Vonnegut's work; he's an author-as-failure stand-in). There's no such thing any more and no such fears; Michael Chabon writes fantasy novels; I'm sure someone is writing their PhD thesis right now on Chuck Tingle.
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Jul 24, 2018 21:30
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anilEhilated posted:So what is the Dark Souls of literature? Gormenghast?
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Jul 24, 2018 21:41
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I've never rage quit a book because a monster five pages in kept killing me so I don't think Dark Souls has a literary equal. As for the divide between literary and genre fiction, I think academia still has some definite biases but it's much less than say, the view art history professors have towards illustration. I remember showing a book called Color and Light by illustrator James Gurney to a my professor of 20th Century Art and he nearly threw a chair at me. Couldn't manage it since he was usually drunk by the time the class finished (carried wine in a thermos which he drank while going over the slides.) Ccs fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jul 24, 2018 |
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Jul 24, 2018 21:43
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Bingo Reading genre to own the Your posts on Wolfe's prose were great. please post more stuff about your take on BOTNS
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Jul 24, 2018 22:25
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Tim Burns Effect posted:See also: "video games as art" oh dont get me started on that whole shitshow Seldom Posts posted:Reading genre to own the I will hop back in soon. I have been distracted by some other projects binging Octopath Traveler
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Jul 24, 2018 22:56
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Ben Nerevarine posted:Gormenghast? 1) utterly batshit fanbase constantly willing to fanatically fight over their pet theories regarding the somewhat ambiguously told stories, 2) being cited as an artistic, mechanical or storytelling influence to every other game out there, including those that came out before it, 3) having actual gameplay based on dying and retrying over and over against traps and enemies until you memorize their patterns and learn how to exploit them. ...Come to think of it, the Dark Souls of literature might actually be genre fiction.
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Jul 24, 2018 23:06
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Nah, it's going to either be Faulkner or late Joyce.
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Jul 24, 2018 23:09
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I would've thought the Dark Souls of literature would be characterised more by the painful and punishing experience of slogging through it than the genre trappings. Which makes me think to the last book I really had to struggle to drag myself through, inch-by-inch, before becoming much more willing to toss books if I wasn't enjoying them by a quarter of the way in - that being Proust's Swann's Way. Needless to say I did not drag myself through the remaining several thousand pages of In Search of Lost Time.Mel Mudkiper posted:And this is why critiquing Sci-Fi and Fantasy is so tiresome. When you treat the text how genre fans want it to be treated, they get all defensive because any non-laudatory comment is seen as reinforcing their own sense of inferiority. Criticism is a dissection of a work, and if you are not comfortable with seeing the guts of your favorite books, do not seek it. Oh please. Before engaging with the text at all, or having read anything beyond a very small number of excerpts forums posters would occasionally put up, you said several times Wolfe's books were 'bad' or 'badly written'. It's difficult to take the 'Oh, I want to analyse it in good faith but the idiot fans...' exasperation seriously. I mean, probably you were just low-effort trolling at the time, but that's not a very good way to make people receptive to discussion.
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Jul 24, 2018 23:18
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Neurosis posted:having read anything beyond a very small number of excerpts forums posters would occasionally put up, you said several times Wolfe's books were 'bad' or 'badly written'. Your damning evidence that I saw things that I thought were bad and said they were bad. When someone posts a terrible bit of prose in the "post great prose thread" I feel confident to assume the rest of the writing is gonna be poor because a bad piece of writing was being shown off as his best. Neurosis posted:It's difficult to take the 'Oh, I want to analyse it in good faith but the idiot fans...' exasperation seriously. I never said genre fans were idiots. I said they were insecure. And, to be fair, feeling like I am criticizing your intelligence because I am criticizing a book you like is kind of completely proving my point, don't you think?
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Jul 24, 2018 23:25
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Your damning evidence that I saw things that I thought were bad and said they were bad. When someone posts a terrible bit of prose in the "post great prose thread" I feel confident to assume the rest of the writing is gonna be poor because a bad piece of writing was being shown off as his best. I believe you made comments to the effect 'Oh it was all just artifice like when he wrote 900 pages badly lol sure buddy' having not read it - don't you think that's a bit beyond what that evidence would show? quote:And, to be fair, feeling like I am criticizing your intelligence because I am criticizing a book you like is kind of completely proving my point, don't you think? ??? That's exactly what you were doing before starting to read at all??? Edit: Anyway, this sniping is probably not a good use of time; I'll wait until Mel's finished and there's more substance to grapple with rather than acting out personal acrimony over 30 pages. And despite my antagonism, Mel, I do appreciate that you are putting time and effort into this which people are getting value out of. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Jul 24, 2018 |
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Jul 24, 2018 23:38
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Neurosis posted:I would've thought the Dark Souls of literature would be characterised more by the painful and punishing experience of slogging through it than the genre trappings. Which makes me think to the last book I really had to struggle to drag myself through, inch-by-inch, before becoming much more willing to toss books if I wasn't enjoying them by a quarter of the way in - that being Proust's Swann's Way. Needless to say I did not drag myself through the remaining several thousand pages of In Search of Lost Time. 
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Jul 24, 2018 23:44
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Neurosis posted:I believe you made comments to the effect 'Oh it was all just artifice like when he wrote 900 pages badly lol sure buddy' having not read it - don't you think that's a bit beyond what that evidence would show? Here, let me guide you through the comment Mel Mudkiper posted:I hope you all understand why I am skeptical to assume that Gene Wolfe totally deliberately chose to write badly for 900 pages because of the depth of his insight into his character and not just because he wrote poorly -I said the writing was bad -people said the writing was bad because it was in character of severian -severian narrates the entire 900 page novel -ergo, I assumed, that means the next 850 pages would be similarly written, ergo, poorly
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Jul 24, 2018 23:49
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Thanks for the good & cool analysis, Mel.Neurosis posted:I would've thought the Dark Souls of literature would be characterised more by the painful and punishing experience of slogging through it than the genre trappings. Which makes me think to the last book I really had to struggle to drag myself through, inch-by-inch, before becoming much more willing to toss books if I wasn't enjoying them by a quarter of the way in - that being Proust's Swann's Way. Needless to say I did not drag myself through the remaining several thousand pages of In Search of Lost Time.
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Jul 25, 2018 00:28
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Yeah, Mel, I like your critique. BotL's stuff can be fun to read but is also way confrontational, so a more neutral analysis of what you liked and didn't like is nice. Neurosis:  It's okay if Mel doesn't like the prose. I can buy that the prose is intentionally overblown and clunky because of the POV, and I can actually see the appeal of that on a level, but it also means the prose is overblown and clunky and if that's a struggle, it's not really worth struggling through 900 pages of that. I've never read any of Wolfe's stuff but it sounds like he does a lot of stuff that isn't exactly the best crafting of a narrative but that he finds satisfying on another level, and that's fine, but at the same time that means that something that looks amazing to you when viewed at the angle you're seeing at could look poorly constructed and shoddy from another angle. And that angle where it looks poorly constructed isn't wrong.
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Jul 25, 2018 00:52
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I feel it would be in poor taste to savage a book written by a fellow forum member Well, that's a relief for when I finally get around to finishing the one I started writing. Mel Mudkiper posted:Not necessarily a fan, I just thought it had good elements. I think it significantly failed in its characters, who were never given a chance to be anything more than archetypes. I also think the novel dwelled too much on the "events" of their alienation and less on the experience of the alienation. It was a deeply plot focused novel which I find to be a shame because it clearly had something to say, but never took the time to say it. Honestly, the way I've seen you talk about writing, even the faintest glimmer of praise is surprising and tempts me to consider you a "fan" of whatever you might give the aforementioned praise.
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Jul 25, 2018 03:28
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Here, let me guide you through the comment See, I disagree with the first premise. I think that was their mistake, in admitting that.
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Jul 25, 2018 03:31
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I never found Wolfe's prose clunky. It's dense but not distracting. Sometimes he puts an adverb after a verb instead of before, which changes the rhythm of the sentence, and avoids the -ing suffix like the plague. Other than that its easy going.
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Jul 25, 2018 03:32
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hey neurosis nothing personal but your posts are really bad and no one wants to read them
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Jul 25, 2018 19:40
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chernobyl kinsman posted:hey neurosis nothing personal but your posts are really bad and no one wants to read them Same to you. You add zero value here so please stop posting.
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Jul 26, 2018 01:01
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chernobyl kinsman posted:hey neurosis nothing personal but your posts are really bad and no one wants to read them I mean, as much as I was annoyed by neurosis, I wouldn't want anyone run out of the thread for getting upset.
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Jul 26, 2018 01:27
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It's extremely cool to own someone for their bad posting eight posts after they decide to stop their bad posting.
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Jul 26, 2018 01:38
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More close analysis of prose please. I would like to know about what makes writing I like not work well, and what could make it better.
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Jul 26, 2018 02:34
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20 month old checking in, would appreciate if someone would lift the spoon up to my mouth and make aeroplane noises while feeding me tia
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Jul 26, 2018 02:37
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Ccs posted:More close analysis of prose please. I would like to know about what makes writing I like not work well, and what could make it better. Yeah getting back into the book tomorrow
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Jul 26, 2018 02:40
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CestMoi posted:20 month old checking in, would appreciate if someone would lift the spoon up to my mouth and make aeroplane noises while feeding me tia Oh, baby wants to be fed now? Typical
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Jul 26, 2018 04:13
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We gonna review any more books? I kinda wanna do NK Jemisons Evil Earth thing, because I think the entire "discrimination against magic people === IRL racism" trope so many genre works love just doesn't work.
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Jul 27, 2018 06:13
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