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So what advantages do literature have over some decent non-fiction? The idea that it enriches your understanding of the world and the human condition always seemed misplaced to me given that what you are really learning is what some artist thinks about how things work. Which isn't exactly very compelling. Unless you want to argue that the aesthetic experience of prose and rich character development is inherently valuable? Hate Fibration fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Jul 23, 2017 |
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Jul 23, 2017 12:05
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Hate Fibration posted:So what advantages do literature have over some decent non-fiction? The idea that it enriches your understanding of the world and the human condition always seemed misplaced to me given that what you are really learning is what some artist thinks about how things work. Which isn't exactly very compelling. What are the advantages of watching a movie over a documentary? Also, no second hand knowledge is ever without bias or the creator's perspective.
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Jul 23, 2017 13:00
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Hate Fibration posted:So what advantages do literature have over some decent non-fiction? The idea that it enriches your understanding of the world and the human condition always seemed misplaced to me given that what you are really learning is what some artist thinks about how things work. Which isn't exactly very compelling. Maybe you should try reading some literature.
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Jul 23, 2017 13:02
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All I'm learning looking at this painting is what water lilies look like when you have bad eye sight, which isn't exactly very compelling
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Jul 23, 2017 13:19
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CestMoi posted:All I'm learning looking at this painting is what water lilies look like when you have bad eye sight, which isn't exactly very compelling Much like how literature is infinitely more interesting when you actually read it.
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Jul 23, 2017 14:42
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There is nothing "standard " about Joseph goddamn Conrad.
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Jul 23, 2017 15:16
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me: i like to experience beautiful things made by people you, a genius: but some of those things might not even be objectively true me: i am defeated
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Jul 23, 2017 16:49
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Tree Goat posted:me: i like to experience beautiful things made by people You didn't claim that. I'm not talking to you. 
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Jul 23, 2017 18:04
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Hate Fibration posted:You didn't claim that. I'm not talking to you. Your posts are just what you think. Which isn't exactly very compelling.
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Jul 23, 2017 18:41
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Tree Goat posted:Your posts are just what you think. Which isn't exactly very compelling. Why are you like this?
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Jul 23, 2017 18:54
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People won't mock you so much if you don't say very stupid things.
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Jul 23, 2017 19:03
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CestMoi posted:People won't mock you so much if you don't say very stupid things. Now you tell me
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Jul 23, 2017 21:05
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Hate Fibration posted:Unless you want to argue that the aesthetic experience of prose and rich character development is inherently valuable? Look at this stupid sentence you should have your nose pushed in it like a dog who poo poo on the carpet
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Jul 23, 2017 21:31
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Look at this stupid sentence Tell me why!
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Jul 23, 2017 22:23
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Hate Fibration posted:Tell me why! A. You are misconstruing fact for truth B. You are naively ignoring the artificiality of all narratives and the role of the storyteller in creating meaning C. If I have to explain to you while beautiful things are valuable you are literally irredeemable as a human being
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Jul 23, 2017 23:21
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why don't I wander into TBB, uh, more often
dooinit fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Jul 24, 2017 |
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Jul 24, 2017 06:41
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Hate Fibration posted:Tell me why! Dude you literally just posted 'Unless you want to argue that Good Thing is inherently valuable?' and acted like you were posing a question with a more deep and meaningful answer than 'No poo poo'. If the aesthetic experience of prose and character has no inherent value, what is there in a book that does?
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Jul 24, 2017 06:57
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To get serious for a minute - reader contract is a big distinction but there's also a cultural element to consider. Alice, who picks up The Spaceship's Adventure from the space opera section of the bookshop because the raygun on the cover catches her eye, will likely expect certain elements from the book (a plot-driven story, speculation of what spacefaring technology might be in the future, action, etc). Bob, over in the literary fiction section looking at The Profession-haver's Daughter-Wife, will expect carefully-crafted prose, much internal dialogue and character change, no glorified violence, and so on. He'll be very disappointed if the Daughter-Wife builds a raygun and shoots off in a rocket to fight in spacewars. So lots of folk say, "it's all marketing, literary fiction is just another genre of fiction, like horror or romance" but I think that's a bit misleading because there's such a huge cultural difference of perception between genre and lit. The thing is - in Australia where I'm from - writing "literary fiction" can get you awards and government grants which are never given to genre authors. There's a a bunch grants, awards, competitions, conventions etc set up by both government grants and non-profit organisations. They can give young aspiring writers a massive leg up. "Genre" fiction does not receive this cultural "recognition" and is not taken seriously (occasionally it's tolerated if it's YA). Lit books will get reviews in the Sunday newspapers but sci-fi books almost never will. I don't know what it's like in the US (different I imagine), but in a small middlebrow country with a very spread-out population like Australia, this stuff is super important to author careers - our population is tiny and conservative, it's borderline impossible to chalk even a meagre living from being a fiction writer, and this sort of stuff is all we got. If Bob writes great debut novel that's considered literary, he can send it to competitions and win awards, get invited to festivals, apply for writing residencies in lovely old houses, and so on. If Alice writes a fantastic debut that's considered genre, all of that is closed to her, because it won't not considered serious fiction. And - having an element of non-realism/speculative/fantastic stuff will almost always get you flagged as genre (with rare strange exceptions that seemed to be tied to foreign authors, but Magical Realism is a whole another beast). This is understandable if you're talking about a genre book that relies on tropes and conventions - your book might be considered less original because it relies on frameworks built by others. But that's not all genre books by far - for every Weiss and Hickman, there's a Gibson and Banks. You can write a fantastic novel, examine serious issues, be existential and all, but the presence of a speculative/fantastic/mythic element will get the book flagged as genre and it'll be shut out from a lot of opportunities as a result. I suspect genre might be looked down upon more because a book with horrid writing and awful plots can still sell if it hits the "sweet spot" for readers who are into certain niche things, love to read about them, and will love books about them even if the book is of objectively poor quality (e.g. Ready Player One). To get a Lit piece on the bookstore shelves, you have to be able to string a few sentences together at least. Or perhaps it's because genre stuff is considered more financially profitable in the US, and is so considered less serious because it's less challenging to write (due to less financial obstacles) and less challenging to read (due reliance on familiar tropes)? I dunno.
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Jul 24, 2017 07:28
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Wheat Loaf posted:I'm not sure how to delineate the categories. "Genre" fiction is more than just sci-fi and fantasy, right? Something like, say, Nero Wolfe mysteries or romance novels would be "genre" fiction, yes? I assume that must be the case. I'd love to hear someone actually attempt to defend The Road as not being paint-by-numbers dystopian science fiction.
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Jul 24, 2017 08:33
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ZeroCount posted:If the aesthetic experience of prose and character has no inherent value, what is there in a book that does? Literally nothing. That's the point. The arguments put forth against genre fiction rely on this conceit that literature possesses some intrinsic value outside of entertainment. Hate Fibration fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Jul 24, 2017 |
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Jul 24, 2017 10:18
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Hate Fibration posted:Literally nothing. That's the point. The arguments put forth against genre fiction rely on this conceit that literature possesses some intrinsic value outside of entertainment. Denying the value of art doesn't strengthen your case it makes you look like some hosed up anime weirdo
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Jul 24, 2017 10:27
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Ras Het posted:Denying the value of art doesn't strengthen your case it makes you look like some hosed up anime weirdo Gross, anime is terribly written.
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Jul 24, 2017 10:32
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Screen animation is unironically the ideal medium for fantastical storytelling, which is the basic problem with (SFF) genre lit: it's obsolete.
Peel fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Jul 24, 2017 |
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Jul 24, 2017 11:13
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Hate Fibration posted:Literally nothing. That's the point. The arguments put forth against genre fiction rely on this conceit that literature possesses some intrinsic value outside of entertainment. I'm not sure if you've actually thought this position through.
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Jul 24, 2017 11:56
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Hate Fibration posted:Literally nothing. That's the point. The arguments put forth against genre fiction rely on this conceit that literature possesses some intrinsic value outside of entertainment. I don't think you can call something a conceit if it's completely true.
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Jul 24, 2017 12:00
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https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312
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Jul 24, 2017 12:09
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You can spend money on "real literature" books as much as you want but I guarantee I've got the better deal by having surgery to transform me into a baby again so I can lie in a cot and paw ineffectually at a mobile
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Jul 24, 2017 12:09
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Hate Fibration posted:Literally nothing. That's the point. The arguments put forth against genre fiction rely on this conceit that literature possesses some intrinsic value outside of entertainment. A fedora has gained sentience Liquid Communism posted:I'd love to hear someone actually attempt to defend The Road as not being paint-by-numbers dystopian science fiction. I'm not the biggest fan of The Road but if you are going to wholly discount the role of craft in its popularity you are giving the book a tremendously pedestrian reading. Like, simply looking at The Road and going "heh typical post-apocalyptic fiction" is to reduce all literature to simply the recounting of plot details. Craft matters. Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Jul 24, 2017 |
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Jul 24, 2017 12:32
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It's kind of a weird argument to make anyway, since literature is more entertaining than genre.
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Jul 24, 2017 13:00
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I'm not the biggest fan of The Road but if you are going to wholly discount the role of craft in its popularity you are giving the book a tremendously pedestrian reading. the road is "just" typical post-apocalyptic fiction compared to Blindness though.
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Jul 24, 2017 14:40
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I am still struggling to comprehend the level of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual emptiness it takes to reduce all art to utilitarian entertainmentulvir posted:the road is "just" typical post-apocalyptic fiction compared to Blindness though. Well Blindness is one of the greatest novels ever written so that's not really fair. Like, I will defend McCarthy as a generational talent but Jose Saramago is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jul 24, 2017 |
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Jul 24, 2017 14:41
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true, I was just splitting hairs
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Jul 24, 2017 14:42
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I am also really mad at The Road because its lesser McCarthy that won the Pulitzer over the way more deserving The Echo-maker by Richard Powers The Echo-Maker is probably the best American novel of the aughts EDIT: gently caress forgot about Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, second best American novel
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Jul 24, 2017 14:44
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CestMoi posted:You can spend money on "real literature" books as much as you want but I guarantee I've got the better deal by having surgery to transform me into a baby again so I can lie in a cot and paw ineffectually at a mobile This was too good. No one's gonna top this. I'm out. Mel Mudkiper posted:I am still struggling to comprehend the level of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual emptiness it takes to reduce all art to utilitarian entertainment Please do not spend actual effort on my dumb posts. Art is important and without music life would be a mistake.
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Jul 24, 2017 15:50
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Renunciation of the desire for transcendence is true wisdom; adult babies are the bodhisattvas of our age.
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Jul 24, 2017 16:13
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I am still struggling to comprehend the level of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual emptiness it takes to reduce all art to utilitarian entertainment their actual argument was missing a few premises in the original post but i think it is supposed to be something like "people say to read lit rather than genre because it's supposed to reveal truths about the human condition + it's aesthetically better, but if i want truth, why not just read non-fiction? and 'aesthetics' seems pretty hard to quantify, so..." so it's still very stupid, but not quite "why do these hu-mans make 'art,' it does not further their species, beep boop" Tree Goat fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jul 24, 2017 |
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Jul 24, 2017 16:25
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Hate Fibration posted:Literally nothing. That's the point. The arguments put forth against genre fiction rely on this conceit that literature possesses some intrinsic value outside of entertainment. This is extra dumb because genre fiction also has this intrinsic value. There's plenty of authors who write books that have "SCIENCE FICTION" or "FANTASY" stamped on the spine that I enjoy for their writing. People who bemoan genre fiction do so because they feel it doesn't live up to these standards, not because it has openly eschewed it. Is this you being mad that someone doesn't like a book you like because it really doesn't matter if they don't
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Jul 24, 2017 17:46
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Mel Mudkiper posted:A fedora has gained sentience Craft does matter, but then we are also in need of a better definition of 'genre' beyond pretentious snobbery still based in the era of pulps.
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Jul 24, 2017 22:34
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Liquid Communism posted:Craft does matter, but then we are also in need of a better definition of 'genre' beyond pretentious snobbery still based in the era of pulps. it's a normative category based on a combination of its content and its marketing, hth. not all books with spaceships in them are genre fiction, but all books with spaceships on the cover are genre fiction.
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Jul 24, 2017 23:10
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Tree Goat posted:it's a normative category based on a combination of its content and its marketing, hth.
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Jul 24, 2017 23:20
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