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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > "Real literature" and fantasy/sci-fi/genre fiction
 
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A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

Oliver Reed posted:

Essentially I don't think it matters: you can read whatever you want to read and as long as you're having fun or getting something out of the experience, who gives a poo poo?

I don't care about the definition of literature but this is a really poor attitude, since reading nothing but stupid books is going to make your brain turn into liquid. if you read books that aren't stupid, you'll be able to think about things better.

* # ¿ Jul 17, 2017 06:00
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# ¿ May 22, 2024 11:33
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A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I've noticed that genre-heavy readers and literary-heavy readers both think they are getting the short end of the stick.

Literary readers think genre is way more popular because it dominates pop culture more but genre people think lit is more popular because it gets more mainstream credibility

'Lit' doesn't actually get more mainstream credibility though? It's given grudging attention at times but only because that's what people are 'supposed' to pay attention to, and even then they'll usually avoid genuinely innovative or challenging authors in favour of like a murakami or someone similar.

* # ¿ Jul 18, 2017 00:25
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A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

 yeah, escapist genre stuff is about as steeped in contemporary society as you can get.

* # ¿ Jul 19, 2017 12:06
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A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

Tree Goat posted:

i don't have the energy to add in all the žižek lisps, so you'll have to insert those yourself:

fiction only has the potential to be revolutionary if it is engaged with the lived conditions of real people, even aspirationally. there is a reason that soviet realism was the official artistic and literary style of the soviet union. by retreating to fantasy worlds, we cede control over affecting the existing order, and so act to reinforce it (c.f. adam curtis' "hypernormalisation").

escapism necessitates a retreat from these conditions, and so, paradoxically, is the most beholden to them. marx claimed that "the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist" so too, are the works of verne and gibson indebted to the material conditions at the time of their creation. gibson himself acknowledges this with his short story "the gernsback continuum," which deals explicitly with the combination of nostalgia and second-hand naïveté when we reflect on science fiction written even a decade or two older than our own.

Thank you.

* # ¿ Jul 20, 2017 00:40
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A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

ShinsoBEAM! posted:

The best way I had it explained to me was

Literature focus on
Writing Quality > Deeper Meaning > Characters > Plot

While genre more or less goes
Plot > Characters > Writing Quality > Deeper Meaning

i think maybe you need to find a different person to explain it

* # ¿ Jul 21, 2017 06:51
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A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

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.

* # ¿ Jul 24, 2017 12:00
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A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

Hate Fibration posted:

This was too good. No one's gonna top this. I'm out.


Please do not spend actual effort on my dumb posts. Art is important and without music life would be a mistake.

so you were never actually interested in having your ideas engaged with or challenged then

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.

its not 'pretentious' to be like, this guy writes way better than these other guys

* # ¿ Jul 25, 2017 01:03
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A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

Halloween Jack posted:

Is it even that impenetrable, or simply unappealing? I don't keep up with literary fiction, but my stereotype of it is that it's mostly about family drama, upper-middle-class ennui, and/or people who work at a college.
That stuff is the bad literary fiction as a weird steroetype that cool people don't read.

* # ¿ Jul 27, 2017 04:43
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# ¿ May 22, 2024 11:33
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A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

learnincurve posted:

I have no strong opinion on this debate but reading Gadsby By Ernest Vincent Wright is exactly like being repeatedly walloped upside the head with a thesaurus.

http://spinelessbooks.com/gadsby/01.html

If youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn’t constantly run across folks today who claim that “a child don’t know anything.”A child’s brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult’s act, and figuring out its purport.

what's wrong with that sentence exactly

* # ¿ Aug 2, 2017 07:02
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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > "Real literature" and fantasy/sci-fi/genre fiction