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TheAardvark posted:Is The Name Of The Rose a good (the best) starting point for Eco? That's the big obvious one which I've never gotten around to reading. It was my first Eco and is still my favourite, so I'd say yes. That said, what makes The Name of the Rose "Literature™" rather than "Historical Fiction"? E: like, until they came up here it never occurred to me to think of Rose or Foucault's Pendulum as Literature, partly because they both seem to belong to existing genres (historical mystery and conspiratorial thriller respectively) and partly because they're fun and accessible reads ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 19:00
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Lex Neville posted:"Literary" is a quality any kind of fiction can have and is separate from genre altogether. There are loads of literary works of historical fiction This makes sense, but it is not, in practice, how most people categorize it. You can argue that "what genre" and "literary y/n" are separate axes and that (e.g.) the strict segregation between Genre Fiction and Actual Literature¹ in bookstores and libraries is an artefact of the difficulty involved in placing the same volume on two different shelves at the same time, but even outside those contexts, most people seem to draw a sharp divide between them -- a book is either genre fiction or literary fiction, never both. You see that in this forum, in fact; most of the forum is people reading genre fiction for fun, and then there's a minority of people who are very into Serious Literature, and the latter have a lot of poo poo to talk about the former. Growing up, we didn't really have this division, and The Name of the Rose tended to drift between "historical stuff" like Shogun, A Choice of Destinies, I, Claudius, and my dad's huge collection of historical romances, and "mystery stuff" like Doyle, Christie, and Stout, depending on the whims of whoever shelved it last, but this really doesn't seem to be the norm in most public places where people talk about books. ¹ which are often just used as shorthands for "bad books" and "good books" by whoever's talking quote:Years ago in uni we had a discussion about more or less this subject and I remember my professor pitching the idea that the reason typical genre-fiction genres such as SF/F, romance, whodunnits etc are often not considered literature is that (historically) many such works either are formulaic or offer (relatively) little artistic or intellectual value, and for whatever that's worth, it has kind of stuck with me. What exactly makes literature literary will probably never be settled, though, so in the end, who really gives a poo poo. The point is not whether a work is literary. Everyone's never going to agree on that. The point is whether it's good. This becomes a vicious cycle, though; there's nothing of "artistic or intellectual value" in genre fiction because anything of value² retroactively becomes Serious Literature. I've seen this dynamic at work a lot over the years and it frustrates me immensely. And often "artistic or intellectual value" is just used as a proxy for "the author is safely dead and the book is turgid and inaccessible enough that I can use having read it as an excuse to poo poo on people who haven't". I'm no longer entirely sure what the point of this post was, except perhaps to explain why I was so surprised to see Eco represented here -- his books are fun, gripping, accessible³, and slot neatly into existing genre categories, i.e. everything that literary fiction isn't (or, at least, everything that the loudest proponents of literary fiction seem to want it not to be). The same applies to Lord of the Flies, on reflection. It was one of the few assignments in school that I actually enjoyed reading, rather than grimly trudging through in between C.J. Cherryh novels. ² for some definition of "value" anyways ³ I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of depth that I missed -- especially in Rose, which I read when I was like 14 and should probably reread -- but you don't need to be a deep-sea diver to enjoy them, is my point
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Jun 1, 2020 23:21
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I think "genre fiction" as opposed to "literary fiction" is a bit of a misnomer. After all, if you really feel the need to, you can make up a genre for any kind of fiction, literary or otherwise. In other words, prefacing "fiction" with whichever genre does not preclude it from being "literary".
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Crimpolioni posted:The lit-crowd on this forum and probably everywhere loves Eco and are vocal about saying it I mean it's not like I ever actually looked at the literature thread in this forum—between the child-loving title and the fact that the BotL was the most prominent face of the literature crowd here, why the gently caress would I ever be tempted to? Lex Neville posted:As for the rest of your post, if you want I'll respond more elaborately later tonight or tomorrow as I'm working right now, but I'm getting the sense that you're bemoaning a perceived trend that you really don't have to let affect your own conviction. I don't mean for that to come off rude (and I hope it even makes sense, does it?). Yeah, I don't think it actually needs an elaborate response, I'm just kvetching about the tendency to present literature and genre as fundamental opposites and then use that false divide as an excuse to poo poo on people who enjoy genre fiction That and wondering who the Umberto Eco of sci-fi is On the plus side, this thread has reminded me that (a) there's still a bunch of Eco I haven't read and (b) I should reread Rose now that I'm older and hopefully better able to appreciate it.
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Jun 2, 2020 00:10
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TheAardvark posted:I'm happy this thread was made, please do not tempt restarting this argument Sorry, not trying to rekindle any arguments! I'm glad this thread exists. quote:Was already in the middle of a book but I think I'll be starting Name of the Rose this week. Apparently already owned on my Kindle(?). I'm assuming there's only the one translation? Huh. A delightful gift from your past self?
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Jun 2, 2020 01:02
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I think that's another part of it. People will make up their minds about this stuff when they're kids and don't have the frame of reference to appreciate it. I wonder if half the books you slogged through while wishing you were reading Cherryh would have the same effect today. Maybe?? I gave two or three of them another shot after university and still hated them, and on the flip side, I read Rose and Pendulum while I was in high school and enjoyed the poo poo out of them -- but those weren't school assignments, I borrowed them from my parents. I just think I'd appreciate them more if I reread them now.
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Jun 2, 2020 02:31
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