Complexity in European and American novels

[Jozanny]

Virgil asserts in another thread that European novels, and I presume he means the classics, are more *complex* than their American counterparts. As a value judgment I find this troubling, even though Virgil freely admits this is his opinion, and of course he is entitled to it.

If allowed, however, I think this is worth further examination, and think we need a thread where we can use spoiler content to look at the issue. I will give the argument this much, as a concession: Europe emerged as the ill begotten child of Roman Empire, and America *emerged* out of European territorial encroachment on indigenous populations.

So the one culture is older than the other, but I don't think the literature of the former is more complex than the latter, and the only way to get to that is to use example and comparison.

I will come back to do that, by and by.

[Leabhar]

What are some examples? I find European and American literature to be equally complex. We have our simple literature, but so do Europeans. English classics, for instance, are generally less complex than Russian classics.


Europe emerged as the ill begotten child of Roman Empire, and America *emerged* out of European territorial encroachment on indigenous populations.

That is very, very, very simplistic view of history so the result of using that as a basis is going to be very flawed. For one, American culture emerged from European culture almost in its entirety. Its simply a continuation/evolution of it on a different continent. You are also using political history as a beginning for culture, which makes absolutely no sense. Cultural history is more important. America emerged out of the churning of many European ethnic groups (and African, but really they are only 13% of the population), so it is by no means less culturally complex than Europe. All these cultures merged into one, with regional differences, so it be said even that America is more complex, culturally, than any single European country.

[Jozanny]

That is very, very, very simplistic view of history so the result of using that as a basis is going to be very flawed.

I never posted that I was attempting to use history to justify Virgil's claim. I just boiled it down. The Roman Empire collapsed. Europeans such as existed during the dark ages thought the end of the world was neigh. City states, nation states emerged. Capitalism developed on a micro-economic level. Explorers hit the new world and eventually and fairly rapidly destroyed native societies that existed at the time. Inca and Aztec. Canada and the United States emerged from the British Empire. Mexico and South America from Spain and France lost with a few notable exceptions.

Still simple and I know of nothing to basically refute the time line.

[mortalterror]

If by complex you mean convoluted, byzantine, prone to lengthy tangents, overreaching, cramped, crowded, and pedantic; then yes, European literature has a tendency to be more complex. American literature's strength was it's ability to see through all the gimickery, to throw away the useless baggage of culture, to strip writing down to it's essentials, and keep only what was useful. I think the pithy abstractions of yesterday are finally being purified in a stream of functional commercialism, and the head is being re-united with the body.

[Jozanny]

If by complex you mean convoluted, byzantine, prone to lengthy tangents, overreaching, cramped, crowded, and pedantic; then yes, European literature has a tendency to be more complex. American literature's strength was it's ability to see through all the gimickery, to throw away the useless baggage of culture, to strip writing down to it's essentials, and keep only what was useful. I think the pithy abstractions of yesterday are finally being purified in a stream of functional commercialism, and the head is being re-united with the body.

Well, I'd like to know what Virgil means by *complex*, since he started the controversy:yawnb:

I am not an expert on the birth of the novel, and I couldn't say what the first French, Spanish, German, or Italian novel is. I suppose that is deplorable. In England the canon asserts it was Joseph Andrews by Fielding, and I will have to take 18th century scholars at their word. For Spain, was it Don Quixote?

Now, America did not have a national literature until Hawthorne and Melville.

Don Quixote is complex; Joseph Andrews is complex in terms of giving fictional narrative an ontological realism, and a new form, taking over from the epic and adapting character to prose. Don Quixote in a way does the opposite, since Cervantes is asserting that fantasy is more powerful than daily existence.

But I don't see how this detracts from the power of the Puritan psyche in establishing an American literary voice. The Scarlet Letter is complex, and so is Moby Dick. Moby Dick is the American Epic, and is as rich in its own dialectic tensions as Don Quixote.

These are very distinct narratives, but difference doesn't make one more or less complex over the other.

I am just starting.:bawling: :D

[Leabhar]

If by complex you mean convoluted, byzantine, prone to lengthy tangents, overreaching, cramped, crowded, and pedantic; then yes, European literature has a tendency to be more complex. American literature's strength was it's ability to see through all the gimickery, to throw away the useless baggage of culture, to strip writing down to it's essentials, and keep only what was useful. I think the pithy abstractions of yesterday are finally being purified in a stream of functional commercialism, and the head is being re-united with the body.

How asinine. Throwing away culture is very bad. Commercialism is also disgusting. Talk about the corruption of literature.

[aabbcc]

Don Quixote is complex.
Why?

I am not interested nearly as much as what makes this specific example "complex"; rather, I do not understand what do you mean by "complex" and I am having difficulties following discussion due to that.
Which characteristics does a literary work have to have in order to, by your criteria, fit into the "complex" category?

[Jozanny]

Another way to restate the crux of my problem is complexity is not a good comparative measure.

Let's take a few more examples. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Both European, both aiming a critical eye, examining the end, need or use for aristocracy, and the corruption of virtue surrounding bourgeois sentiments, though I simplify horribly and Bovary is a complex experiment which still reverberates in its impact.

I don't think Dreiser's Sister Carrie is any less complex, and it upends the European trope of killing off sinning characters or heroines. If anything, Carrie's behavior is worse than Emma's, but she not only survives, but succeeds, is even rewarded, in the US at the turn of the century.

Some novels are difficult. Some novels are intricate and linguistically vibrant, but I cannot accept that European novels are more complex.

There may be an intrinsic cultural difference, in that the America of the 19th and 20th century did not pay lip service to government by monarchy--but that is the best any knowledgeable reader can offer, that the differences inform upon us as readers in various ways, and as the Americas matured, the hemisphere was less influenced by the *pushback* of European authors against imperialism, and more influenced by ethnic struggle, and expression, like Hispanic influences, and African American, and the attempt to level the social playing field.

And Virgil hasn't even posted here yet:p .


Why?

I am not interested nearly as much as what makes this specific example "complex"; rather, I do not understand what do you mean by "complex" and I am having difficulties following discussion due to that.
Which characteristics does a literary work have to have in order to, by your criteria, fit into the "complex" category?

Don Quixote is an easy book to read if properly translated or if one is fluent in Spanish but Cevantes offers a complex philosophy behind it about the nature of illusion, dream, fantasy, which Spaniards continue to use as an artistic trope right up into the 21st century, as in the film Vanilla Sky, with Cruise baby. It was an ambitious attempt by whatever is left of independence in Hollywood to let a real film maker gamble the dice.

I can hear luke beating me with a stick as I post:p , but I haven't read the novel in years and I am not going to anytime soon. It is the uber-fiction, if you like, from which everything European follows after--though the English have a stronger tradition in novel-as-social comedy and commentary. You don't get Fanny Burney without Fielding before her, you don't get Austen without Burney, then Trollope, and so forth. I agree with mortalterror on one thing. I have had my fill of English didactics--by the early 1900's, the literary world needed modernism, and I thank god for that.

[Virgil]

Did I say complex? I meant to say that in general the European novel in the 20th centurty is richer than the American novel. There are just more Erupean high tier great novels. I don't have the time now, but I'll come back to fill in more what i meant.

[Jozanny]

Did I say complex? I meant to say that in general the European novel in the 20th centurty is richer than the American novel.

Richer isn't any easier to hang one's hat on than complex. As I tried to state in my opening thread before my very quick historical timeline was challenged, Europeans have older traditions to draw on, inclusive of classical antiquity, but that is all I'll concede.

Of course, before the modern era, the Americas borrowed from classical antiquity as well, but native influences gradually differentiated the American ethos, and that is as early as Melville, who might said to be sympathetic to pantheism.

Augustus did not give a very kind gift to the world when he became Caesar. Yes, there were kings before that. Persia, and Pharoh, but Rome ruled the damn civilized world, and the Republic was an enlightened form of governance, but nooooooo, Otavian could not see that power held by right of birth would lead to upheavals which culminated and died a final death in the first World War.

That is one corroded legacy. I love good literature, whether in the European imperial tradition or not, but I shine my torch on the best of any culture, not simply that which couldn't let go of the right of kings.

[mortalterror]

Don Quixote is an easy book to read if properly translated or if one is fluent in Spanish but Cevantes offers a complex philosophy behind it about the nature of illusion, dream, fantasy, which Spaniards continue to use as an artistic trope right up into the 21st century, as in the film Vanilla Sky, with Cruise baby. It was an ambitious attempt by whatever is left of independence in Hollywood to let a real film maker gamble the dice.

I wouldn't call it ambitious so much as it was a decent remake in English of the popular 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes. It was hardly a gamble since the film was already a success in Spain and just needed the proper advertisement and mass market exposure to take it global. It made about as much sense as when Scorsese reshot the Hong Kong police drama Infernal Affairs for an English audience and called it The Departed. By the way, the originals are much better than their Americanized counterparts. I wouldn't call either example maverick film making by Hollywood rebels so much as they were calculated thefts by competent veterans. Besides, Cruise isn't independent. He's as entrenched and main stream as you can get.

[tractatus]

Comparing American literature to European is a big courage.
I suppose you call USA=America,
and when you say European it means all the continent from England to Russia, Spain to Germany, Portugal to Greece. Confusing, and a bit overlooking.

Choose any terms; Complexity or Richness or Creativity or...any. I dont think in any century, in any literary way American literature come even close to European.

[PeterL]

Virgil asserts in another thread that European novels, and I presume he means the classics, are more *complex* than their American counterparts. As a value judgment I find this troubling, even though Virgil freely admits this is his opinion, and of course he is entitled to it.

If allowed, however, I think this is worth further examination, and think we need a thread where we can use spoiler content to look at the issue. I will give the argument this much, as a concession: Europe emerged as the ill begotten child of Roman Empire, and America *emerged* out of European territorial encroachment on indigenous populations.

So the one culture is older than the other, but I don't think the literature of the former is more complex than the latter, and the only way to get to that is to use example and comparison.

I will come back to do that, by and by.

The culture of the Americas is part of Western Civilization that stretches back to the Sumerians and Egyptians and passed through the Greek and Roman cultures. While there may be differences in the amount of complexity in European and American literature, the reason certainly is not a matter of the age of the culture.

I would contend that the quantity of the complexity of the literature is not significantly different between Europe and America, but some of the types of complexity are based on local issues.

[Virgil]

Richer isn't any easier to hang one's hat on than complex. As I tried to state in my opening thread before my very quick historical timeline was challenged, Europeans have older traditions to draw on, inclusive of classical antiquity, but that is all I'll concede.

Of course, before the modern era, the Americas borrowed from classical antiquity as well, but native influences gradually differentiated the American ethos, and that is as early as Melville, who might said to be sympathetic to pantheism.

Augustus did not give a very kind gift to the world when he became Caesar. Yes, there were kings before that. Persia, and Pharoh, but Rome ruled the damn civilized world, and the Republic was an enlightened form of governance, but nooooooo, Otavian could not see that power held by right of birth would lead to upheavals which culminated and died a final death in the first World War.

That is one corroded legacy. I love good literature, whether in the European imperial tradition or not, but I shine my torch on the best of any culture, not simply that which couldn't let go of the right of kings.

I agree with Peter above. There is nothing stopping us from drawing from the same traditions.

[Jozanny]

Comparing American literature to European is a big courage.
I suppose you call USA=America,
and when you say European it means all the continent from England to Russia, Spain to Germany, Portugal to Greece. Confusing, and a bit overlooking.

Choose any terms; Complexity or Richness or Creativity or...any. I dont think in any century, in any literary way American literature come even close to European.

I was including North and South America. As to all of Europe, you are right. I cannot know the entire canon spread from east to west, but I don't like the yardsticks of European literature being more complex or richer than American literature.

[Virgil]

Oh if you're including South America, Jozy, as part of America, the South American novel is very rich!

[Jozanny]

Oh if you're including South America, Jozy, as part of America, the South American novel is very rich!

Then I guess we've made peace!:)

[Virgil]

Then I guess we've made peace!:)

:lol: I was never in war with you. :D

[curlyqlink]

in general the European novel in the 20th centurty is richer than the American novel.

I don't know... Faulkner is plenty complex. I guess a writer like Hemingway fosters the perception that American (U.S.) novels have a "plain speaking" style, very unlike Proust or Joyce. But is Hemingway less complex, less rich, than Proust? How do we even measure a thing like that?

In the 19th century, I think the generalization was true. Europe was the cultural leader. Things had shifted by the 20th century though...

[Virgil]

I don't know... Faulkner is plenty complex. I guess a writer like Hemingway fosters the perception that American (U.S.) novels have a "plain speaking" style, very unlike Proust or Joyce. But is Hemingway less complex, less rich, than Proust? How do we even measure a thing like that?

In the 19th century, I think the generalization was true. Europe was the cultural leader. Things had shifted by the 20th century though...

Other than Faulkner, who in my opinion is the greatest novelist of the 20th century, American novelists pretty much have a single good novel. Fitzgerald has The Great Gatsby, Ellison has Invisble Man, Bellow has The Adventures of Augie March, Capote has In Cold Blood, Morrison has Beloved, McCarthy has Blood Meridan. For me these are the really great American novels that I would compare with the European great novels. But each writer seems to only have one great in them.

No I do not think Hemingway is as great as Proust. I don't count Hemngway with the top tier American novelists. He's good but not great. I can't make up my mind on Pynchon and DeLillo. My hunch is that they are over rated.

[stlukesguild]

No I do not think Hemingway is as great as Proust. I don't count Hemngway with the top tier American novelists. He's good but not great.

As a novelist, I agree with you. Hemingway is not among the greatest. As a short story writer on the other hand...:thumbs_up

[mortalterror]

Other than Faulkner, who in my opinion is the greatest novelist of the 20th century, American novelists pretty much have a single good novel. Fitzgerald has The Great Gatsby, Ellison has Invisble Man, Bellow has The Adventures of Augie March, Capote has In Cold Blood, Morrison has Beloved, McCarthy has Blood Meridan. For me these are the really great American novels that I would compare with the European great novels. But each writer seems to only have one great in them.

No I do not think Hemingway is as great as Proust. I don't count Hemngway with the top tier American novelists. He's good but not great. I can't make up my mind on Pynchon and DeLillo. My hunch is that they are over rated.

I just lost a page and a half of cogent argument; so here it is short and sweet. Joyce sucks. Proust sucks. Faulkner is sometimes great but occasionally sucks. Capote, Morrison, and McCarthy are alright. Bellows is cool. I love the Great Gatsby, and Ernest Hemingway is a better writer than all of them. The end.

[Jozanny]

I just lost a page and a half of cogent argument; so here it is short and sweet.

Hate it when that happens.:crash:


Joyce sucks. Proust sucks. Faulkner is sometimes great but occasionally sucks. Capote, Morrison, and McCarthy are alright. Bellows is cool. I love the Great Gatsby, and Ernest Hemingway is a better writer than all of them. The end.

Yes, we cannot get away from a game of billards when cuing in on personal preferences;parlor games are a form of entertainment, which, as I may have posted elsewhere, is one of my failings with literature. I take it seriously and ask the same of the writers I read.

I appreciate Joyce up to a point, but only that. Maybe it is my Roman blood, but I don't care about the ever wailing Celtic ethos, (no offense to the Irish) which Joyce turned on its head so radically that he and Proust changed the course of literary endeavor for as long as we'll be able to understand modernism, cliched and dead as it is, the body is still there, and no writer worth their salt can ever really lose sight of what they are up against. Where does one go, or do, to find the next movement?

It isn't minimalism--that is simply a style, and others handle it a little better than McCarthy, from what I've seen thus far. Magical realism? Devolved into chicanery.

But, I think it is a fatal flaw to consider the European canon as simply *superior*. Any literature can be appreciated on its own terms, and the American aesthetic has its own terms, regardless of whether we prefer Flaubert to James, or Calvino to Marquez.

It is finding the lexicon which intrigues me, and maybe there isn't one, as tractus cautioned me, and yet, I think the literature informs upon cultural *differance* to channel Derrida, and cultural interchange too, and writing has very much changed in the modern era. It is ghettoized, academic, workshopped, insular, and it is partially the fault of modernists themselves that it became so. David Mitchell, whom I keep harping on, is the product of this academic insulation, and reading him may have something to do with why I am not writing so much any more. I cannot top Cloud Atlas. It achieves what I was vaguely groping toward in the 80's, but Mitchell wins. I cannot write like that, and maybe DeLillo is the only talent who can answer for Mitchell, that I don't know, and I also don't know what more will be done to torture language into yet another movement.

It isn't here yet.

[mortalterror]

Hate it when that happens.:crash:

It is finding the lexicon which intrigues me, and maybe there isn't one, as tractus cautioned me, and yet, I think the literature informs upon cultural *differance* to channel Derrida, and cultural interchange too, and writing has very much changed in the modern era. It is ghettoized, academic, workshopped, insular, and it is partially the fault of modernists themselves that it became so. David Mitchell, whom I keep harping on, is the product of this academic insulation, and reading him may have something to do with why I am not writing so much any more. I cannot top Cloud Atlas. It achieves what I was vaguely groping toward in the 80's, but Mitchell wins. I cannot write like that, and maybe DeLillo is the only talent who can answer for Mitchell, that I don't know, and I also don't know what more will be done to torture language into yet another movement.

Losing a long post when your computer crashes is as frustrating as being stopped in gridlock for an hour just a mile from your house.

My problem with Joyce and Proust is that they are a lot like the X-Games, an athletic competition where cyclists get together to show you everything your bike was never designed to do, and you should never try to do yourself. The person who can do the most tricks, who can jump highest, get off and on in mid air, who can flip and spin gets a shiny new medal. I doubt Lance Armstrong can do half of that stuff, or that he ever wanted to. That's how I feel about Hemingway. He was above gimmickry.

Although I hate the direction which twentieth century letters took, we got off lite compared to other mediums. The new visual aesthetic looks like the product of an Olympic competition for ugliness. I've got to wonder what was wrong with the old aesthetic values? Maybe, a couple of academics just couldn't live in a world filled with Michaelangelos and Dantes. Perish the thought. We may not need the overhaul of a full fledged Renaissance, but the slight tweaking of a Pre-Raphaelite type movement could do us all some good.

[Jozanny]

Losing a long post when your computer crashes is as frustrating as being stopped in gridlock for an hour just a mile from your house.

My problem with Joyce and Proust is that they are a lot like the X-Games, an athletic competition where cyclists get together to show you everything your bike was never designed to do, and you should never try to do yourself. The person who can do the most tricks, who can jump highest, get off and on in mid air, who can flip and spin gets a shiny new medal. I doubt Lance Armstrong can do half of that stuff, or that he ever wanted to. That's how I feel about Hemingway. He was above gimmickry.

Valid objection, but I've read deeper into Proust than Joyce, and the pan shots of the former are quiet transitions beautifully done.

[Virgil]

Losing a long post when your computer crashes is as frustrating as being stopped in gridlock for an hour just a mile from your house.

My problem with Joyce and Proust is that they are a lot like the X-Games, an athletic competition where cyclists get together to show you everything your bike was never designed to do, and you should never try to do yourself. The person who can do the most tricks, who can jump highest, get off and on in mid air, who can flip and spin gets a shiny new medal. I doubt Lance Armstrong can do half of that stuff, or that he ever wanted to. That's how I feel about Hemingway. He was above gimmickry.


That's a nice analogy, and I share your frustration with gimmicky writers, but the criteria is whether the technique is integral to the themes of the work. If the technique is there for the heck of displaying skill, that's a gimmick. If the technique amplifies themes of the work, than that's aesthetics, and the more original the aesthetics, the greater the work. I'm not going to comment on Proust since i'm not really familiar with him. But with Joyce, all of his novels integrate technique with themes and raise the works to a high standard of art.

Look, you like Hemingway, that's fine. As a short story writer, I think Hemingway is among the very best. As a novelist, I think The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell To Arms are good novels. The rest in my opinion are mediocre at best. His characters tend to be stock characters (which is why i think he's better at short stories), and the female characters are rediculously two dimensional. At his best I enjoy his prose.

[aabbcc]

Don Quixote is an easy book to read if properly translated or if one is fluent in Spanish but Cevantes offers a complex philosophy behind it about the nature of illusion, dream, fantasy [...]
Great, but that is not what I asked.
And even though I asked you, because it was convenient, it is a question I would actually love to ask everybody participating in this discussion - because nobody defined what they speak about, so the potentially great discussion does not have much sense. ;)

Elementary form of a definition is genus proximum cum differentia specifica. What I am interested in was what is complexity in a literary work. You can handle it in two ways:

1) Defining "complexity of a literary work", in which case you must first define complexity itself, to be able to specifically distinguish complexity of a literary work as opposed to any other type of complexity;
2) Defining "complex literary work", in which case you must first define literary work and then use complexity as differentia specifica of a set of literary works as opposed to non-complex ones, and explain where is the difference.

Of course, as we wish not to be overly meticulous, use the option 2) and skip defining literary work (or else we will go way off-topic and end up somewhere else), even though it is not exactly "correct" to do so, but for the purpose of this thread just make a distinction between complex literary work and non-complex literary work.

Then, and only then, will this discussion have sense, for we seem to be talking about a concept whose definition we have not agreed upon. Everybody is bringing up concrete examples, but nobody offered their definition of complexity. You cannot even attempt to 'measure' and 'compare' the complexity of national literatures unless you first define what the hell you mean by "complexity of a literary work". :)

[aabbcc]

But, I think it is a fatal flaw to consider the European canon as simply *superior*.
And I definitely agree with this.
A priori considering of specific canon to be "superior" (which, let us not forget, implies also a question of a value) to another would require a hell of an argumentation - and I sincerely doubt that any of us here has that much of a literary experience to seriously claim that based on experience.

[PabloQ]

From this string, the discussion seems to define literary work as the novel for the most part. Complexity in a novel comes from the basic components of the novel and how those components stand in relationship of one another. The number of characters and settings add complexity. The various relationships between characters add levels of complexity. The plot and numerous subplots layer in more complexity as the characters weave their in and out of them. Add in a heaping spoonful of psychology and voila, complexity.
To me, richness comes from the author's application of the aesthetic to create each component, to breathe life and individuality into each character in a believable way. Rich writing draws you in and guides you through the complexity in a way that can be confusing, but in the end is pleasurable.
That's just my clumsy take on it.
And if the discussion is to advance, I suggest leaving Joyce out of it. I've seen numerous threads run down a rathole once Joyce is brought into the discussion. He is just polarizing. You love him. You hate him. There seems to be very little middle ground with him and probably with Papa as well.
Now get back to entertaining me with how smart you all are!!

[stlukesguild]

Joyce sucks. Proust sucks. Faulkner is sometimes great but occasionally sucks. Capote, Morrison, and McCarthy are alright. Bellows is cool. I love the Great Gatsby, and Ernest Hemingway is a better writer than all of them. The end.

Joyce is way too difficult. Proust is way too long... I mean difficult. Faulkner is sometimes too difficult. Hemingway is easy. That at least seems to be the gist considering the rest of your comments:

My problem with Joyce and Proust is that they are a lot like the X-Games, an athletic competition where cyclists get together to show you everything your bike was never designed to do, and you should never try to do yourself. The person who can do the most tricks, who can jump highest, get off and on in mid air, who can flip and spin gets a shiny new medal. I doubt Lance Armstrong can do half of that stuff, or that he ever wanted to. That's how I feel about Hemingway. He was above gimmickry.

...I hate the direction which twentieth century letters took...

Sometimes art is very difficult... demanding a great deal of effort on the part of the audience. This is surely so of Joyce, although not so much of Proust... he merely demands an extended effort... not much less than Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gibbon, Robert Burton... or the collected efforts of most 19th century novelists for that matter. Joyce is very demanding... but how much less so is William Blake (the Blake of the epic visionary poems and not merely the Songs of Innocence/Experience), Milton, Dickinson, Dante? As Virgil notes there is a difference between gimmickry for the sake of gimmickry, and gimmickry (if it should even be called that) in the service of the art and the artist's intentions. Dante surely employed a vast arsenal of "gimmickry": the terza rima structure, the 3 books divided into 33 cantos each, etc... Joyce is certainly one of the most difficult writers... with Finnegan's Wake as quite possibly THE most difficult book by a major writer. The work is an absolute cornucopia or wordplay... in this way, among others, Joyce sets himself up to challenge Shakespeare. Of course he falls short... but who doesn't? Nevertheless, the result is fascinating... and I say this even while admitting that I am not a major fan of Joyce. I far prefer Proust.

Although I hate the direction which twentieth century letters took we got off lite compared to other mediums. The new visual aesthetic looks like the product of an Olympic competition for ugliness. I've got to wonder what was wrong with the old aesthetic values? Maybe, a couple of academics just couldn't live in a world filled with Michaelangelos and Dantes. Perish the thought. We may not need the overhaul of a full fledged Renaissance, but the slight tweaking of a Pre-Raphaelite type movement could do us all some good.

Funny... Jozy always has me pegged as as the "classicist"... and here i am defending Modernism. As a visual artist myself I have no problem stating that Modernism (c. 1860-1945) was THE single greatest era in European art bar only the Renaissance. Like the Renaissance it involved a paradigm shift far beyond anything which happened in literature. From the time of the Renaissance... Giotto or earlier... Western art has been rooted in the notion that the goal of the visual artist is to offer up a "mirror of reality". Starting with the Renaissance artists began to master skills needed for just such a depiction of visual "reality": anatomy, physiology, linear/aerial/atmospheric perspective, etc... I am not dismissing these developments.They resulted in some of the greatest artistic achievements ever... but they were also limited. The art of the middle ages, the art of Asia, Africa, South America held very little interest to the European of the era... because such art was not rooted in the same concept of illusionary depiction. Modernism is essentially the result of Western artists coming into contact with the art from non-Western cultures... as well as with examples of Western art from pre-Renaissance eras... and realizing that it was not something crude or incompetent because of its lack of "realism"/illusionism... but rather that it was rooted in a notion that art need not be "realistic"... that a person could be painted bright red and his or her body twisted and distorted... if such was needed to convey a desired mood or feeling. Taken to the logical conclusion... art need not even look like anything. Like music or architecture or a Persian carpet it need only be a marvelous organization of the formal elements of art: color, line, shape, etc...

I certainly agree that we are no longer living in one of the great artistic milieus. We are currently in a long stagnant period... coming to terms with, absorbing or digesting all that Modernism opened up. Historically, every great and brief shining moment in art has been followed by a longer period of coming to terms with what has transpired... and unfortunately also of mannered distortions and absurdities... which eventually lead to the next great revolution. The Renaissance was followed by Mannerism. The Baroque by the Rococo. Neo-Classicism and Romanticism by academicism. Modernism has been followed by what come to be termed as Post-Modernism... without any clear idea as to what that means. There are artists working in the Post-Modern era who continue the experiments of Modernism, there are those who take the notions of innovation/originality/novelty to an absolutely absurd level. There are artists... a good many reactionaries who never "got" Modernism... but some who did... who would turn to a Pre-Modern notion (not unlike the Pre-Raphaelites... as in before Raphael or before the high Renaissance). I would guess that they, like the Pre-Raphaelites have but a minor role to play. Now that Modernism has opened up the possibilities of art... allowed us to appreciate the art of the African wood carver, the Indian temple sculptor, the Japanese ceramist, printmaker, and screen painter, the medieval stone carver, the Celtic scribe, and the Persian miniaturist... as well as he great achievements of Michelangelo, Titian, and Rubens... it is highly unlikely that Picasso, Matisse, Klee, and van Gogh are going to be forgotten as some anomaly any time soon.

[Jozanny]

1) Defining "complexity of a literary work", in which case you must first define complexity itself, to be able to specifically distinguish complexity of a literary work as opposed to any other type of complexity;
2) Defining "complex literary work", in which case you must first define literary work and then use complexity as differentia specifica of a set of literary works as opposed to non-complex ones, and explain where is the difference.

Of course, as we wish not to be overly meticulous, use the option 2) and skip defining literary work (or else we will go way off-topic and end up somewhere else), even though it is not exactly "correct" to do so, but for the purpose of this thread just make a distinction between complex literary work and non-complex literary work.

I suspect my answer will frustrate you when you return to the forum, but what makes novel length fiction difficult, or complex, or intricate in its linguistic form cannot be quantified.

Literary theory and criticism isn't a science, though New Critics like to think it is. Here is a wiki link for that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism

Novels may have a simple diction but offer a complex engagement with the reader. See our discussion of Cormac McCarthy here:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36194

But any body of literature can have a complex engagement with its audience, from the first Grecian plays to Stephen King's fantasy and suspense.

I was going to offer a much longer spiel, but The Literature Network isn't here to award me a doctorate.

I simply thought Virgil posted an incautious assertion in another thread, and rather than conflate the discussion there, moved it here. I believe he modified his position since, and the debate has been enjoyable.

If you want to pick a text we can both read and deal with on a critical level, that can be done and give you some sense of the reader's dynamic engagement with the text, but that's done all the time.

[mortalterror]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]Modernism (c. 1860-1945) was THE single greatest era in European art bar only the Renaissance.

Modernism is essentially the result of Western artists coming into contact with the art from non-Western cultures... as well as with examples of Western art from pre-Renaissance eras... and realizing that it was not something crude or incompetent because of its lack of "realism"/illusionism... but rather that it was rooted in a notion that art need not be "realistic"... that a person could be painted bright red and his or her body twisted and distorted... if such was needed to convey a desired mood or feeling. Taken to the logical conclusion... art need not even look like anything. Like music or architecture or a Persian carpet it need only be a marvelous organization of the formal elements of art: color, line, shape, etc...

You covered a lot of ground with your comments and it will take me some time to address them all as thoroughly as I wish. I beg your indulgence and in this post, I'd like to limit my comments to the visual arts side of your argument.

First and foremost, I'd like to state that just because something lacks realism does not mean it is not crude or incompetent, and not everything that has a line, a shape, and a color is necessarily art. I believe in keeping an open mind, but there are rational limits to everything. When you continually bend over backwards in the interest of fairness, you wind up with your head up a very uncomfortable orifice. Saying that everything is equivalent implies that every value is flexible, or that none exist at all. I believe that in art there is a good, a bad, a better, and a worse.

I am not as well versed in the visual arts as you are. But I do not need a Masters degree to know that this (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9c/Mondrian_Comp10.jpg), this (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Pollock_composit.jpg), and this (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Duchamp_Fountaine.jpg) are not equivalent to this (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Lightanddark.jpg), this (http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h268/Saliari/caravaggio22.jpg), and this (http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h268/Saliari/DavidbyBernini.jpg).

[TheFifthElement]

David Mitchell, whom I keep harping on, is the product of this academic insulation, and reading him may have something to do with why I am not writing so much any more. I cannot top Cloud Atlas. It achieves what I was vaguely groping toward in the 80's, but Mitchell wins. I cannot write like that, and maybe DeLillo is the only talent who can answer for Mitchell, that I don't know, and I also don't know what more will be done to torture language into yet another movement.

Mitchell is good, but would you class him as 'European'? I know he is British by nationality but I find his style of writing to be Japanese, not British. I think he has been very heavily influenced by his time in Japan, and I think it's no surprise that he cites Haruki Murakami as one of his influences - as a reader of both I can see that. Cloud Atlas is an excellent book, though I enjoyed Ghostwritten more, but perhaps that is because I read it first, and so I wasn't quite so blown away by Cloud Atlas as I might have been.

Did you really give up writing because of Mitchell? That seems strange, and yet understandable. Of course you can never write like Mitchell, but you can still aspire to be as good, but in your own style.

Have you read anything by Jon McGregor? if nobody speaks of remarkable things left me speechless! Perhaps, if I have time, I'll post a section in the 'perfect prose' thread. But McGregor made me feel something similar to what you've described here: feeling like I had a long way to go, making me reassess what it meant to me to be a writer. Isn't it brilliant when a book touches you that way?

[mortalterror]

in this way, among others, Joyce sets himself up to challenge Shakespeare.

I've heard that before from Harold Bloom and I didn't believe it when he said it either. I know that Ulysses has elements of Hamlet in it but it has even more elements of the Odyssey and you'll notice that Bloom doesn't say Joyce is having an agon with Homer. That's because Bloom has a fair amount of bardolatry himself as evidenced in his books Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human and Hamlet: Poem Unlimited. I believe it was in his book The Anxiety of Influence that he put forward the hypothesis that writers are influenced by strong misreadings of their precursors and their attempt to move beyond this is what spurs their creativity, but that theory says more about Harold Bloom himself as a critic and his tendency to misread writers such as Joyce.

In any event, while I'm sure that Joyce greatly admired Shakespeare, if he'd truly been engaged in some sort of necro-identity struggle with him, Joyce probably would have written more poems and plays than he did. I can see the Dante in Eliot, but I don't see the Shakespeare in Joyce. He has other primary influences.

[Jozanny]

Mitchell is good, but would you class him as 'European'? I know he is British by nationality but I find his style of writing to be Japanese, not British. I think he has been very heavily influenced by his time in Japan, and I think it's no surprise that he cites Haruki Murakami as one of his influences - as a reader of both I can see that. Cloud Atlas is an excellent book, though I enjoyed Ghostwritten more, but perhaps that is because I read it first, and so I wasn't quite so blown away by Cloud Atlas as I might have been.

He is certainly a chameleon, although I know that doesn't answer your question. I don't know how he does it but he takes American/English and the distinctiveness of Asian styles and melds them fluidly. Mocks them? Maybe that is a judgment call. When I can get over him as a nearly religious experience (I am not quite joking) then I will read Ghostwritten.


Did you really give up writing because of Mitchell? That seems strange, and yet understandable. Of course you can never write like Mitchell, but you can still aspire to be as good, but in your own style.

No, I should not confuse the notion that he beat me to something (and he did, I started a novel in the late 80's that had a "fantasy island" theme going, with chapters about real-world characters interlocking and disappearing to wind up on the island...) with major depressive episodes :D , but he does tempt me to a sort of stunned aesthetic silence.

He has his detractors, and those detractors have valid points, but I don't care. To me what Mitchell has done is to be celebrated for the fact that someone tried to do this and succeeded.



Have you read anything by Jon McGregor? if nobody speaks of remarkable things left me speechless! Perhaps, if I have time, I'll post a section in the 'perfect prose' thread. But McGregor made me feel something similar to what you've described here: feeling like I had a long way to go, making me reassess what it meant to me to be a writer. Isn't it brilliant when a book touches you that way?

I will look him up and put him on my reading list. Thanks.:)

[stlukesguild]

I believe that in art there is a good, a bad, a better, and a worse.

I am not as well versed in the visual arts as you are. But I do not need a Masters degree to know that this:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Mondrian_Comp10.jpg

this:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/ma5792L.jpg

and this:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/marcel-duchamp-fountain.jpg

are not equivalent to this:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Lightanddark.jpg

this:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/judithbeheading_caravaggio.jpg

and this:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/bernini_david.jpg

Certainly one may find the good, the bad, and the ugly in art. Artistic "relativism" is the last thing you'll find me arguing in support of. Judging or comparing is something we all must do if we are to decide what works of art to spend our times with... and which are not worth the effort. Finding a direct correlation, however, is obviously impossible. The art of one culture is not the same as that of another culture... as the cultures themselves are vastly different. In comparing two disparate art works we are certainly being unfair if we judge them both by the standards of one. At the same time you are right in your comparisons... if somewhat ingenuous. To compare anyone at any time in history with Michelangelo is almost certainly a losing gamble as he looms as large in art as Shakespeare in literature. Caravaggio (The Beheading of Holferenes) is another giant... virtually founding the Baroque movement and the return to "realism" and direct observation after 100 years of Mannerism. Bernini (David) may be the least of these old masters... verging on the overly sensational at times... and yet he stands unchallenged as the greatest sculptor of the Baroque era, and one of the greatest craftsmen ever is the art of carving marble. Against them you have placed Mondrian (surely a somewhat minor figure... although one of the founders of geometric abstraction), Jackson Pollack (the strongest Modernist work offered) and Marcel Duchamp.

I'll turn to Duchamp first. Duchamp is currently one of if not THE most influential of Modern artists. Unfortunately this is largely because of the shift in art training from the art school and the stress upon hands-on learning of the various crafts (painting, drawing, ceramics, etc...) toward art education in the universities which place the ideas and theories above the actual art. Duchamp, by and large, was a mediocre artist. I agree with the critic who suggested he never matured beyond the clever sophomoric student stage. I see him as more of a aesthetician or critic of art than an artist. The work shown here, the "Fountain" has a fascinating history that has been misunderstood for decades now.

Duchamp was invited to participate in an exhibition in which it was announced that there would be no jurying involved. Every work of art entered would be accepted. Duchamp, in the French tradition of "salon or studio jokes" decided to have the organizers on and test them. He purchased a urinal and signed it with the pseudonym, R. Mutt. The work was sent to the exhibition. Under the terms of the show, all art was to be accepted. The question then was "is it art"? Duchamp fought for the inclusion of the work suggesting that as we cannot offer a definition of art, something becomes art if an artist says it is so. It was all tongue-in-cheek... including Duchamp's resignation from the show when the "fountain" was rejected and his publication of several essays (again under pseudonyms) in defense of the work. As such... the art, if we wish to call it such, lie not in the actual art object, but in Duchamp's performance. Unfortunately this was grossly misconstrued. The urinal is now treated as some sacred icon of Modernism and stands as the touchstone among all the conceptual artists whose work is about ideas to the exclusion of the actual art form. Perhaps the greatest take on Duchamp must be that of the "artist" who urinated in the "fountain" declaring that he was simply reverting the art object to the original use for which it was made.

The other two paintings you have selected are certainly far greater works of art than Duchamp's "fountain". Indeed, they well represent two opposing poles of abstraction. Abstraction itself was the logical development of art once the artist had come to realize that the art work need not mirror or imitate visible "reality". With this realization artist began to question why painting (the central at form since the Renaissance) might not merely be constructed of an organization of shapes, colors, forms, lines, etc... like essentially abstract works such as fiber arts:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/fabric101.gif

book illuminations:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/koran.jpg

and architecture...

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/OrvietoInterior2sm.jpg

...and not unlike music. Indeed, many artists were greatly espoused by the concept of art echoing musical form... and such was put forward by Walter Pater in his book The Renaissance, in which he declared that "all art aspires to the nature of music" where form and content become one.

continued...

Let us deal with Mondrian first. Piet Mondrian was one of the founders of geometric abstraction in painting. Personally he is is not my favorite. I find he surrendered far too much by limiting himself solely to the primary colors, black and white, to horizontal and verticals, and by eliminating any hint of the human touch. Nevertheless... what he achieved... the perfect sense of balance or equilibrium... was not far removed from what is also intended in many works of classical and minimal architecture. I find his innovations were developed to a far more expressive end by artists such as Paul Klee:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/FireatEveningsmall.jpg

(who brought a quirky playfulness and sense of the human touch)...
Sean Scully:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Scullyshow3sm.jpg

(who also built upon the notion of a human, imperfect architecture)...
Paul Feiler:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/9308.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/9313.jpg

(who unearthed a gorgeous spirituality within the geometry)...
and Mark Rothko:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/a0001074.jpg

who uncovered a tragic, meditative Zen-like quality to the same.

Jackson Pollack stands at the opposite pole to Mondrian. Where Mondrain always makes the structure plainly visible, in Pollack the structure is far looser... spontaneous... but still exists as anyone can discover when looking at any number of his poor imitators. Just as the structure still exists in Mahler or Debussy or Wordsworth or Whitman... although it may be far more difficult to discern than it is in Bach or Mozart or Petrarch or Dante, so is Pollack's structure of rhtyhms and emphasises. Pollack is largely rooted in Monet...

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/monet-083.jpg

and JMW Turner before him:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/sea-monsters.jpg

Later in his career, Monet began to work in a serial manner... producing numerous paintings of the exact same image or motif:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/MonetRouen2small.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/MonetRouen1small.jpg

He recognized that the motif changed as light and atmosphere changed... but also recognized that the purely abstract elements of painting: color, texture, brushwork, etc... could make profound changes in how we perceived the motif. In his final works, the motif evolved into a nearly abstract "field". This concept... merged with the automatism of Surrealism and Native-American sand painting... led to Pollack's concept of "field painting". The motif was all but removed, and all that remained was a field of paint: various colors, drips and skeins organized into a sort of rhythmic dance.

In the end, Pollack is but a central figure in a single small movement within the scope of the whole of art history: Abstract Expressionism... an American art movement rooted in European Modernism that lasted but 15 brief years. Mondrian offered the possibility of painting taken to an extreme minimalism. In both instances their art is something of an endgame... offering but limited possibilities for further development without it first being invested with further elements. But in neither instance are we looking at one of the absolute giants of Modernism. Regardless of the preponderance of rhetoric that surrounded Abstract Expressionism (and it certainly was the first artistic movement in which the United States was leading the rest of the world) the leading figures were never among the giants of Modernism... let alone of the whole of art history. Abstract Expressionism was but the final explosive "hurrah" of a movement that began in the mid-1800s, and whose real giants included Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Degas, Klee, Beckmann, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Bonnard, and a number of others... No artist known to me today can stand up to these figures. At the same time, I have no problem with declaring that these artists can easily hold their own against all but the very finest of the old masters: Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Titian, Rubens... and even then Matissse, Picasso, and Beckmann especially would not fall far short.

continued...

As I noted early on, one can compare art from one era with art from another... but it is unfair to compare both based upon the standards of one. It must be a two way street. In other words if we take a figure such as Rembrandt:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/bathing-riversmall.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/sp1659.jpg

There is no question that he is one of the finest artists who ever lived. His handling of paint is highly original and magnificent. His use of lighting is magical. He greatest strength, however, lies in the manner in which he is able to invent characters who essentially strike us a real human beings. In this he far outstrips even Michelangelo whose characters are largely idealized "types"... abstractions... superhuman expressions of human longing. Rembrandt, however, gives us people that are a real and as memorable as the greatest characters we might come across in literature.

Let us then compare him with an artist such as Bonnard:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/bonnard_model_in_backlightmedium.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Bonnard02.jpg

Both handle paint and the element of light equally well... albeit in a highly different manner. Rembrandt surely gets the nod for drawing ability... but Bonnard far outstrips the Dutchman in his use of color. Rembrandt certainly surpasses the Frenchman in his invention of human characters... but then again Bonnard almost takes an Asian approach to the figure... presenting it as but a part of the whole wonder of nature. Bonnard also gets the nod for his use of expressive distortions... albeit these are quite tame in comparison with Matisse or Picasso. In the end, I would surely place Rembrandt higher in the hierarchy than Bonnard... he is more moving, his mastery of drawing and painting and printmaking is unsurpassed, and he is certainly the more innovative. But it is no simple decision. The best Modernists easily hold their own with the best artists of any era.

[TheFifthElement]

I don't know how he does it but he takes American/English and the distinctiveness of Asian styles and melds them fluidly. Mocks them?

Yes, I think you're right. Very perceptive, actually.

[Jozanny]

Yes, I think you're right. Very perceptive, actually.

I sound like I'm a Mitchell groupie:idea: and guess I am, sort of, yet my lack of authorial distance makes me feel discontent. He isn't the greatest thing since the ham sandwich, and the reviewers who feel they cannot follow his vision are onto something...

but... damn how can I get at this? His technical showing off may be off putting, even to those of us well trained and steeped in canonical reading and training. This detraction, however, doesn't outweigh what he managed to do and how he did it, and when I talk about stunned aesthetic silence, well, I am not a novelist, but I have two novel projects going, and if I ever finish Don Paydola and it gets published, it feels meaningless, after experiencing this man's skill. And it would kill me to be called an imitator of an author on a project I really did start researching after I took my degree. I've let it flounder because other forms got easier and the idea seemed impossible to execute.

Well, whiz kid showed me you can indeed pull a couple of fast ones on a reader and still be some kind of something as a composer. I cannot come close to an imitation though so shouldn't worry.

I am feeling a little better this morning and should stop gabbing and get to business. I'm not a monster. I'm a disabled woman who's made some mistakes in the past, learned my lesson. Any missteps on LN would never be deliberate or intentional, so yada yada.;)

[Virgil]

I believe that in art there is a good, a bad, a better, and a worse.


http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/marcel-duchamp-fountain.jpg


I got a kick out of this. What kind of urinal is this? You pee into it and it pees back at you? :lol:

[Jozanny]

The Duchamp urinal isn't trying to be art. We can say a few things about design as a secondary issue, but according to my aesthetic, the Duchamp urinal murders art, just as Flaubert murders language and led the way for post-modern linguistic nihilism. I have a few more things to say about modernism and post-modernism in literature, and then I will leave mortalterror and luke to duke it out over representational art and abstract expressionism. Some one be nice, go to the LN subforum, and ask them for an art subforum so luke can play:p . I've been here too long this morning already waiting for my batteries to charge....zzzzzzzz

[stlukesguild]

Jozy... interesting analogy... Duchamp and Flaubert. You are of course right that Duchamp... or the Duchampian "aesthetic" (more an anti-aesthetic) murders art. I must say, however, that I see nothing in Flaubert that approaches that degree of anti-aesthetics. As much of a supposed "realist" as Flaubert was, he strikes me as firmly entrenched on the sensual language of 19th century French Symbolism. Duchamp's aesthetic of negation was of course part of the Dada movement reaction to the First World War and the feeling that society did not deserve any works of aesthetic beauty. Personally I find the concept sophomoric and naive... perhaps not unlike the group of artists who announced a "day without art" in response to Nixon's escalation of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Somehow I just don't picture Nixon rethinking his stances on international politics because Frank Stella didn't go into the studio one day.:lol: Perhaps the closest that I can come to Duchamp in the literary field is Gunter Eich, late poems of Paul Celan, Celine, Henri Michaux... and perhaps even some of what Beckett and Borges attempted.

[Jozanny]

Jozy... interesting analogy... Duchamp and Flaubert. You are of course right that Duchamp... or the Duchampian "aesthetic" (more an anti-aesthetic) murders art. I must say, however, that I see nothing in Flaubert that approaches that degree of anti-aesthetics. As much of a supposed "realist" as Flaubert was, he strikes me as firmly entrenched on the sensual language of 19th century French Symbolism.

Yes, but let me assert something I cannot prove, but intuit all the same, and may prove. Flaubert was of course a man of his age luke, but without him we don't get the literary Modernism we have, or Existentialism as Sartre meant to fully articulate it, nor would the post-modernists like John Gardner have so much fun.

It is Flaubert who created the fissure from which the rest follows. Not Dostoevsky, not James, not Zola--and Zola seems to have suspected something in Flaubert's work breeches Zola's beloved realism.

Now I have to support this contention:idea:

[stlukesguild]

Yes, but let me assert something I cannot prove, but intuit all the same, and may prove. Flaubert was of course a man of his age luke, but without him we don't get the literary Modernism we have, or Existentialism as Sartre meant to fully articulate it, nor would the post-modernists like John Gardner have so much fun.

It is Flaubert who created the fissure from which the rest follows. Not Dostoevsky, not James, not Zola--and Zola seems to have suspected something in Flaubert's work breeches Zola's beloved realism.

Now I have to support this contention:idea:

Yes. I might have an easier time proving that it was Baudelaire who establishes this break with the past:D. By the way... John Gardner? I notice you keep bringing him up. Seriously I've never found him that interesting. For Post-Modern literature I far prefer Italo Calvino, Julio Cortazar, Alejo Carpentier, John Barth, Donald Barthleme, Thomas Pynchon, J.L. Borges, Sam Beckett, and Cormac McCarthy... although it is certainly arguable who is late Modernist and who is Post-Modernist.:confused:

[Jozanny]

Yes. I might have an easier time proving that it was Baudelaire who establishes this break with the past:D. By the way... John Gardner?

I have to defend Grendel as the first American post-modern masterpiece. No cheap tricks. If Conrad's Heart of Darkness was a narrative box within box within box--the unnamed narrator--->to Marlowe---> to Kurtz (the lie).

Grendel is almost the perpetual motion machine, not only deconstructing Beowulf, but reconstructing the epic at the same time in the middle of its own disjunctive irony. The hero is deconstructed but reconstructed too into a frightening presentment of the modern idealogue and what damage the evolution of that kind would do to humanity in the 20th century. If I had written it I would have been just fine fracturing my head in a motor-cycle accident. He died during the course we used for the novel. Spooky.


I notice you keep bringing him up. Seriously I've never found him that interesting. For Post-Modern literature I far prefer Italo Calvino, Julio Cortazar, Alejo Carpentier, John Barth, Donald Barthleme, Thomas Pynchon, J.L. Borges, Sam Beckett, and Cormac McCarthy... although it is certainly arguable who is late Modernist and who is Post-Modernist.:confused:

The divide between early Modernism and PoMo isn't that clear cut as it is. Pynchon has a few moments he can call his own; I may, just may, reread GR again, but not anything else.

[stlukesguild]

Perhaps I'll give Grendel another reading. Its been a long time.

By the way, Jozie... speaking of Modernist and Post-Modernist trickery... or formal innovations (and considering the story within a story within a story in most older frame stories: Arabian Nights, Canterbury Tales, etc... how new is that idea?) looking at how far we have come with Calvino, Kafka, Joyce, Borges, Cortazar, Pynchon, and the absolute reductions of Beckett and Celan... where do we head next? Are we merely spinning our wheels in a mannered rehash of the innovations of Modernism? I ask this considering the cyclical history of the visual arts... where each period of ground breaking innovation is followed by a far longer period of mannerism in which these innovations are perhaps digested... but where the result largely looks to be that of an endless rehash and desperate grasping at novelty... until there is a return to something firmly rooted in observation of real life... which once more leads to a new era of innovation.

[Drkshadow03]

Complexity of literature can be discerned by figuring just what the hell good literature is supposed to do and how it differs from average novels or bad works.

1) Influence: Does the writing style influence later writers and completely change the face of how writers write? Are later writers trying to imitate these writers? Are they constantly making allusions to their works?

2) Aesthetics: Beautiful writing. It may not necessarily influence other writers, there is no objective standard for this, but it mostly comes down to good writing that does more than just progress the story.

3) Originality (plot and details): It's very rare for any novelist to write a "new" plot. As the structuralists have pointed out the structure of our classics are often the same narrative structures as our low-brow works. However, the devil's in the details. Literary works tend to have original details. They present tired, worn tropes in new ways.

4) Storytelling: Undervalued and probably the weakest category. Much work that wouldn't be considered traditional highbrow literature may have good storytelling values. However, much "good" literature does in fact have very good and powerful storytelling. We are often told plot isn't important; however, literature is not a philosophical treatise either. At the end of the day I think the best writers are the ones that remember to tell a good story along with everything else.

5) Depth of Theme: Does the story have multiple ways it can be interpreted? Are there lots of little symbols interspersed throughout that flow with the imagery? Does it tell us something important about ourselves and the human experience? Do we finish the final pages with more questions and thoughts than answers?

6) Depth of Characterization: Do the characters feel like real people with real complex motivations, different believable personalities? Are they memorable? Do we still remember specific characters from the book long after we close the final pages and have picked up other books? Much genre fiction suffers in this area I think.

The most complex works are strong in all 6 of these characteristics. Some works may contain a few of these, but not all. Do you think these are good criteria for judging whether a work of literature is complex or not?

[kasie]

Drkshadow: I think you have summed up the answer most succinctly - thank you.

I would add only: Universality. Does the work speak to the reader of The Human Condition across Space and Time? If the work is centred too much on a specific place and a specific era and lacks an application to the experience of life in a different county or period, then whilst it may be good of its time and place, it falls short of true greatness.

[Jozanny]

Complexity of literature can be discerned by figuring just what the hell good literature is supposed to do and how it differs from average novels or bad works.

1) Influence: Does the writing style influence later writers and completely change the face of how writers write? Are later writers trying to imitate these writers? Are they constantly making allusions to their works?

2) Aesthetics: Beautiful writing. It may not necessarily influence other writers, there is no objective standard for this, but it mostly comes down to good writing that does more than just progress the story.

3) Originality (plot and details): It's very rare for any novelist to write a "new" plot. As the structuralists have pointed out the structure of our classics are often the same narrative structures as our low-brow works. However, the devil's in the details. Literary works tend to have original details. They present tired, worn tropes in new ways.

4) Storytelling: Undervalued and probably the weakest category. Much work that wouldn't be considered traditional highbrow literature may have good storytelling values. However, much "good" literature does in fact have very good and powerful storytelling. We are often told plot isn't important; however, literature is not a philosophical treatise either. At the end of the day I think the best writers are the ones that remember to tell a good story along with everything else.

5) Depth of Theme: Does the story have multiple ways it can be interpreted? Are there lots of little symbols interspersed throughout that flow with the imagery? Does it tell us something important about ourselves and the human experience? Do we finish the final pages with more questions and thoughts than answers?

6) Depth of Characterization: Do the characters feel like real people with real complex motivations, different believable personalities? Are they memorable? Do we still remember specific characters from the book long after we close the final pages and have picked up other books? Much genre fiction suffers in this area I think.

The most complex works are strong in all 6 of these characteristics. Some works may contain a few of these, but not all. Do you think these are good criteria for judging whether a work of literature is complex or not?

I am not altogether sure about 1) and 2) Drk, but even with 3 thru 6 as a prerequisite, complexity is still a difficult thing in and of itself to ascertain, which is why I created the thread, because the complexity between one text over another essentially leads one nowhere.

Let's take two examples, both of which I've recently read and are on my mind: Is Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych more complex than Dostoevsky's The Idiot? Or vice versa? How do they compare to Melville's Billy Budd? All three, while not exactly Christian allegories, do impose the Christian archetype on the reader. We can say any number of things:

1. Tolstoy had the better structure and form, in this instance, than Dostoevsky, the latter of which would have been better served by a good editor to pare down Hippolite, but Dostoevsky has the more complex, if cliched, psychology than does the former, whereas Melville's character is sopped in American innocence, and his character's sacrificial death is more clearly a necessity than is the case with the Russian stories.

2. In terms of complexity however, that is something to shy away from. Each text, each narrative voice, scene, texture, the character's ontological feel and sense, have a *complex* engagement with the reader--which is why it cannot truly be parsed, or boiled down.

[stlukesguild]

The problem with measuring art is that one can almost always find works that meets any list of criteria for good art... and fail miserably... and others can seemly fail to meet any number of the same... and succeed marvelously. My immediate questions with your list is nos. 4 and 6:

4) Storytelling: Undervalued and probably the weakest category. Much work that wouldn't be considered traditional highbrow literature may have good storytelling values. However, much "good" literature does in fact have very good and powerful storytelling. We are often told plot isn't important; however, literature is not a philosophical treatise either. At the end of the day I think the best writers are the ones that remember to tell a good story along with everything else.

The problem here is that there is much good literature that is not about narrative. Immediately I would think of essays and lyrical poetry. One might also point out that there are any number of narrative works (stories/novels) where the narrative is but rudimentary or rather secondary in comparison with other elements... whether it be atmosphere, character development, etc...

6) Depth of Characterization: Do the characters feel like real people with real complex motivations, different believable personalities? Are they memorable? Do we still remember specific characters from the book long after we close the final pages and have picked up other books? Much genre fiction suffers in this area I think.

Again... there are endless works of the greatest literature that barely deal with the invention of character. How many character's do we remember from Kafka, J.L. Borges, Emerson, Baudelaire, Holderlin, etc...? Surely J.K Rowling has more "memorable" characters... for better or worse. Personally I think the only measure can be that of aesthetics. How much aesthetic pleasure does a work of art bring you? That is what is most essential to each of us. How much aesthetic pleasure does a work of art bring to the audience that is essential to the survival of a work of art?... to future artists, to the art "experts" (whether we are speaking of critics, historians, curators, etc...), and to the art lover... or in the specific case of literature... to the not-so-common "common reader" (as Virginia Woolf terms them) who continue to invest the time and the effort into reading?

[Drkshadow03]

Drkshadow: I think you have summed up the answer most succinctly - thank you.

I would add only: Universality. Does the work speak to the reader of The Human Condition across Space and Time? If the work is centred too much on a specific place and a specific era and lacks an application to the experience of life in a different county or period, then whilst it may be good of its time and place, it falls short of true greatness.


Hmm I would probably just put "universality" underneath the heading of "depth of theme" since part of a theme's depth has to do with whether it is universal. Of course there is a question in my mind whether all themes are in fact universal. What does one do with a story about the American Dream for example, which so much of American literature happens to be about, in Europe? What do Europeans make of The Great Gatsby I wonder.


I am not altogether sure about 1) and 2) Drk, but even with 3 thru 6 as a prerequisite, complexity is still a difficult thing in and of itself to ascertain, which is why I created the thread, because the complexity between one text over another essentially leads one nowhere.

I am not sure why you object specifically to 1 and 2. I agree that complexity is hard to boil down. Not to mention I've said elsewhere it's a complete waste of time to compare one literary text/figure with another as better or worse.

"Well, I think Shakespeare is better than Faulkner."

"Well, I think Faulkner is better than Hemingway."

"Well, I think Hemingway is better than Goethe, etc."

There is no real objective way to do this. Ultimately we are dealing with an art form, so a great deal of these conversations will boil down to subjective tastes, both cultural and personal.

Stlukesguild might be able to make a convincing comparison that the works of old are better than the modern trash art, but what happens when you start attempting to compare Michaengelo and Rembrandt. Van Gogh to Cezanne with the claim that one is better than the other (as opposed to just different). Certainly one might prefer one to another.


The problem with measuring art is that one can almost always find works that meets any list of criteria for good art... and fail miserably... and others can seemly fail to meet any number of the same... and succeed marvelously. My immediate questions with your list is nos. 4 and 6:

Perhaps I wasn't clear in my original post. Any given work of art need not meet ALL the criteria or even most, just some. Also, I openly admit certain criteria are more important than others. 4) storytelling is probably the least important, but still a feature I've noticed in stories that DO have narratives. I admit I might have been a bit general when I wrote: "At the end of the day I think the best writers are the ones that remember to tell a good story along with everything else." I meant that only for literature that has an actual narrative.

Also, I didn't mean for this to be a method for evaluating whether one complex work is better than another complex work rather just a general list of the general important elements works of literature often contain.


The problem here is that there is much good literature that is not about narrative. Immediately I would think of essays and lyrical poetry. One might also point out that there are any number of narrative works (stories/novels) where the narrative is but rudimentary or rather secondary in comparison with other elements... whether it be atmosphere, character development, etc...

But I'm willing to bet you would agree such essays and lyrical poetry would probably fall under: 1) influence 2) aesthetics 3) originality 5) depth of theme

4 of my 6 categories.


Again... there are endless works of the greatest literature that barely deal with the invention of character. How many character's do we remember from Kafka, J.L. Borges, Emerson, Baudelaire, Holderlin, etc...? Surely J.K Rowling has more "memorable" characters... for better or worse. Personally I think the only measure can be that of aesthetics. How much aesthetic pleasure does a work of art bring you? That is what is most essential to each of us. How much aesthetic pleasure does a work of art bring to the audience that is essential to the survival of a work of art: to future artists, to the art "experts" (whether we are speaking of critics, historians, curators, etc...), and to the art lover... or in the specific case of literature... to the not-so-common "common reader" (as Virginia Woolf terms them) who continue to invest the time and the effort into reading.

Let's just take Borges as our example. Ficciones certainly meets 1) influence 2) aesthetics 3) originality 4) Storytelling 5) Depth of Theme

5 of my 6.

So I'm still failing to see how any of these examples challenge my criteria. I never meant for any work to necessarily meet each and every one, despite my throw away line, "the most complex works are strong in all 6 of these characteristics." I probably shouldn't have said that. You'll notice if you read closely, however, that I follow it up with: "some works may contain a few of these, but not all."

[Jozanny]

Personally I think the only measure can be that of aesthetics. How much aesthetic pleasure does a work of art bring you? That is what is most essential to each of us. How much aesthetic pleasure does a work of art bring to the audience that is essential to the survival of a work of art: to future artists, to the art "experts" (whether we are speaking of critics, historians, curators, etc...), and to the art lover... or in the specific case of literature... to the not-so-common "common reader" (as Virginia Woolf terms them) who continue to invest the time and the effort into reading.

I hedged on the aesthetic of the work perhaps for the very reason luke includes it:rolleyes: I have an entire tome on bookshelf about the philosophical problems generated by aesthetic standards. On and on we go.:)

[mortalterror]

1)Influence or 3)Originality should not be criteria used to judge a work of art. All art needs to be judged on it's own merits not in relation to other works of art. There was a professor back in the twenties who took the authors names and dates off of works of literature and then asked people to evaluate them objectively. I.E. they wouldn't automatically rate a Shakespearean sonnet a 10 just because it had his name attached. You couldn't use the "Well it's a product of it's time and that was an astonishing innovation ten centuries ago" excuse for a book being full of stock hack kneed conventions that don't work anymore. With no criticisms, nobody else's opinions to guide them, people had to make their minds up for themselves about what was good and what was bad.

Personally, I think that Homer's Odyssey is a better book than Virgil's Aeneid or Milton's Paradise Lost, not because of it's influence; but because it has a better story. And yes boys and girls, storytelling is important. It's probably the most important element in aesthetics. A plot is the skeleton that you hang hearts and brains and whatever else you got on, and if it doesn't work then it makes everything else not work either. Is it the only element? Not at all. Which is why every book should be judged on a series of criteria; so you can say this writer does character, or dialogue well, that one writes some nice action or psychology. Saying that a book is a masterpiece despite poor characterization is a cop out. It denies that a masterpiece can have flaws... Do not say, "It is a masterpiece. It does not need this or that." Rather say, "In spite of these flaws, this work remains a masterpiece," and you retain your objectivity.

Another reason why Influence and Originality should be removed from the criteria is that they contradict each other. As a work of fiction gains influence it loses originality. The use of these two ideas as criteria also presupposes the opinion that all innovations must necessarily be positive and equally valuable, which I think we all can agree is simply not true. Nothing is rendered more useful by dint of it's being made differently, and I've never heard of a book being somehow more pleasant to read by the coincidence of it's influence.

[stlukesguild]

Ideally, each of us forms our opinions of a work of literature based upon the aesthetic merits of that work. This is the concept of absolute Formalism or Art pour l'art. In reality, such is impossible. We cannot form an opinion without having experience of other works of literature against which to compare. No matter how hard we try, no work of art exists within a vacuum...all works of art exist within the world as a whole and in relation to other works of art. To declare, for example, that Homer is a better storyteller than Virgil or Milton, one assumes a knowledge of all three of their works and a comparison of them. Certainly one can say that there exist criteria by which we might measure good and bad prose, poetic form, etc... but are aesthetic rules clear enough... universal enough so that a judgment solely upon the basis of aesthetics is not largely subjective? We all form opinions as to what works of art resonate most with us and at times these opinions do not concur with the larger opinions of history, criticism, opinions of other artists. It is highly unlikely that a simple declaration of "this is good. this is better" is going to sway others or be worth much of anything without recourse to some examples of proof... which almost certainly involve comparison with other works of art. You can declare that Homer's Odyssey has a stronger story than Virgil's Aeneid. Why? In what way "better"? Perhaps it is more "original" (which goes against the notion that originality is of any importance). But then again... how much were Homer's epics based upon pre-existing narratives? Was he any less derivative than Virgil? And then where does this leave Shakespeare? With the exception of Midsummers' Night Dream and a few other works, most of his plays were based on pre-existing narratives or histories. Again I find it hard to find any simple criteria for measuring art.

...every book should be judged on a series of criteria; so you can say this writer does character, or dialogue well, that one writes some nice action or psychology. Saying that a book is a masterpiece despite poor characterization is a cop out. It denies that a masterpiece can have flaws... Do not say, "It is a masterpiece. It does not need this or that." Rather say, "In spite of these flaws, this work remains a masterpiece," and you retain your objectivity.

This reminds me of the absurd collection of criteria established by the French Academy some centuries ago by which they sought to judge... to compare and contrast art. The results were laughable. An artist such as Rembrandt might rank well below a second tier painter of the Italian Renaissance because of the fact that he fell short on many of the criteria (anatomy, perspective, color, polish, etc...) which were of minor importance or of no importance whatsoever to the Dutch master. Is it actually a "flaw" that Mallarme or Verlaine make little use of narrative? Is Kafka's or Borges' lack of character development actually an element that detracts from their work? How is this different from criticizing Citizen Kane for not making a great showing of color? No single element is more important than another to art as a whole. Storytelling is only important if it is important to the work in question. For others it may be the texture or resonance or suggestiveness of the poetic language. Still again it may be the depth of the ideas expressed.

[mortalterror]

Is it actually a "flaw" that Mallarme or Verlaine make little use of narrative?

I couldn't say. I'm not familiar enough with either man's work.


Is Kafka's or Borges' lack of character development actually an element that detracts from their work?

Yes, I've noted that a number of times.


How is this different from criticizing Citizen Kane for not making a great showing of color?

It's not. That's a valid criticism. The same can be said for silent films. The fact of the matter is that people tend to enjoy films more when they are in color and have sound. What's so hard to understand about that?

How many silent films do you watch? There are so few black and white silent films that can overcome this terrible handicap that most of them just aren't worth watching. I own several hundred films and the only silent era works in my collection are three of Chaplin's tramp movies and The Passion of Joan of Arc. And the longer they are the more magnified their defects become. Have you ever watched the four hour cut of Erich von Stroheim's Greed edited down from the original 9 hour epic? They use that instead of waterboarding in some countries.

Some of our greatest films are in black and white. Casablanca, Seven Samurai, Schindler's List, but these films' strength lies more in their plot, dialogue, acting, and direction than in their visual aesthetic. They cannot compare to the shear spectacle of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, or Lord of the Rings which are all luscious eye candy for movie goers.

You can still like Proust and honestly admit that he had a lot to learn about plot and setting.

[stlukesguild]

SLG- Is Kafka's or Borges' lack of character development actually an element that detracts from their work?

MT- Yes, I've noted that a number of times.

But that's a meaningless criticism. Character development has nothing to do with what Kafka and Borges are attempting, and in all reality would probably be a distraction from the focus.

SLG- How is this different from criticizing Citizen Kane for not making a great showing of color?

MT- It's not. That's a valid criticism. The same can be said for silent films. The fact of the matter is that people tend to enjoy films more when they are in color and have sound. What's so hard to understand about that?

What's hard to understand is the absurdity of such a criticism. Art is not about pleasing the largest possible audience. An artist works with the language that is available... and that he or she chooses. This language dictates many of the decisions made. Black and white film give a director (or photographer) certain options that don't exist for color... and limit others that do. To suggest that it is a valid criticism of a black and white film to point out that it is lacking in color is about as absurd as to suggest that Beckett's decision to write in French was a flaw considering that more people read English.

How many silent films do you watch?

Quite a few, thank you: The Golem, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , Nosferatu, Die Nibelungen, Metropolis, The Phantom of the Opera, The Queen of Spades, The Battleship Potemkin, etc... but how many silent films in comparison to those with sound were there?

There are so few black and white silent films that can overcome this terrible handicap that most of them just aren't worth watching. I own several hundred films and the only silent era works in my collection are three of Chaplin's tramp movies and The Passion of Joan of Arc. And the longer they are the more magnified their defects become. Have you ever watched the four hour cut of Erich von Stroheim's Greed edited down from the original 9 hour epic? They use that instead of waterboarding in some countries.

Some of our greatest films are in black and white. Casablanca, Seven Samurai, Schindler's List, but these films' strength lies more in their plot, dialogue, acting, and direction than in their visual aesthetic.

That is absolute nonsense. Schindler's List (and you will notice that Spielberg certainly had the option of using color film) is an absolutely visually stunning film... a visual tour de force using many of the techniques of the greatest black and white film-makers (especially the German Expressionists) and photographers. A film maker using black and white has certain advantages and certain limitations... just as the same exists for a painter, a print-maker, or a photographer. Black and White is not a flaw of Guernica... but rather part of what gives it its particular strength. The same hold true regardless of the medium.

Color film was introduced as far back as the birth of film using hand-tinting processes, but had to wait until the 1930s for Technicolor's real perfection of the medium. Nevertheless... a good many films continued to be made in black and white. In some instances this was due to financial constraints. In others it was a conscious decision upon the part of the film-maker/director. There are endless black and white films among the finest ever made... and a good many of these were produced well after the introduction of color film: Shindler's List, Raging Bull, Zelig, Young Frankenstein, A Place in the Sun, Elephant Man, Ed Wood, Psycho, Wild Strawberries, Virgin Spring, Persona, Spellbound, Strangers on a Train, Touch of Evil, etc... Whether a conscious choice or by necessity the artist nevertheless must work with the language at hand... its strengths and its limitations.

They cannot compare to the shear spectacle of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, or Lord of the Rings which are all luscious eye candy for movie goers.

Again... absolute nonsense... and I say this as a visual artist. Citizen Kane is undoubtedly one of the most masterful films in purely visual terms... in terms of lighting, cinematography, etc... The notion that one genre or art form is inherently superior to another is absolutely ridiculous.

You can still like Proust and honestly admit that he had a lot to learn about plot and setting.

:brickwall

[mortalterror]

But that's a meaningless criticism. Character development has nothing to do with what Kafka and Borges are attempting, and in all reality would probably be a distraction from the focus.

So your contention is that whenever somebody isn't really trying to do something, I can't say they are bad at it as long as they are good at something else? That anybody can just pick one thing to be good at to the exclusion of everything else, and then be immune from criticism?


Art is not about pleasing the largest possible audience.

I don't see why not. Popularity should never be the sole criterion for establishing what is and is not good art, but any set of values that leaves it entirely out of the equation is not a valid form of criticism.


An artist works with the language that is available... and that he or she chooses. This language dictates many of the decisions made. Black and white film give a director (or photographer) certain options that don't exist for color... and limit others that do. To suggest that it is a valid criticism of a black and white film to point out that it is lacking in color is about as absurd as to suggest that Beckett's decision to write in French was a flaw considering that more people read English.

While black and white is better for establishing textures and contrasts within a frame, it does emphasize the unreal nature of film, which turns many people off. Most filmmakers choose not to alienate large portions of their intended audience, and know that for every advantage a black and white image brings with it there are other ways to do the same things with color and lighting.

While I do not believe that Beckett made a mistake by writing in French, I do believe that you are onto something there. French is read by hundreds of millions of people, so that would hardly limit his audience. Yet, I hear of certain intensely local writers who write in languages spoken by only a few hundred people in their village, and can't help but think that this is a mistake. Limiting your audience is never a good thing, and a smart artist will remove barriers between his art and his audience. Writing in Catalan, or Esperanto is a waste of time. It does not necessarily mean that the writing is bad. But it does cast doubt upon the intelligence of artist and one wonders what other "unique decisions" they may have made.


That is absolute nonsense. Schindler's List (and you will notice that Spielberg certainly had the option of using color film) is an absolutely visually stunning film... a visual tour de force using many of the techniques of the greatest black and white film-makers (especially the German Expressionists) and photographers. A film maker using black and white has certain advantages and certain limitations... just as the same exists for a painter, a print-maker, or a photographer. Black and White is not a flaw of Guernica... but rather part of what gives it its particular strength.

Schindler's List happens to be one of my favorite movies and it is visually appealing. I get that the black and white was an artistic choice to make the film look like newsreel and pictures of the time and how the lack of color is supposed to show how it's sad and devoid of humanity. I just think that there are a lot of other things Spielberg could have done to achieve that effect and if it were just a bunch of pretty pictures nobody would care about the film. Visually, Spielberg isn't a notch on Kubrick, Scorsese, Ridley Scott, or that new guy coming up Aronofsky. Most of the punch from that movie is it's endless series of one-liners, it's incredible editing, superb acting, the score, and most important of all: it's content.

Try watching it with the sound off, stop every couple of scenes to examine the frame. What's in the foreground? What's in the background? Is this a simple two shot or is the cameraman composing in three dimensions? The pictures aren't nearly as interesting as those in 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you look at those frames, you see things, shapes and colors in remarkable combinations. You wonder how Kubrick got the sky to look the way he did, how the weather will have these incredible cloud formations. You see that when an object comes in from the left or the right it does so with a purpose, that one shot isn't randomly coming after another, but they bear a relationship to each other and are being composed in a visual language that isn't there in Schindler's List. Much of the cinematography in Schindler's List is just competent journeyman level work and Janusz Kaminski does not have the cinematic vocabulary of Vittorio Storaro, Sven Nykvist, or even Roger Deakins.


The same hold true regardless of the medium.

The visual arts must function according to different rules from the audio arts since they affect separate parts of the brain. I know that a grand unifying theory of art is tempting, but let's not overreach ourselves. I know you are fond of saying that all art aspires to be music but that's really only the kind of thing somebody would say who'd already decided to value formless abstraction and worked backwards from there. If architecture aspired to be music we'd all be cold and wet. Thank god they have a concept of functionality in that field. I would we had one in literature.

You can still like Proust and honestly admit that he had a lot to learn about plot and setting.

:brickwallC[/QUOTE]

You're right, he's perfect in every way. He has no flaws. He's Mary Poppins. My mistake. Personally, I've never read a book I didn't think could be made better by the addition or subtraction of something. Even Shakespeare, and Proust is no Shakespeare.

We don't get to make up our own criterion by which our actions will be judged on a case by case basis because if we did that then all of our values would be self-serving and it would be nearly impossible to fail at them. Because when we do that we are no longer living by rules but by convenience. What is right for Hemingway, is right for Proust, is right for Joyce. That is justice, that is the beautiful and eternal and that is what art aspires to be.

[Drkshadow03]

So your contention is that whenever somebody isn't really trying to do something, I can't say they are bad at it as long as they are good at something else? That anybody can just pick one thing to be good at to the exclusion of everything else, and then be immune from criticism?



I felt similarly about Borges: Here were some of my thoughts after I read it last year (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2007/05/27/ficciones/).

Don't get me wrong I like Borges and I get what he is trying to do, but I do prefer narrative and character-driven stories.

[stlukesguild]

So your contention is that whenever somebody isn't really trying to do something, I can't say they are bad at it as long as they are good at something else? That anybody can just pick one thing to be good at to the exclusion of everything else, and then be immune from criticism?

If an artist or film-maker works in black and white or if a poet focuses upon nuances and shading of language, structure, atmosphere, and suggestion... and not upon narrative or character development, to criticize them for their poor use of color or lack of character and narrative development is ridiculous. It is a valid criticism to suggest that Thomas Kinkade's use of color is poor... because he employs color... but does so garishly and in a saccharine manner. To suggest that Picasso's Guernica lacks a mastery of color is just a meaningless criticism. It is no less meaningless to ctiticize beckett for his lack of a sensual, lush use of language or Borges for his lack of character development. these eliments have nothing to do with their work.

SLG- Art is not about pleasing the largest possible audience.

MT- I don't see why not. Popularity should never be the sole criterion for establishing what is and is not good art, but any set of values that leaves it entirely out of the equation is not a valid form of criticism.

But you have assumed that your set of values are somehow set in stone... and that we all agree with them. Popularity should be a measure of the merits of a book because it is one standard by which people have selected what to read? Then why not cover art as another criteria? Certainly there are those for whom that is a deciding factor. Or perhaps sexual content. A good many readers love a good steamy sex scene. There's a couple strikes against Shakespeare there... no good cover art in that First Folio and no hot sex scenes. My point is still that I don't think it has been unanimously agreed upon by all serious readers that any single criteria such as narrative or character development is essential... and a standard by which all writing must be measured

SLG- An artist works with the language that is available... and that he or she chooses. This language dictates many of the decisions made. Black and white film give a director (or photographer) certain options that don't exist for color... and limit others that do. To suggest that it is a valid criticism of a black and white film to point out that it is lacking in color is about as absurd as to suggest that Beckett's decision to write in French was a flaw considering that more people read English.

While black and white is better for establishing textures and contrasts within a frame, it does emphasize the unreal nature of film, which turns many people off. Most filmmakers choose not to alienate large portions of their intended audience...

You are assuming that emphasizing the illusion of "reality" is the primary focus of art. Surely the German Expressionists, Ingmar Bergman, and others have made a conscious choice to emphasize the "unreality". There are other film-makers who chose to do the same with color. Tim Burton comes immediately to mind. Of course most studios would prefer not to alienate their audience... which is why we have the mutilation of films by Orson Welles, among others. The audience, as might be measured by the popularity of Tim Burton's films, Toy Story, and other animated works is surprisingly more open to fantasy and an unreality than you give them credit for. But how does this all apply to literature. Are you also suggesting that "realism" is the ideal for which all literature strives and thus any work of literature that does not focus upon narrative and character development is somehow flawed?

...and know that for every advantage a black and white image brings with it there are other ways to do the same things with color and lighting.

Yes... you can certainly create a focal point... a sense of mood... drama... etc... through the use of color... but it is not the same. It is not inferior or superior... any more than the symphony is inherently superior or inferior to the sonata for solo keyboard... but it is different.

While I do not believe that Beckett made a mistake by writing in French, I do believe that you are onto something there. French is read by hundreds of millions of people, so that would hardly limit his audience. Yet, I hear of certain intensely local writers who write in languages spoken by only a few hundred people in their village, and can't help but think that this is a mistake. Limiting your audience is never a good thing, and a smart artist will remove barriers between his art and his audience. Writing in Catalan, or Esperanto is a waste of time. It does not necessarily mean that the writing is bad. But it does cast doubt upon the intelligence of artist and one wonders what other "unique decisions" they may have made.

Once again you are assuming that one of the unquestionable measures of art is the scale of the audience. Hollywood blockbusters are watched by far more people than will ever enter an art museum... let alone a gallery of contemporary art. So the artist who makes the decision to work in such an archaic language as painting should have his or her intelligence questioned? The same surely holds true for all those medieval scribes spending endless hours creating a world to be held between two hands, shared by only the reader and the anonymous artist... the work of art as an individual experience rather than public spectacle. Harry Potter has been read by far more readers than have ever read James Joyce, Milton, perhaps even Dante. Why waste our time discussing these writers of such "limited" audience? If your goal is to pander to the tastes of the broadest possible audience, fine. Most artists have some concept of their audience... of who it will be that may be interested in what they are doing. I will assume that J.V. Foix is aware of who his audience is and is not interested in abandoning his native language... which I will assume he loves... just in order to reach a larger audience. I must say that if I were a writer of Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Albanian, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, etc... I would find that last comment insulting.

Most of the punch from that movie (Schindler's List) is it's endless series of one-liners, it's incredible editing, superb acting, the score, and most important of all: it's content.

Form and content in art are forever intertwined. Content is not merely subject matter. Cezanne created some of the greatest masterpieces of Modernism painting nothing but apples. To this day I still remember certain scenes of Schindlers List far more than the narrative: the staccato of flashing machine-gun fire as the German's hunt down the last Jews hiding contrasted with the young, educated German officer playing staccato piece of the piano (was it Mozart... or Beethoven?) an image that immediately pulled together the dichotomy of this culture that could create such beauty and such ugliness. Or the scene or the almost Boris Karloffish Nazi officer who sits with a shadow just falling beneath his eye... making it impossible to make human contact with him... while Schindler begs for the return of his Jews.

Try watching it with the sound off, stop every couple of scenes to examine the frame. What's in the foreground? What's in the background? Is this a simple two shot or is the cameraman composing in three dimensions? The pictures aren't nearly as interesting as those in 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you look at those frames, you see things, shapes and colors in remarkable combinations. You wonder how Kubrick got the sky to look the way he did, how the weather will have these incredible cloud formations. You see that when an object comes in from the left or the right it does so with a purpose, that one shot isn't randomly coming after another, but they bear a relationship to each other and are being composed in a visual language that isn't there in Schindler's List.

You forget that you are lecturing to a visual artist. I am more than aware of the visual elements of film. Yes, 2001 is a splendid film... but I actually find Dr. Strangelove (black and white) to be stronger... let alone Schindler's List. By the way... it is interesting that you bring up 2001... considering that the film really is so much about the visual and the musical... suggestion far more than narrative.:D

MT- Much of the cinematography in Schindler's List is just competent journeyman level work and Janusz Kaminski does not have the cinematic vocabulary of Vittorio Storaro, Sven Nykvist, or even Roger Deakins.

Again, an empty assertion that assumes that your opinions of what is truly spectacular vs competent are in any way agreed upon.

MT- The visual arts must function according to different rules from the audio arts since they affect separate parts of the brain. I know that a grand unifying theory of art is tempting, but let's not overreach ourselves. I know you are fond of saying that all art aspires to be music but that's really only the kind of thing somebody would say who'd already decided to value formless abstraction and worked backwards from there. If architecture aspired to be music we'd all be cold and wet. Thank god they have a concept of functionality in that field. I would we had one in literature.

Pater's statement that "all art aspires to the state of music" is further clarified to suggest that all art aspires to a state whereby form and content are so intertwined as to be inseparable... or one and the same. Certainly this is not the desire of all artists. We can certainly dissect a painting and speak separately of the subject matter, the narrative (if present), the iconography, etc... We can do the same of most literature... separating the narrative and theme from the whole for the purpose of discussion. Nevertheless... these individual elements never add up to the whole. The content of any work of literature is within the experience of the whole. As for architecture... the equivalent of Pater's quote for architects was "Form Follows Function". The purpose or the content become one and the same. There are marvelous examples of such... but there are also endless examples of architecture that are functional... at the expense of form (the endless smoked glass high-rises or corrugated steel warehouses)... or works of architecture where form becomes ornament... at the expense of function.

You're right, he's perfect in every way. He has no flaws. He's Mary Poppins. My mistake. Personally, I've never read a book I didn't think could be made better by the addition or subtraction of something. Even Shakespeare, and Proust is no Shakespeare.

No one suggested Proust or Shakespeare were perfect. All artists have moments when they are not on their game. On the other hand, one does not improve them by adding something to them that has nothing to do with their intentions. Or maybe you enjoyed all of Ted Turner's colorized films?

We don't get to make up our own criterion by which our actions will be judged on a case by case basis because if we did that then all of our values would be self-serving and it would be nearly impossible to fail at them. Because when we do that we are no longer living by rules but by convenience. What is right for Hemingway, is right for Proust, is right for Joyce. That is justice, that is the beautiful and eternal and that is what art aspires to be.

Eternal standards and values by which all art must be measured? I had no thought that such ideas still existed. So... we simply define who are the greatest one or two artists in any field... discern which elements are the most essential to their work... and thus eliminate all other art according to the distance that it falls from these "eternal" standards. Once again it sounds like the French Academy. Makes judgment rather easy in the visual arts if we place Michelangelo, Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Rubens at the pinnacle, we can largely dismiss the whole of Modernism, Asian art, African art, Medieval art, etc...:brickwall

[stlukesguild]

I do prefer narrative and character-driven stories.

You "prefer" narrative and character-driven stories. You "prefer"... but you haven't suggested that such should be an "eternal standard" by which all literature must be measured. Actually I love good story-telling and marvelous character development myself. I also like well written explorations of ideas... the use of sensual/sensory suggetive poetic language. At times I have certain preferences more than others... My preferences may define what I like... but I'm not going to suggest that they are eternal truths by which all art should be measured.

[MorpheusSandman]

I love this topic, and enjoy reading it even if I'm not experienced enough in great literature to comment much in it, but when you start talking about film, well, you're entering my arena.

EDIT: Yikes, stlukes! I wrote my reply and in continuing to read the thread discovered you'd made most of my points for me! I think we must be kindred spirits or something!


The fact of the matter is that people tend to enjoy films more when they are in color and have sound. What's so hard to understand about that?Most people today would also prefer Harry Potter over Proust. What's so hard to understand about that? Let's not get into what "most people" would prefer because the lowest common denominator is NOT who decides what lasts... Probably because what's great amongst them changes from month to month (being the flavor of it and all). I really don't have a preference between b&w and color, it just so happens that the greats worked more and did more with the b&w form than any have done in color. If every director used color like Bertolucci, Godard, Hsiao-hsien, or any number I could name then I'd probably like it more. But color sometimes just gets in the way of what's going on and directors forget to use it as a cinematic tool.


How many silent films do you watch?As many as I can. Sadly, the majority of all silent films have been lost. This was long before the days of non-flammable celluloid and the concept of film preservation so it was very easy for films just to be destroyed. Nobody thought about future generations who might want to see them.


There are so few black and white silent films that can overcome this terrible handicap that most of them just aren't worth watching.Silent films' lack of sound isn't a handicap. It's a limitation, yes, but every art-form has limits. That's like saying literature can't overcome the handicap of not having sound, which is ridiculous. The appeal of film has always, first and foremost, been the art of the moving picture, and the silent film greats understood this better than any.


I own several hundred films and the only silent era works in my collection are three of Chaplin's tramp movies and The Passion of Joan of Arc.See more, including Eisenstein, Murnau, Griffith, and Keaton.


but these films' strength lies more in their plot, dialogue, acting, and direction than in their visual aesthetic.It's the director that determines the visual aesthetic for the largest part. And I think this is just plain nonsense. If you think The Seven Samurai lacks visual aesthetics then you don't know what visual aesthetics are. I'd say the majority of the most amazing films on a visual aesthetic level are in b&w. Just a short list:

Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, or any b&w Welles
The Third Man
Raging Bull
Sunrise, The Last Laugh, or any b&w Murnau
Battleship Potemkin
L'Atalante
Raging Bull
Ikiru
La Dolce Vita, La Strada, 8 1/2 or any b&w Fellini
The Children of Paradise
Breathless
Notorious, Rebecca, Psycho, or any of Hitchock's b&w films
L'Avventura
Dr. Strangelove
The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, or any b&w Bergman
Night of the Hunter
The 400 Blows
Metropolis, M, Destiny, or any b&w Lang
Ugetsu
Pather Panchali
Viridiana
Stagecoach, How Green Was My Valley, My Darling Clementine or any b&w Ford

This is all just off the top of my head. I mean, really, the list is endless.


They cannot compare to the shear spectacle of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, or Lord of the Rings which are all luscious eye candy for movie goers."Spectacle" and "eye candy" are not the same as real visual aesthetics and splendor. Of this list I give you 2001, which is a wondrous visual film, not because of its color, but because of its marriage of form and content and its rather SILENT FILM technique of telling the story through visuals rather than words. I begrudgingly give you Blade Runner, but Scott was just borrowing from the great b&w noir films for tone and 2001 for visual cues. As for Lord of the Rings visuals they're like Tolkien's descriptive writing; flowery, but ultimately absolutely vacuous. I'm a huge fan of the films personally, but on a visual level I'd take the battle in the rain in Seven Samurai over anything in Lord of the Rings (who even though they were copying the Battle of Helm's Deep from the book, took its visual cue FROM The Seven Samurai's rain battle).


You can still like Proust and honestly admit that he had a lot to learn about plot and setting.Also ridiculous. If an artist does something extremely well, why should they need to learn something else? That's like people who criticize Kubrick for being too cold and cerebral and unemotional when they don't realize what a unique emotion his films (especially 2001) achieve.


if it were just a bunch of pretty pictures nobody would care about the film.Visual art is often a bunch of pretty pictures and people care about it.


Visually, Spielberg isn't a notch on Kubrick, Scorsese, Ridley Scott, or that new guy coming up Aronofsky.Not many have a notch on Kubrick visually. Scorsese and Spielberg both share a talent of seeming to know how to naturally put a film together. On the visual front I'd put both about equal, but I prefer Scorsese's content more. Scott is hit and miss for me. He's Kubrick's lesser but equally ambitious brother and I'd definitely take Spielberg over him. Aronofsky is another interesting savant. While I didn't care for Pi or Requiem I admired the ambition, and while The Fountain was one of the most visually breathtaking films of the 21st century it's not without its major faults and to suggest he's better visually than Spielberg is ridiculous. Aronofsky has yet to create 1/10 of the memorable visuals in Spielberg's films.


most important of all: it's content.I always get grief when I say this but I think Grave of the Fireflies is a better film than Schindler's List. Visually, aesthetically, it's Schindler's equal. In terms of content it's only slightly less portentous (we're dealing with two humans not an entire group of people being killed). But in terms of execution I think Fireflies has one major thing over SL and that's nuance and subtlety. I also think it's more graceful and transcends its historical context its based on. I love Spielberg, but subtle he's not, and he's also not good at dealing with complex subjects in any way but a manner that comes off as too simplistic. Terry Gilliam said of SL that it's biggest problem was it was about success while WW2 was about the greatest human failure ever. I also think Fireflies has another big advantage in that it's incredibly emotional without being maudlin.


The pictures aren't nearly as interesting as those in 2001: A Space Odyssey.Comparing every film visually with 2001 would be like comparing every novel to War & Peace. 2001 might be the most visually brilliant film ever, and I can only think of a few that I would dare to call its equal and only a few that I actually prefer.


If you look at those frames, you see things, shapes and colors in remarkable combinations.Well, Kubrick was a minimalist for the most part. His color scheme was basic, but he managed to create great associations through those basic colors (the life-blood read, the sterilized, stark white, the endless black, etc.). Keeping with that minimalism he also used geometric framing creating shapes-within-frame. But Ozu was probably the best at this.


that one shot isn't randomly coming after another, but they bear a relationship to each other and are being composed in a visual language that isn't there in Schindler's List.These specific Kubrick uses date back to silent films. If you're talking about "juxtaposed images bearing a relationship to each other" then you're talking Eisenstein's montage theory. And he was using shapes within frame as far back as '25. Again, much of Kubrick's language CAME from silent film.


Much of the cinematography in Schindler's List is just competent journeyman level workIt's not Kubrick level, but it's hardly what I'd call "competent journeyman level" either. If you want I'll point you in the direction of some film pros and Spielberg defenders who'll gladly bite your head off for all of this, I just don't have the energy for it.


You're right, he's perfect in every way. He has no flaws.The goal of art isn't to be flawless. 2001 is more flawless than Evangelion, but I prefer the latter, so there ya go.

[MorpheusSandman]

Yes, 2001 is a splendid film... but I actually find Dr. Strangelove (black and white) to be stronger... let alone Schindler's List. By the way... it is interesting that you bring up 2001... considering that the film really is so much about the visual and the musical... suggestion far more than narrative.Interesting you prefer Strangelove over 2001. I love both, and while they're impossible to compare content wise (a film on the theme of evolution and a satirical cold-war comedy), if we look at the form and how it related to content, I don't think there's ever been a more "music-like" marriage of the two ("all art aspires to the state of music") than 2001. That film simply doesn't work if it attempts to follow any traditional film form. Read the book and you'll realize that 2001 does have a narrative - Clarke found it, and told it, and made a good but limited sci-fi book. Kubrick ignored it, went for something different, and created a transcendent work of art. I think the content of Strangelove is strong enough that it would've worked in a different form. You certainly lose something without Kubrick's precise direction and especially his usage of b&w, but I don't think it would've been enough to be fatal (but this is speculative of course).

And on the film/form/music theme, you might appreciate this Kubrick quote:


A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

[stlukesguild]

Yes... you are probably right... 2001 is the more original and the greater film... but I've always loved the dark satire of Dr. Strangelove. It has marvelously memorable visual moments: the B-52 bombers laden with the weaponry intended to destroy half of the world refueling in a twisted parody of the sexual act to the innocuous strains of Try a Little Tenderness.:lol: On the other hand... 2001 is indeed virtually a visual symphony.

[kasie]

Hmm I would probably just put "universality" underneath the heading of "depth of theme" since part of a theme's depth has to do with whether it is universal. Of course there is a question in my mind whether all themes are in fact universal. What does one do with a story about the American Dream for example, which so much of American literature happens to be about, in Europe? What do Europeans make of The Great Gatsby I wonder......

There, I think, you have it, that is my point - there are many themes that are worthy and interesting in themselves but are not necessarily a universal experience. I think maybe this is why Virginia Woolf was disappointed with Mrs Dalloway when she had finished it, she felt she had shown Clarissa as a product of her class and time (which Woolf felt to be of little 'value') rather than as a type of all human experience, just to give a particular instance.

With reference to The Great Gatsby, I think many readers of my generation do find this to be a story about the American Dream and, as such, to be interesting but they find it hard to view it in any other way and to see the characters' experiences as universal. Indeed this experience of American Literature is, I suspect, the over-riding one for many British readers (I hesitate to speak for the rest of Europe!); they find it interesting to read about America and what it means to be American, rather than reading it to find out what it means to be human.

I shall now use the excuse of the imminent arrival of visitors to run away and hide in order to escape the hail of criticism that will rain down on me for such sweeping statements.

btw, E M Forster in Aspects of the Novel said, '...and, oh dear, yes, the novel tells a story...'

[Jozanny]

Let me try to rescue myself, perhaps lamely, from charges of relativism. We of course have to have critical standards on which to judge artistic value, and I am not an absolute New Critic in that sense. One needs to be able to have some historical sense--for instance, how WW1 sent Victorian king's body hierarchy crashing, and Modernism did the best it could to pick up the pieces by creating a dialectical irony between The Text, the past, and the shattered values it compared itself to. Moral certainty ended with the rise of Joyce, Proust, Eliot, Tate, Woolf, and any early Modernist I skipped.

Post modernism, I think, destroys even the reverence placed on the object, or the text, whatever other criteria we ascribe to it, and I'll readily confess I've never met a succinct definition of PM that I like.

Now, one might be tempted to say these movements are more complex than past artistic periods. I say no. They are progressive, but the relationship between post modern art and its audience is no more or less complex than is Shakespeare to his audience, or Shakespeare filtered through to a modern audience who might or might not have studied the Elizabethan Age, or even an audience's relationship to film.

Marvelous discussion there gentlemen, and I cannot make a fool of myself by saying anything about technique except for when it comes to Orson Welles genius--but still, the only thing different in human interaction with film is the components involved. There has to be some narrative scheme of some sort, and as in building, you have a virtual community of craft persons who assemble to make a visual story. It takes a little more sophistication to make a cinematic masterpiece perhaps, in comparison to a single artist, the end product, and the audience engagement with it, but making a film is still, at the end of the day, a tribal activity.

Now, I will throw out one, merely one example of where a literary text may be more complex in its relation to an audience than not. Take The Tin Drum. This is already a difficult novel for a native German who may or may not still feel the weight of psychic guilt, but when you get a non-native speaker you have this:

author and his relationship to his own narrative------>translator, his or her relationship to the author's intent, his or her relationship to lingual fluency, the non-native speaker who is beyond the living memory of Nazism--okay, this is a more complex dynamic than that which occurs if I, as a dumb, loud, fat, American white chick, tries to have some empathy for my sister's reading tastes, and gets a hundred pages in to Jennifer Weiner before screaming "I am not going on this journey."

Which in no way implies Weiner is a trashy writer; she's not. Her work is a generation ahead of me, her characters have the kind of sex that even when I was sexually active I could only dream of, and I simply have a mental revolt towards completing the wholistic balance one knows is coming for the heroine first person narrator.

[mortalterror]

These specific Kubrick uses date back to silent films. If you're talking about "juxtaposed images bearing a relationship to each other" then you're talking Eisenstein's montage theory. And he was using shapes within frame as far back as '25. Again, much of Kubrick's language CAME from silent film.

I know that Eisenstein is responsible for developing montage and other early techniques, but I think that you grant him far too much credit as an influence on Kubrick's work. Kubrick's visual style was formed in his early career when he worked as a photographer for Life magazine. Kurosawa was a painter, as was Ridley Scott, and James Cameron. Fellini was a cartoonist. Certain aspects of The Seventh Seal aside, Bergman had a background in writing and his images don't become really sophisticated until he hooks up with Sven Nykvist. You can see that all great artists bring a separate knowledge to their mediums that wasn't there before, that adds to it and informs the art. Tarantino has been having so much trouble since Pulp Fiction because movies are all he really knows.



Most people today would also prefer Harry Potter over Proust.

Yes, and why is that? The lowest common denominator theory is a little too easy, and doesn't require the level of thought it's proponents seem to think themselves capable of. Whenever a film that looks dumb makes a hundred million dollars I like to go to it and try to see what other people are seeing in it. I don't dismiss millions of other people's opinions out of hand. Like it or not, there is something going on with Harry Potter that I simply do not get, and it's not just a fad, and it's not just that everyone is stupid. There are real story elements that have captured the planetary zeitgeist, that really resonate with people, and any writer who is willing to ignore what works for some feigned feeling of superiority isn't studying his craft and doesn't deserve to be read, or viewed as the case may be. The job of any artist serious about improving his craft is to take those elements that work in Harry Potter, and write a better book using that knowledge.

We should also not end our query by asking what is good or bad in Harry Potter, but we must ask ourselves again why would somebody not want to read Proust? Can you think of any reason besides, 1)It's too long, or 2)It's too good? If you can't think of more reasons than that, you aren't being an objective critic.


Silent films' lack of sound isn't a handicap. It's a limitation, yes, but every art-form has limits. That's like saying literature can't overcome the handicap of not having sound, which is ridiculous. The appeal of film has always, first and foremost, been the art of the moving picture, and the silent film greats understood this better than any.

I didn't say that literature's lack of sound was a handicap, but you raise another good point. More people prefer to listen to music or watch movies than read a book. The average American watches 4 hours of television a night. How many people do you think read books 4 hours a night? Multi-media has a stronger, wider appeal than mono-media. I'm not saying that the best literature doesn't overcome this limitation but a book has to be pretty good to compete with television for an audience. A lot of the really smart writers are writing for film and television, because they can make more money and have their work seen by more people.

I don't see why we can't just be honest about what we're responding to. Why we have to censor ourselves for some archaic notion of good taste. Why STLuke thinks we ought to hide our light under a bushel and if nobody likes what you do you must be a genius.

I'll admit that the visual component of film is more important than the audio. But when you give people the option of one or both, that's no choice at all.


See more, including Eisenstein, Murnau, Griffith, and Keaton.

I have, and aside from Keaton, they bore me. Although I wish I had a copy of The Man With The Movie Camera. That film was dope. FYI Keaton's Sherlock Jr. is more entertaining than The General. And if I had the chance, I'd probably re-watch Safety Last!. If you haven't seen it, check out Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Criterion put out a copy with a new soundtrack called Voices of Light that sets the film off beautifully.


It's the director that determines the visual aesthetic for the largest part. And I think this is just plain nonsense. If you think The Seven Samurai lacks visual aesthetics then you don't know what visual aesthetics are. I'd say the majority of the most amazing films on a visual aesthetic level are in b&w. Just a short list:

That's a pretty good list. However, I've never been really impressed by Hitchcock's visuals, aside from his movie Rope, and the end of Strangers on a Train. And really, The Third Man? All that film's got going for it is the ferris wheel scene. Ikiru is a wonderful film, but visually? I guess if you like swings. I'm a big fan of Kurosawa, and Seven Samurai is definitely top ten material, but his visuals are better in Rashomon, Ran, or Dreams than they are in Seven. I'd also be hesitant to recommend all of Lang's opus. M, Fury, Scarlet Street, and The Big Heat are all awesome. Metropolis has it's moments. But have you ever seen Ministry of Fear? Terrible doesn't begin to describe it. However, it was based on a Graham Green novel like The Third Man, so that might have something to do with why I didn't like it. While I have to give props to Ford and admit that The Searchers and Stagecoach are visually excellent, I'd have to say that like Hitchcock his strengths weren't in visual so much as storytelling areas. Otherwise a very good list.

And one good list deserves another http://mortalterror.livejournal.com/220929.html#cutid1 .


Also ridiculous. If an artist does something extremely well, why should they need to learn something else? That's like people who criticize Kubrick for being too cold and cerebral and unemotional when they don't realize what a unique emotion his films (especially 2001) achieve.

Kubrick is my favorite director (except sometimes I prefer Fellini) but he is cold and cerebral.


Aronofsky is another interesting savant. While I didn't care for Pi or Requiem I admired the ambition, and while The Fountain was one of the most visually breathtaking films of the 21st century it's not without its major faults and to suggest he's better visually than Spielberg is ridiculous. Aronofsky has yet to create 1/10 of the memorable visuals in Spielberg's films.

I wouldn't put Scott within spitting distance of most of the others I've mentioned, but his visuals are as good as anybody. He's held back both by his narrative and shallow two dimensional characters, Thelma and Louise aside. While I own thirteen of Spielberg's films I have to admit that he hasn't hit the top register as often as Scorsese. He's held back by his fake feeling happy endings to tragic movies, and his emotional manipulation of the audience and pandering maudlin characters. Aronofsky hasn't fulfilled his promise yet, but all the heroes are dead: Kubrick, Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa. Scorsese can hold his own in that company but who would you choose to take their place? I'm guessing the new wave will be from Hong Kong with Zhang Yimou or Wong Kar Wai.

I liked Grave of the Fireflies too but it's no Schindler's List, and Takahata is rightfully the second banana in Studio Ghibli.


Comparing every film visually with 2001 would be like comparing every novel to War & Peace. 2001 might be the most visually brilliant film ever, and I can only think of a few that I would dare to call its equal and only a few that I actually prefer.

You might compare it to Tarkovsky's Solyaris or maybe Fanny and Alexander? Actually, I chose that example because the film lacked strong dialogue, plot, character, and other storytelling elements because I wanted to focus on the visual side of things to the exclusion of story which Seven Samurai and Schindler's List both have in abundance.


Well, Kubrick was a minimalist for the most part. His color scheme was basic, but he managed to create great associations through those basic colors (the life-blood read, the sterilized, stark white, the endless black, etc.). Keeping with that minimalism he also used geometric framing creating shapes-within-frame. But Ozu was probably the best at this.

Ozu is alright, but there's just not enough action or conflict in his stories for me. His stories are very human, but not terribly dramatic. I sat through Tokyo Story going "Somebody throw a pie!"


The goal of art isn't to be flawless. 2001 is more flawless than Evangelion, but I prefer the latter, so there ya go.

The movie bugged me, as did the series episodes when they got to the twenties. "Why do you pilot the Eva?" But beyond that, I thought they were both worth watching. Evangelion was more fun to watch than 2001 but less rewarding.

[Jozanny]

Yes, and why is that? The lowest common denominator theory is a little too easy, and doesn't require the level of thought it's proponents seem to think themselves capable of. Whenever a film that looks dumb makes a hundred million dollars I like to go to it and try to see what other people are seeing in it. I don't dismiss millions of other people's opinions out of hand. Like it or not, there is something going on with Harry Potter that I simply do not get, and it's not just a fad, and it's not just that everyone is stupid.

Who is suggesting Rowling is a bad author because she and the movie adaptations of her work are popular? How do you think Shakespeare got to be the industry he is?

I do not know the Potter series, haven't read them. Seen maybe two of the movies on television. Is it good children's lit? Perhaps. Harry is confronted with numerous moral choices, and Rowling uses the traditions of English mythology to teach them. Most of the teachers/wizards are well developed, their powers tie into the plot, but it is too early to say where Harry Potter will eventually stand in the canon. The movies, which are all I can judge, do seem to tend on the gimmick side now and again--but that's the genre.

[MorpheusSandman]

I generally don't like cutting posts up this much, but I'm not sure how else to reply directly to points. :sick:


I know that Eisenstein is responsible for developing montage and other early techniques, but I think that you grant him far too much credit as an influence on Kubrick's work.Eisenstein is but one influence I detect in Kubrick. Most of the great directors are also voracious film enthusiasts so it's fair to say that Kubrick has a huge range of influence. I was just saying that films like 2001, especially, seem to utilize techniques that were developed and more essential to silent cinema's art.


You can see that all great artists bring a separate knowledge to their mediums that wasn't there before, that adds to it and informs the art.Oh certainly, and I wouldn't deny that. But my point was merely towards the idea that early films suffered from their handicaps (no color, no sound), and yet you praise a film whose tradition was very much rooted in those early films.


Yes, and why is that?Because Rowling supplies more superficially and demands less of her audience. Proust supplies more substance, but the audience has to work to reap the rewards.


Whenever a film that looks dumb makes a hundred million dollars I like to go to it and try to see what other people are seeing in it. I don't dismiss millions of other people's opinions out of hand.Neither do I. But the question becomes how much has an artist sacrificed to pander to an ignorant and easily manipulated mass audience? Spielberg is able to capture the imaginations and emotions of millions and not lose the artistry. I can't say the same for Michael Bay.


Like it or not, there is something going on with Harry Potter that I simply do not get, and it's not just a fad, and it's not just that everyone is stupid.I wasn't trying to denigrate HP. they're books I genuinely enjoy and in terms of fantasy are probably the best to come along in a great many years. What makes them worthwhile is Rowling's imaginative spin on old concepts. Her utterly unique blending of mythologies. To an extent that's what made Lord of the Rings so appealing as well. It's this utterly believable alternative reality filled with things that capture the imagination better than all imitations who just play off and don't add to tired concepts.

All that said, if we're talking artistic substance, something within the work that's going to reward commitment, then it's simply not there in HP the way it is in most of the great works. Great imagination can only take one so far if there's nothing else there... and I'm not exactly saying there is NOTHING else there in HP. It obviously has enough to keep people interested, but I don't think it will ultimately inspire the kind of devotion that LotR has. Time will tell.


The job of any artist serious about improving his craft is to take those elements that work in Harry Potter, and write a better book using that knowledge.That's assuming that's what their goal is.


Can you think of any reason besides, 1)It's too long, or 2)It's too good? If you can't think of more reasons than that, you aren't being an objective critic.3) It's too difficult and demands too much from readers. 4) It has the stigma of being a classic, therefor people have preconceptions about what it is. 5) People don't know about it because it doesn't make news like HP and all their friends aren't reading it. 6) It's French, and anything French is pretentious.

There's probably more.


More people prefer to listen to music or watch movies than read a book. The average American watches 4 hours of television a night. How many people do you think read books 4 hours a night?Most people are looking for entertainment that allows them to disengage their brain after a day of labor (whether physical or mental). Most entertainment they seek provides them with that vegetative state. The equivalent of laying down and getting a massage. Reading requires the brain being active, and that's too much mental work for some and is counter to what they are seeking.


Multi-media has a stronger, wider appeal than mono-media. I'm not saying that the best literature doesn't overcome this limitation but a book has to be pretty good to compete with television for an audience.But that's again assuming that the bigger audience equals better. I repeat it's NOT the current mass flavor that decides what lasts because what entertains one month is played out the next as everyone rushes to oversaturate the market with impersonators of whatever made the big splash. Do you know how many Beatles-esque bands there were in the 60s? How many are remembered compared to the Beatles? But how many were popular at the time? That's my point.


Why we have to censor ourselves for some archaic notion of good taste.I don't. I admit to liking HP. I'll admit to liking a lot of trash movies as well. But I like them in perspective.


But when you give people the option of one or both, that's no choice at all.To me, any "addition" made to art is just a new combination that can be utilized to a higher purpose. That doesn't automatically make it better. That's like saying just adding more to any recipe automatically makes it better. I could add spinach to peanut butter and jelly but that doesn't mean it's going to be better. The ingredients have to be combined for the purpose of the greater good of the work or the added ingredient might as well not be there. And what I see today is a strong trend towards movies and TVS that would work equally as well as radio programs.


I have, and aside from Keaton, they bore me.Well, they intrigue and entertain me in a way that sound film doesn't. You don't like the art (in general), that's fine for you, but don't assume your opinion extends to everyone.


Although I wish I had a copy of The Man With The Movie Camera. That film was dope.I think they just released a new version with a new score. Haven't seen it though.


Keaton's Sherlock Jr. is more entertaining than The General.I think The General is more entertaining, but I prefer Sherlock Jr. My yardstick for great art doesn't end at what entertains me.


If you haven't seen it, check out Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Criterion put out a copy with a new soundtrack called Voices of Light that sets the film off beautifully.I own it. It's number 5 on my list of 50 favorite films list, only behind Evangelion, Seven Samurai, 2001, and Mulholland Drive.


I've never been really impressed by Hitchcock's visuals,Really? The man pretty much wrote the book on how to make thrillers and how one could use the camera as a narrative tool. He invented so many techniques that are, to this day, inextricably linked to him. Nobody can do the Hitchcock zoom without being reminded of Vertigo, or put a murder to music without being reminded of Psycho. Even Welles, in preparation for CK, said he watched The Lady Vanishes 100 times.


And really, The Third Man? All that film's got going for it is the ferris wheel scene.You've got to be kidding me. It's the best noir ever made. The shadows, the wet streets, the sewer chase, probably the best reveal in cinema history, the tilted camera, the hands reaching through the grate, and that unforgettable zither score!

But hey, don't take my word for it, check out Theyshootpictures (http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_top100films.htm) where it's number 23.


Ikiru is a wonderful film, but visually? I guess if you like swings.That swing scene is unforgettable. One of my top 5 favorite scenes of all time. That's poetic imagery at its most potent. But Kurosawa's direction throughout is wonderful. Whether it's the meditative long takes following Shimura after his realization, or the drunken way the camera cuts in during the wake, etc. etc.


his visuals are better in Rashomon, Ran, or Dreams than they are in Seven.Ran perhaps (I haven't seen Dreams yet), but I'd vehemently disagree they're better in Rashomon. I think his techniques were just coming into maturation with Ikiru and Rashomon and were finally fully cultivated in Seven Samurai.


Metropolis has it's moments.To this day I still think Metropolis is visually better, on sheer ingenuity and audaciousness, then the vast majority of all sci-fi.


I'd have to say that like Hitchcock his strengths weren't in visual so much as storytelling areas.While I agree they were among cinema's greatest storytellers, I completely disagree their strengths weren't in the visuals. On the contrary, they were both two of the top 5 greatest visual artists in cinema. If you talk to anyone who studies their films they'll mention their visual inventions and language before they bring up their narrative techniques (though the two were often intertwined).


Kubrick is my favorite director (except sometimes I prefer Fellini) but he is cold and cerebral.See, I don't think that. I think Kubrick is very emotional, he's just not going after the "central" emotions that so many films and directors cheaply manipulate. His films are among the most emotionally complex because they can evoke feelings we don't have names for, and his films so rarely resort to evoking maudlin "happiness" or "sadness" or "triumph". I always reaction emotionally and viscerally to 2001, but I probably couldn't put a name to all my feelings, and that's part of its beauty.


his visuals are as good as anybody.Only superficially.


While I own thirteen of Spielberg's films I have to admit that he hasn't hit the top register as often as Scorsese.Agreed.


He's held back by his fake feeling happy endings to tragic movies, and his emotional manipulation of the audience and pandering maudlin characters.I've often said the reason I don't mind Spielberg's maudlin nature is because, despite it all, he comes off as always being honest. If you're a sentimental person and make sentimental films, then I think it's unfair for others to expect you to not be how you are. Even Ford veered into sentimentalism and maudlin emotions, but he seemed to do it from a place of honest, and that's what makes the biggest difference.


who would you choose to take their place? I'm guessing the new wave will be from Hong Kong with Zhang Yimou or Wong Kar Wai.I've yet to be truly impressed by WKR. I can never get past the idea that he's just mimicking the greats. My problems with Yimou has been with the terrible DVD releases of his films. Being stuck somewhere where there are no art-house cinemas I have to go with what's available on DVD and the releases of his films on DVD have been terrible.

I'm particularly fond of the New Wave of Taiwanese Cinema: Hou Hsiao-hsien is, IMO, the greatest film-maker of the last 20 years, but like with most of the others his films (especially his best late-80s/early-90s material) can be hard to find. Edward Yang is just as brilliant, but he sadly died recently. Watch Yi Yi and try to find a way to see A Brighter Summer Day if you haven't. Then there's Tsai Ming-liang, who seems to be inventing a whole new cinematic language. His last film I saw had one line of dialogue in the entire film, and his films can be hilarious, shocking, and completely intriguing in their superficial emptiness.

I'm also very intrigued by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Bela Tarr, David Lynch and, perhaps one of the handful of old greats left, Godard.


I liked Grave of the Fireflies too but it's no Schindler's List, and Takahata is rightfully the second banana in Studio Ghibli.Often times mediocre talent can rise to meteoric heights with the right material and inspiration. Fireflies is majestically directed, and the fact that, with all my knowledge of film, I still cry like a baby every time I see it is a testament to its greatness. I would say that Schindler's List is no Grave of the Fireflies actually. Fireflies is in my top 20 films, SL wouldn't be in my top 100.


I chose that example because the film lacked strong dialogue, plot, character,I'm also not of the belief that 2001 lacks the latter two. It just has them in a different form than most typical film does. 2001 actually has a very strong narrative, it just progresses visually rather than verbally. And there's a reason HAL is one of the most memorable characters ever. ;)


Ozu is alright, but there's just not enough action or conflict in his stories for me.Fair enough. But I think he is one of the absolute best ever. The lack of contrived conflict and drama is what makes his film so poignant. Technique wise he's also one of the most studied directors. He might be the greatest formalist of all directors.


I sat through Tokyo Story going "Somebody throw a pie!"What do you think of Satyajit Ray then? He's similar to Ozu, but in an Indian rather than Japanese context. I think his Apu Trilogy is just wonderful.


The movie bugged me, as did the series episodes when they got to the twenties.Any particular reason? The series and film are intentionally subversive, and that tends to bug people who are looking for the traditional.


Evangelion was more fun to watch than 2001 but less rewarding.Actually, I think it's the reverse. NGE was an overwhelmingly powerful experience for me, one that wasn't necessarily what I'd call fun. Effective, yes. Fun, no. The film is, to this date, the most mentally and physically exhausting film I know of. 2001 I thought was a blast - like a visual thrill ride. And even though I've spend a lot of time discussing, writing about, and studying both, I've come to the conclusion that NGE is simply a richer and, for me, much more rewarding experience. NGE has a human element that 2001 lacks. It also simply has a more varied range of thematic substance. Visual wise I think they're even equals. Anno's direction is not lesser than Kubrick's, it's just different. Kubrick is forging his own style while Anno adapted and adopted as necessary and both provide a treasure trove for people who care to study their marriage of form and content.

Both left me with that feeling you get when you've just experienced something really important, but NGE has kept me actively interested in its depths for the past 2+ years while I lost interest in just discussing 2001 after the first few months, feeling I'd exhausted all its possible rewards.

[stlukesguild]

The lowest common denominator theory is a little too easy, and doesn't require the level of thought it's proponents seem to think themselves capable of. Whenever a film that looks dumb makes a hundred million dollars I like to go to it and try to see what other people are seeing in it. I don't dismiss millions of other people's opinions out of hand. Like it or not, there is something going on with Harry Potter that I simply do not get, and it's not just a fad, and it's not just that everyone is stupid. There are real story elements that have captured the planetary zeitgeist, that really resonate with people, and any writer who is willing to ignore what works for some feigned feeling of superiority isn't studying his craft and doesn't deserve to be read, or viewed as the case may be. The job of any artist serious about improving his craft is to take those elements that work in Harry Potter, and write a better book using that knowledge.

The job of any artist serious about improving his craft is to take those elements that work in Harry Potter, and write a better book using that knowledge.

This has got to be one of the most ridiculous posts I've yet read here. The artist who is not interested in learning from some piece of mediocre schlock is not studying his craft and doesn't deserve an audience? That's retarded! So Cormack McCarthy should be reading J.K. Rowling, Sean Scully and Anselm Kiefer should be looking at Thomas Kinkade and LeRoy Nieman, and Henryk Górecki, Arvo Pärt, John Adams, or Philip Glass should all be learning from Madonna and Britney Speares... because their work resonates with a vast audience and all those people couldn't be wrong, could they? Or could they? Once again you make the false assumption that the goal of every artist is (or should be) to reach the largest possible audience. If such were true... then yes... I'd say Proust could have learned something from Rowling. But pandering to the tastes of the masses isn't my idea of a solid strategy for creating art of any real merit. No, this doesn't mean I have some romantic idea of the starving artist flipping burgers while flipping the finger to the masses of bourgeois in some poverty-laden and obscure hovel. But neither does it mean that the goal of art is to continually increase market share.

More people prefer to listen to music or watch movies than read a book. The average American watches 4 hours of television a night. How many people do you think read books 4 hours a night? Multi-media has a stronger, wider appeal than mono-media. I'm not saying that the best literature doesn't overcome this limitation but a book has to be pretty good to compete with television for an audience. A lot of the really smart writers are writing for film and television, because they can make more money and have their work seen by more people.

Again... you are making the assumption that the sole goal of the artist is to reach the widest possible audience through whatever means necessary. Give the people what they want and rake in the cash. Anyone who does other wise is obviously not one of the "really smart" artists. The word for that is "pandering". It's fine if that is what your goal is. The goal of most serious artists is to bring something of their unique vision or perspective of life as they have experienced it to their art. This doesn't mean that they are unaware of the audience... but rather, concern for this audience is an afterthought. Almost every work will find an audience... some larger than others. Certainly the scale of the audience one way or another is no indication of the merits of the art. But the goal of art is not to meet the temporal whims of the public... or to paraphrase Picasso, "the artist is one who sells what he makes, not one who makes what sells".

MS- that's again assuming that the bigger audience equals better. I repeat it's NOT the current mass flavor that decides what lasts because what entertains one month is played out the next as everyone rushes to oversaturate the market with impersonators of whatever made the big splash. Do you know how many Beatles-esque bands there were in the 60s? How many are remembered compared to the Beatles? But how many were popular at the time? That's my point.

:thumbs_up Yes! How many people who did not grow up on the stuff now listen to the Association or the Monkeys or Paul Revere and the Raiders... all of whom were outselling Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones in the mid-60s... to say nothing about Thelonious Monk or Miles Davis. Handel was nearly driven into bankruptcy in competition with the sensations caused by the Italian castrati, while bear baiting gave Shakespeare and his peers serious competition. Perhaps they should have learned from these spectacles and introduced dog fights or some equally violent show in order to capture that all important audience?

To me, any "addition" made to art is just a new combination that can be utilized to a higher purpose. That doesn't automatically make it better. That's like saying just adding more to any recipe automatically makes it better. I could add spinach to peanut butter and jelly but that doesn't mean it's going to be better. The ingredients have to be combined for the purpose of the greater good of the work or the added
ingredient might as well not be there.

Again:thumbs_up

[Jozanny]

I am glad you took that one luke. I was going to but felt not that I was denigrated, but that the discussion was deliberately trashed. It saddened me a little.

Anyway, it was interesting when it wasn't cued for provocation. Unless I see something later which is worth debating I'll retire the field.

[Drkshadow03]

With reference to The Great Gatsby, I think many readers of my generation do find this to be a story about the American Dream and, as such, to be interesting but they find it hard to view it in any other way and to see the characters' experiences as universal. Indeed this experience of American Literature is, I suspect, the over-riding one for many British readers (I hesitate to speak for the rest of Europe!); they find it interesting to read about America and what it means to be American, rather than reading it to find out what it means to be human.

I wonder, though. After all, what exactly is the American Dream? Does such a dream have its origins in Europe? Similarly, when we take a look at how Gatsby portrays, questions, critiques, and thinks about the American dream do these questions raise issues that ONLY Americans can relate to? I'm not so sure . . .

Is the American Dream really just a false aspiration, a false set of ideals, to help foster some sort of meaning and purpose to a meaningless life in a meaningless world? Is the American Dream really about class struggles between an American aristocracy who wants nothing to do with a rising class of entrapraneurs and gangsters much like the class struggles between the aristocracy and gentry or gentry and working-class? Is Gatsby's problem really about living in a past that can never be reclaimed? Do people outside of America have this problem, especially in regards to former loves?

All of these questions at the heart of The Great Gatsby might use the language of specifically American issues, but I do think at their core they are about universal themes/issues.

[Virgil]

What a greaat thread this has turned into. I can't keep up but the discussion is combative but civil. Kudos to all who are participating here. :) :) :)

[MorpheusSandman]

or Paul Revere and the Raiders...SHOCKING you should bring them up because my mom actually toured with them all over the country when she was young and I've got to hear about them my whole life! :)

[mortalterror]

If anybody is interested and has five minutes to watch a video, Nova has a vodcast that explains how large groups of people can make accurate judgements. http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/rss/media/nova-v-20080620-2.m4v

So it's not just my opinion. It's science's opinion too.

[Jozanny]

If anybody is interested and has five minutes to watch a video, Nova has a vodcast that explains how large groups of people can make accurate judgements. http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/rss/media/nova-v-20080620-2.m4v

So it's not just my opinion. It's science's opinion too.

This is a near total fallacy, even if we look at other disciplines. Newton is considered the greatest scientist who ever existed. He is one man, his work and inventions are still in use.

Popularity isn't necessarily a detraction mortal, but neither is it the defining yardstick of a superior aesthetic. Without brave minds like Galileo and Newton and Darwin, we might still be stuck with the earth as the center of the universe. That was once the *popular* disseminated view.

No doubt you have a defense for this in your nostalgia for everything in its proper place. The world has changed. Even the sexes aren't what they used to be, and the notion of gender itself is no longer a polar opposition--male and female, not even gay or straight anymore, as studies of animals reveal.

It is confusing, and maybe fundo-materialistic free markets aren't the answer to everything, it may even be unpleasant while we adjust to a new global schematic, but I do not think universalist reality tv will be curated in museums, or taught at Harvard as an illuminating truth.

You think the classics suck. Okay. I think we get it, but you've provided little in the way of showing why popular culture is more relevant than Proust.

To me the best writing, and my engagement with that, is very nearly akin to a spiritual experience. I find it useful, even necessary in my life, to enrich myself that way, as is true for the other fine arts.

[mortalterror]

Most people are looking for entertainment that allows them to disengage their brain after a day of labor (whether physical or mental). Most entertainment they seek provides them with that vegetative state. The equivalent of laying down and getting a massage. Reading requires the brain being active, and that's too much mental work for some and is counter to what they are seeking.

But how do you reconcile that opinion with the growing number of people who will play videogames but not read a book? Videogames are a more active audience participation art form than literature that demands an active and complicated engagement. Most people I know enjoy playing on the hardest difficulties, because the challenge is the primary appeal of the medium. And while spectating may be passive and undemanding, what about all the people who would rather pick up a ball than read a novel? There are a lot of folks looking for a level of stimulation that most books simply don't provide; so I don't believe that we can split this debate into a simple active verses passive target audience.

[MorpheusSandman]

But how do you reconcile that opinion with the growing number of people who will play videogames but not read a book?As someone who plays (well, played really) video games I can tell you that video games, after becoming acclimated with the controls, becomes an unconscious act that you simply experience as well. Yes, you actively participate in video games perhaps more than any other art form, but it also provides a lot of superficial entertainment to make the mind go "oooh" and "ahhh". As far as video gamers not liking to read, there are RPGs that have text in the game that's more than 3 times the size of War and Peace. I think you'll find that people who plays these games actually don't mind reading if it's in the context of a video game.


the challenge is the primary appeal of the medium.Yes, but when you "win" a video game you get an automatic rush of accomplishment. That doesn't happen in books. You have to find the accomplishment and rewards on your own, and it's often not as simple as just reading it, because it often requires further discussion and study to reap the rewards of what a book can offer.


what about all the people who would rather pick up a ball than read a novel?That's physical effort and not really mental (yes, there's a mental side that goes into it, but it's more unconscious), and provides the thrill of competition.


There are a lot of folks looking for a level of stimulation that most books simply don't provide; so I don't believe that we can split this debate into a simple active verses passive target audience.I didn't mean to imply it's as simple as all that, but that's a large reason why reading has been out of favor with mass audiences. Here's more:

1. It takes more time to read and finish a book than it takes to finish other artistic activities.
2. The rewards aren't always immediate.
3. Reading is not a sensual experience. IE you only use your eyes to read and the sensation comes from understanding the words subjectively.
4. "The greats" can often be frustrating because narratives aren't always superficially exciting and people will often encounter unknown words and references.

I'm not trying to say that reading is "better" than any other artistic experience. It's not, it's just different. But I think one can find reasons why people like to read less than they enjoy doing other things. For one thing, people likely find a sensual appeal in films, video games, sports, etc. that you don't get with reading. Reading is really the only art-form that relies solely on the internal, subjective understanding of its audience to glean meaning from the work. While reading a reader must "picture" everything in their head to see and follow what's going on. No other art-form requires this, and there is some truth to the idea that people don't like to use their imagination anymore and prefer for the art to provide all the imagination that they lack.

[Jozanny]

I pulled down J.A. Cuddon's A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory and he does no better defining Modernism than luke or I have, so I am not going to quote much of the entry, although, minor quibble, he dates its late 19th century start @1890, and puts the height of its ferment in England & America pretty close to each other, although America pre-dates England, oddly, according to him. America is WW1, England reaches it's apex in the 20's and 30's.

He refuses to say whether or not the movement is over, but I think it is, even though it may continue to have tactical deployment. I think 9/11 broke the back of modernism and post modernism to some extent, although I do remember, amazingly, an op-ed about a week after the attack, with the headline: "Is Postmodernism Dead?"

The contributor's argument was that it wasn't. I am iffy about that. Nothing has replaced it, and Mitchell appears to be its newly crowned champion, unless he's been transcended since 03, but I am still iffy.

I do think, unlike some, that 9/11 created a paradigm shift, for which we'll have to wait and see. DeLillo may have prefigured it as the main 21st century event, however.

I also don't consider the late Jamesian works to be modernist, nor quite Victorian or realistic either. I don't really know what the are, but think they share, along with Flaubert, a tension which threatens the language itself.

If JBI thinks late Joyce cannot be translated, I'd argue the same for The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl.