Any current books you think will become lasting literature?

[Dixie Chick]

Sometimes I wonder what will become classics with time. Any thoughts?

[Sancho Panza]

One book that deserves to become a classic is The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon as it such a fantastic story told in a brilliant way. Not sure about the rest of his work, but that one is certainly a winner

Also in this category I would put the 3 K-Pax books by Gene Brewer, Human Traces by Sebastian Faulkes and The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. I don't read a lot of 'modern' fiction, but these few certainly maintain my hope in the writers of today.

[Catamite]

I liked The Curious Dog but I don't think it's a classic; it's funny and endearing but not encompassing or deep enough to last generations. I think Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is a classic which will poured over in 20, 30 years by lovers of literature, but not by the average person.

[WICKES]

Sometimes I wonder what will become classics with time. Any thoughts?

The books that will last will not necessarily be the best written or deepest (is it possible to get down deeper than Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky etc? Hasn't it all be said already?). The works being written today which will still be read 100 years from now are those which best capture the time in which we are living. Some argue that, in time, every writer (with VERY few exceptions) is forgotten. There is some truth to that, but then again no future writer will ever be able to describe life as a down and out in Paris and London in the 1920s as well as Orwell. There will be future writers with far more talent who may try, but we will still turn to Orwell for this simple reason: he was there. If I want to know what life was like in the trenches during WW1 I won't read Birdsong, I'll read Robert Graves' Goodbye to all that or Sassoon.

I do sometimes wonder if anything we now regard as genius and classic will still be read 500 years from now. How about 1000 years from now or 4000 years from now? Will even Shakespeare and Homer still be being read? Maybe civilisation and humanity will have changed so much that they'll have less and less to say to us.

[dysfunctional-h]

Haruki Murakami is busy writing classics as we speak. David Sedaris has been around for a while, and his stuff from the 80's is still just as hilarious now as is it was then. That's all I have for now.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I do sometimes wonder if anything we now regard as genius and classic will still be read 500 years from now. How about 1000 years from now or 4000 years from now? Will even Shakespeare and Homer still be being read? Maybe civilisation and humanity will have changed so much that they'll have less and less to say to us.

They'll still have the same to say but whether anyone will be interested in listening is a different matter.

[jake21221]

I liked The Curious Dog but I don't think it's a classic; it's funny and endearing but not encompassing or deep enough to last generations. I think Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is a classic which will poured over in 20, 30 years by lovers of literature, but not by the average person.

Agreed. However I really wonder if Infinite Jest will hold up in future generations. It's a great work but I don't see it holding up like say Blood Meridian (weird example I know) does. I just finished it and loved it and have a few more Wallace books to get through now but for some reason I just can't see it being a classic 25, 50 years down the road.

[JuniperWoolf]

Life of Pi (dammit) and the works of Chuck Palahniuk.

[PoeticPassions]

Perhaps some of Kazuo Ishiguro's books.

And John Updike (though he recently died--2009-- so I guess he is not currently writing)

[Lokasenna]

I imagine Thomas Pynchon will be read for a good long while to come. But other than him..?

[JBI]

I suspect the form of novel is near exhaustion - nothing of late seems to be particularly developmental, so therefore anything particularly canonical will probably exist in a niched section of a specific canon.

That being said, Autobiography of Red, but that is somewhat old now.

[Alexander III]

I imagine Thomas Pynchon will be read for a good long while to come. But other than him..?

I am not so sure about Pynchon, but Mccarthy and Marquez I would place money on as sure things.

While the first half of 20th century was undoubtedly dominated and stered by american writers, the second half has most of its great stars from south america.

[PoeticPassions]

I am not so sure about Pynchon, but Mccarthy and Marquez I would place money on as sure things.

While the first half of 20th century was undoubtedly dominated and stered by american writers, the second half has most of its great stars from south america.

Agreed. I forgot about Marquez! And definitely some other SA authors like Llosa...

[Catamite]

I forgot both Pynchon and Marquez, I think people will read them in later years if only for the grandiose of their vision. One Hundred Years of Solitude can be frustrating but it's alternate reality means that, in a sense, it is 'timeless'. I think by its language alone it will be read in the future, which is the most significant factor in old works.

[Paulclem]

Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children and Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red.Both are innovative and quirky.

[Desolation]

I think that the four living writers that Harold Bloom referred to as the best - Pynchon, Roth, DeLillo, and McCarthy - all stand a good chance of holding up.

Of course, I'm sure that there are some very good novelists out there working right now who won't start to receive acclaim until after they've passed on.

Going outside of the realm of novels...If I were to give my honest opinion, I'd say that the figure working today with the best chance of being poured over by English students and professors for years to come (and I'm sure that not many people will agree with me, and that's ok) is this guy:
http://i923.photobucket.com/albums/ad75/death_on_credit/BobDylan7.jpg

[WICKES]

While the first half of 20th century was undoubtedly dominated and stered by american writers, the second half has most of its great stars from south america.

Really?! If you asked a neutral academic to list the great books of the first half of the 20th century it would certainly include American writers, poets etc but it would not be "undoubtedly dominated" by them. A list of the top 10 most important novels of the first half of the 20th century would have to find room for Proust (French), Joyce's Ulysses and possibly Portrait of the Artist (Irish), Huxley's Brave New World (English-British), Orwell's 1984 (English-British), Virginia Woolf (English-British), D H Lawrence's Sons and Lovers or Women in Love (English-British)...and what about Thomas Mann, Kafka, Joseph Conrad...? The only American novels in the top 10 would be Lolita (written by an upper class Russian who'd moved to the USA) and The Great Gatsby.

It is even more ridiculous to claim that the literature of the second half of the 20th century has been dominated by South American writers.

[JBI]

I think that the four living writers that Harold Bloom referred to as the best - Pynchon, Roth, DeLillo, and McCarthy - all stand a good chance of holding up.

Of course, I'm sure that there are some very good novelists out there working right now who won't start to receive acclaim until after they've passed on.

Going outside of the realm of novels...If I were to give my honest opinion, I'd say that the figure working today with the best chance of being poured over by English students and professors for years to come (and I'm sure that not many people will agree with me, and that's ok) is this guy:
http://i923.photobucket.com/albums/ad75/death_on_credit/BobDylan7.jpg

Pynchon - I doubt it, seems to weird a gimmicky to last.

Roth, maybe up until the 90s, but he has gone way downhill in the past while writing weirder, more shallower works.

DeLillo, I think he has already faded to relative obscurity, at least in Canada, and he is no longer part of any real curriculum,

McCarthy, probably. Of the four he seems the most likely to me, and probably the most interesting of the lot. Pynchon is way to gimmick, Roth way to weird and perverted, DeLillo way to synthetic.

That being said, I have enjoyed books by all these authors, but in terms of longevity it is hard to think those as the most likely. Certainly Toni Morrison would be a more likely living author, especially her text Beloved. Likewise we need to factor in more genre into the works, as those works probably have the highest shelf-life for novels these days.

[JBI]

Really?! If you asked a neutral academic to list the great books of the first half of the 20th century it would certainly include American writers, poets etc but it would not be "undoubtedly dominated" by them. A list of the top 10 most important novels of the first half of the 20th century would have to find room for Proust (French), Joyce's Ulysses and possibly Portrait of the Artist (Irish), Huxley's Brave New World (English-British), Orwell's 1984 (English-British), Virginia Woolf (English-British), D H Lawrence's Sons and Lovers or Women in Love (English-British)...and what about Thomas Mann, Kafka, Joseph Conrad...? The only American novels in the top 10 would be Lolita (written by an upper class Russian who'd moved to the USA) and The Great Gatsby.

It is even more ridiculous to claim that the literature of the second half of the 20th century has been dominated by South American writers.

The real international problem is dealing with genre. Poetry is the major genre in many places of the world, whereas in the English speaking, and French speaking world, novel is still the dominant form. Likewise, for novels, there are many types, and the gimmick of post-modernity was experienced differently everywhere.

At the same time, exposure and timing are so strange. Much of the best Latin American fiction was written around mid-century, far before the books themselves were widely available to the wider English audience.

Chinese fiction was also in a ripe age in the early 20th century, as was Chinese poetry to an extent - this lasted well until mid-century. Nobody seems to mention that in modernism, nor Japan as modernism (which existed) or Korea, or...

Anyone who talks of domination is probably just full of themselves. Every country has contributed if they have been read by enough people. The hardest thing to sell would be Estonian Modernist Literature or something of the like.

People know American post-modernism, and 20th century in literature simply because they are probably anglophone, or speak English. That is the main reason for the apparent dominance. I think it is hardly fitting.

What I am waiting for is the emergence of a Norton Arabic Poetry, but I think I will be waiting for a while.

[stlukesguild]

DeLillo, I think he has already faded to relative obscurity, at least in Canada, and he is no longer part of any real curriculum,

And we all know that Canada is the center of the literary world where the canon is made or broken.:rolleyes:

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I think, among living authors, Toni Morrison definitely has the best chance of being read far into the future. Hell, she's already practically a part of the canon.

Aside from her, I think McCarthy has the best chance. Pynchon seems impossible to predict--I say his chances of remembrance are 50/50. I've yet to read Franzen, Roth, or Delilo.

And I agree that the novel as an art form has been exhausted. It's not like they're read or talked about anymore.

[stlukesguild]

Anyone who talks of domination is probably just full of themselves. Every country has contributed if they have been read by enough people.

This is true to an extent... but you know as well as anyone that the "canon" is defined by those nations that are the greatest economic/military/cultural powers. This more true of literature than the visual art or music... because of the limitations of language. If the Anglo-American texts "dominate" the discourse in the twentieth century and Canadian literature is ignored, it is because Canada is irrelevant as an economic/military/cultural power. British, French, American, German, Russian... and the a lesser extent Italian, Spanish, and Latin-American (thanks to their ties with the United States) were the major players in the last century in the international discourse of literature. Japan and China and India and the Middle East are now beginning to be heard. Will the Czech Republic or Estonia or Albania or Australia or Canada become major players in the future. That's somewhat doubtful. Of course in no way can that be taken as a value judgment... in terms of "good" or "bad". These terms are wholly subjective... while it is influence and continued relevance more than anything that defines what survives.

[stlukesguild]

And I agree that the novel as an art form has been exhausted. It's not like they're read or talked about anymore.

I don't buy into that. I don't buy the notion that any art form can be "exhausted" except in the minds of those who cannot see further possibilities themselves. There's a great quote in one of John Barth's "Friday" books (collected essays) in which an author bemoans the fact that he was born so late that all the great narratives, all the great poems, all the great literary innovations have already occurred... and it is impossible for the writer to achieve anything new. The author of the quote was an Egyptian several centuries BC!:shocked:

In all reality it not like the novel has been replaced by a great resurgence of interest in poetry or drama or essay, etc...

Predicting which contemporaries will survive is always a fool's game. How many of us can honestly admit to having done little more than skimmed the surface of what writing is out there... in all languages? I suspect Gabriel García Márquez, Yves Bonnefoy, Jose Saramago, Anne Carson, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, among others may survive. Will their oeuvre as a whole survive... or rather will they be known for a single iconic book (McCarthy's Blood Meridian)?

At other times, I suspect that Hermann Hesse was something of the visionary when he wrote The Glassbead Game in which he foresaw a world in which there is no new art, but rather the art of the past is rediscovered, restructured, and repackaged. I think how we as a a culture have more access to the whole of cultural/artistic achievements of the whole of history and across cultures to unlike any other culture in history. I can sit here before my computer and put my music library on "shuffle" and be serenades by a Beethoven symphony followed by a Gregorian chant followed by Miles Davis, George Gershwin, the Beatles, Johnny Cash, Japanese Shakuhachi flute, and Indian ragas. In other words... the music/culture of "our time" is the music/culture of all time. Discoveries of "lost" or "ignored" composers of the past may be as important if not more-so than the innovations of new music. I suspect something similar is underway in literature and painting. The "discovery" of the Shanameh and the great "forgotten" works of literature of Persia, the Arabs, India, China, Japan, and the rest of Asia may be as important or more important than the new literature of here and now. I don't think this is wholly unique if we consider how the rediscovery of Greek culture during the Romantic age may have been more important than many of the innovations of the time.

Or not... just musing after a couple of martinis and an espresso laced with Frangelico.:cheers2:

[JBI]

Military power never was a sign of artistic power. The Greek models haunted their Roman conquerors.

Either way, my point was not that the US was so great or whatever, but that other countries are ignored because people love to yell about how great the US is.

As for me commenting on Canada, you just love to jump on the bandwagon and bash, since I dared to comment on where I was judging from - maybe you should say that perhaps the US is not the be all and end all, and your own critical perspective is biased due to your local.

As for the novel, of course narrative as a form is not done, I meant the novel as a genre. The same way that dominating forms fade into obscurity over time. The Shi moves into the Sao, the Sao into the Fu, the Fu into the Yue Fu, the Yue Fu into the regulated Shi, the Regulated Shi into the Ci, the Ci into the Qu, the Qu into the Open Form. None of the forms died (except for the Fu and Sao really) but they got exhausted and faded into obscurity, as a new dominant form emerged. Very few people were writing Yue Fu when the Qu was in its height.

Take the Nouveau Roman as an example, the form itself saw the exhaustion of the 19th century model, and adapted a new genre of composition.

Take then our novels today - very different than Pamela, or Walter Scott's or even Joseph Conrad's who is the forerunner of modernism.

It is very possible than genres may be exhausted and move out of favor. That is what traditionally tends to happen as trends change. By me claiming that novels as inventive would pose a problem is a fair criticism - it is proving difficult these days to see such genre stretching, the same way it was shown that modernism really redefined genre, so too will novel be redefined in my time, into something else.

Besides which, this doesn't imply that nobody will write novels, merely as a dominant discourse in high literature, they have passed their glory days.

[stlukesguild]

Military power never was a sign of artistic power. The Greek models haunted their Roman conquerors.

But then were the Greeks not military powerhouses as well? I'm not suggesting that military strength alone is any assurance of artistic merit. In many ways the Roman/Greek dichotomy has been applied to Europe and the US with the Europeans as the Greeks... a culture that has seen its military dominance pass into the hands of a younger, dynamic nation that in many ways envies... is haunted by their older and richer culture. But I assume Mortal will be here momentarily to take you to task for underestimating Roman culture (although I tend to prefer the Greeks myself).

What I am suggesting is that there is a link between money and power and art. Art has always flourished where it was supported. There is also a link between art and an influx of outside ideas. Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Venice, Florence, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles... the major cultural cities have long benefited from the influx of foreigners and foreign ideas and art as a result of trade, immigration, and military conquest. If we look at the history of California we cannot help but recognize just how influential the influx of ideas and individuals from outside were to the evolution and growth of something as powerful as Hollywood and the American film industry.

As for the novel, of course narrative as a form is not done, I meant the novel as a genre. The same way that dominating forms fade into obscurity over time. The Shi moves into the Sao, the Sao into the Fu, the Fu into the Yue Fu, the Yue Fu into the regulated Shi, the Regulated Shi into the Ci, the Ci into the Qu, the Qu into the Open Form. None of the forms died (except for the Fu and Sao really) but they got exhausted and faded into obscurity, as a new dominant form emerged. Very few people were writing Yue Fu when the Qu was in its height.

...your own critical perspective is biased due to your local.

As is your own. Do you honestly believe that anyone here has the least idea just what WTF you are talking about when you start citing all these Chinese poets and movements... or cares? I have been accused of being pedantic... as have most of us who have read obsessively, but really, JBI, do you honestly imagine you can make a point by alluding to a body of knowledge that is as esoteric as this is to the majority here? Or is your point merely to impress others?

Take the Nouveau Roman as an example, the form itself saw the exhaustion of the 19th century model, and adapted a new genre of composition.

Take then our novels today - very different than Pamela, or Walter Scott's or even Joseph Conrad's who is the forerunner of modernism.

It is very possible than genres may be exhausted and move out of favor. That is what traditionally tends to happen as trends change. By me claiming that novels as inventive would pose a problem is a fair criticism - it is proving difficult these days to see such genre stretching, the same way it was shown that modernism really redefined genre, so too will novel be redefined in my time, into something else.

What is intriguing is that some of the elements of artifice that were so obviously played up in the early "novels"... Don Quixote or Tristram Sterne... seem more related to Modern and Post-Modern approaches to the novel than they do to the older, "naturalistic" approach to the novel.

Again... my question to you... as you are placing yourself as the discerning critic... what do you see replacing the novel as we know it? certainly I see alternatives in Donald Barthleme, J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, Homero Aridjis" and Anne Carson's blurring of novel and poem, W.S. Merwin's "prose", etc... but I'm not certain I see any clear heir to the position of the novel as we know it.

[Mr.lucifer]

Online Literature?

[Darcy88]

McCarthy and Marquez are locks in my opinion to go down as great authors, some of their works as classics, comparable to any ever written.

[JuniperWoolf]

Oh yeah, Atwood too. She's so ancient I forget that she's still alive. She's very unilateral but I think that a few of her works have staying power, especially among feminists.


And I agree that the novel as an art form has been exhausted. It's not like they're read or talked about anymore.

I don't buy into that.

I'm pretty sure Mutatis was being sarcastic, we're talking about novels right now.

[mortalterror]

Really?! If you asked a neutral academic to list the great books of the first half of the 20th century it would certainly include American writers, poets etc but it would not be "undoubtedly dominated" by them. A list of the top 10 most important novels of the first half of the 20th century would have to find room for Proust (French), Joyce's Ulysses and possibly Portrait of the Artist (Irish), Huxley's Brave New World (English-British), Orwell's 1984 (English-British), Virginia Woolf (English-British), D H Lawrence's Sons and Lovers or Women in Love (English-British)...and what about Thomas Mann, Kafka, Joseph Conrad...? The only American novels in the top 10 would be Lolita (written by an upper class Russian who'd moved to the USA) and The Great Gatsby.

It is even more ridiculous to claim that the literature of the second half of the 20th century has been dominated by South American writers.

Is that so? Here's how I see the score:
1996 Infinite Jest by William Foster Wallace (USA)
1992 The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago (Portugal)
1991 Angels in America by Tony Kushner (USA)
1990 Omeros by Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia)
1987 Beloved by Toni Morrison (USA)
1985 Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (USA)
1985 The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Canada)
1981 Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (India)
1980 The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (Italy)
1979 If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (Italy)
1974 The Envoy of Mr. Cogito by Zbigniew Herbert (Poland)
1973 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Russia)
1973 The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russia)
1970 The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima (Japan)
1969 Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (USA)
1969 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (USA)
1967 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Columbia)
1966 The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (USA)
1966 Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney (Ireland)
1965 Closely Watched Trains Bohumil Hrabal (Czechoslovakia)
1965 The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
1964 The Homecoming by Harold Pinter (Britain)
1963 Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar (Argentina)
1962 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee (USA)
1962 The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes (Mexico)
1961 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (USA)
1961 A House For Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (India)
1959 The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass (Germany)
1958 The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italy)
1957 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (Russia)
1957 On the Road by Jack Kerouac (USA)
1957 Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs by Adonis (Syria)
1956 Seize the Day by Saul Bellow (USA)
1956 Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill (USA)
1956 The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Joao Guimaraes Rosa (Brazil)
1955 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (Russia)
1955 The Emperor of Ice Cream by Wallace Stevens (USA)
1955 Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo (Mexico)
1954 Sunstone by Octavio Paz (Mexico)
1954 Lord of the Flies by William Golding (Britain)
1953 Gimpel, the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Poland)
1953 Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett (Ireland)
1952 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (USA)
1952 The Shield of Achilles by W.H. Auden (Britain)
1952 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (USA)
1952 The Financial Expert by R.K. Narayan (India)
1951 Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas (Britain)
1951 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (USA)
1951 Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar (France)
1950 Canto General by Pablo Neruda (Chile)
1950 The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco (Romania)
1949 1984 by George Orwell (Britain)
1949 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (USA)
1948 The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki (Japan)
1948 The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht (Germany)
1948 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (USA)
1948 Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)
1948 Death Fugue by Paul Celan (Romania)
1947 Fortress Besieged Qian Zhongshu (China)
1945 Rescue by Czeslaw Milosz (Poland)
1944 No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre (France)
1944 Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
1944 The Dwarf by Par Lagerkvist (Sweden)
1942 The Stranger by Albert Camus (France)
1942 Antigone by Jean Anouilh (France)
1940 Requiem by Anna Akhmatova (Russia)
1939 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (USA)
1938 The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis (Greece)
1937 Out of Africa by Isak Dineson (Denmark)
1937 The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat (Iran)
1935 Wings of Gabriel by Muhammad Iqbal (India)
1935 Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias by Federico Garcia Lorca (Spain)
1934 Message by Fernando Pessoa (Portugal)
1933 Man's Fate by Andre Malraux (France)
1932 Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine (France)
1932 The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil (Austria)
1929 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (USA)
1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence (Britain)
1927 Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse (Germany)
1926 Capital of Pain by Paul Eluard (France)
1925 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Britain)
1925 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (USA)
1925 Cuttlefish Bones by Eugenio Montale (Italy)
1924 The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Germany)
1924 Anabase by Saint-John Perse (France)
1923 The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun (China)
1923 The Prophet by Khalil Gibran (Lebanon)
1923 Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo (Italy)
1922 The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot (USA)
1922 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (France)
1922 Duino Elegies by Ranier Maria Rilke (Germany)
1921 Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello (Italy)
1920 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (USA)
1920 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley by Ezra Pound (USA)
1919 The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats (Ireland)
1918 Ulysses by James Joyce (Ireland)
1918 The Hellscreen by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Japan)
1918 The Black Heralds by Cesar Vallejo (Peru)
1917 The Young Fate by Paul Valery (France)
1915 The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (Czechoslovakia)
1915 The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford (Britain)
1915 Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (Britain)
1914 Kokoro by Natsume Soseki (Japan)
1914 Mending Wall by Robert Frost (USA)
1913 Alcohol by Guillaume Apollinaire (France)
1911 Ithaca by Constantine P. Cavafy (Greece)
1910 Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore (India)
1910 Peruvian Traditions by Ricardo Palma (Peru)
1907 The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg (Sweden)
1907 The Travels of Lao Ts'an by Liu E (China)
1906 Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind (Germany)
1905 Songs of Life and Hope by Ruben Dario (Nicaragua)
1904 The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (Russia)
1903 Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (Ireland)
1903 The Call of the Wild by Jack London (USA)
1903 The Ambassadors by Henry James (USA)
1902 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Britain)
1902 The Immoralist by Andre Gide (France)
1902 The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky (Russia)
1902 The Rain in the Pinewood by Gabriele D'Annunzio (Italy)
1901 Kim by Rudyard Kipling (Britain)
1900 La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler (Austria)

I think America did pretty well for herself last century. I don't think the claim could be made for any one country dominating though.

[mortalterror]

Military power never was a sign of artistic power. The Greek models haunted their Roman conquerors.

But then were the Greeks not military powerhouses as well? I'm not suggesting that military strength alone is any assurance of artistic merit. In many ways the Roman/Greek dichotomy has been applied to Europe and the US with the Europeans as the Greeks... a culture that has seen its military dominance pass into the hands of a younger, dynamic nation that in many ways envies... is haunted by their older and richer culture. But I assume Mortal will be here momentarily to take you to task for underestimating Roman culture (although I tend to prefer the Greeks myself).

I think that during the time of the Roman Republic there was a great deal of envy for the works of Homer, and the dramatists of Greece. There were many who admired Greek painting and sculpture as well. But as the centuries piled up and Roman accomplishments did with them, they had less to envy. Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius supplied the place that Homer previously had occupied. Seneca, Terence, and Plautus took the place of Sophocles, and Aristophanes. Livy and Sallust built over Herodotus and Thucydides. And once the Forums, the Colosseum, the aqueducts, and the Baths of Diocletian cast their shadows, why would they envy the Acropolis? Cicero took over for Demosthenes. Tibullus, Propertius, Horace, and Lucretius supplied the want of Theocritus, Sappho, Hesiod, etc. Simply put, the Romans didn't stay in awe of the Greeks forever, and they did invent their own genres such as satire and mosaics.


What I am suggesting is that there is a link between money and power and art. Art has always flourished where it was supported. There is also a link between art and an influx of outside ideas. Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Venice, Florence, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles... the major cultural cities have long benefited from the influx of foreigners and foreign ideas and art as a result of trade, immigration, and military conquest. If we look at the history of California we cannot help but recognize just how influential the influx of ideas and individuals from outside were to the evolution and growth of something as powerful as Hollywood and the American film industry.

I think that Hollywood did gain by the introduction of foreign Jews, like Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Samuel Goldwyn, and Louis B. Mayer; but I doubt it has gained as much artistically from the much larger Mexican immigration to California. As much as you love to tout an open immigration policy as the key to success, the facts suggest otherwise. I think that a handful of German scientists ie Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Werner von Braun probably did more to advance American prosperity than all the illegal aliens picking fruit in Washington. We totally ought to let in people capable of winning the Nobel Prize like Nabokov, but we have enough people to run our 7 Elevens, and we can mow our lawns ourselves.


As for the novel, of course narrative as a form is not done, I meant the novel as a genre. The same way that dominating forms fade into obscurity over time. The Shi moves into the Sao, the Sao into the Fu, the Fu into the Yue Fu, the Yue Fu into the regulated Shi, the Regulated Shi into the Ci, the Ci into the Qu, the Qu into the Open Form. None of the forms died (except for the Fu and Sao really) but they got exhausted and faded into obscurity, as a new dominant form emerged. Very few people were writing Yue Fu when the Qu was in its height.

...your own critical perspective is biased due to your local.

As is your own. Do you honestly believe that anyone here has the least idea just what WTF you are talking about when you start citing all these Chinese poets and movements... or cares? I have been accused of being pedantic... as have most of us who have read obsessively, but really, JBI, do you honestly imagine you can make a point by alluding to a body of knowledge that is as esoteric as this is to the majority here? Or is your point merely to impress others?

I understood him, but then I did read up on Chinese literature last year. Perhaps you ought to do the same instead of criticizing him for being so knowledgeable. You are, after all, prone to being esoteric yourself. Or do you imagine everyone here is familiar with 10th century Persian poetry and 18th century Japanese painting?

[WICKES]

Is that so? Here's how I see the score:



The score?!! I'm not interested in a my country is better than yours contest. My point was that the claim that the USA dominated the first half of the 20th century was pretty shaky. Especially considering that George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh etc were all writing in the first 50 years of the last century. That is not the same as saying that the USA was irrelevant; it certainly was not.

It is even more ridiculous to say that South America has dominated the world's literature since WW2. You could argue that the USA has dominated the english-speaking world in the last 60 years, but then that was inevitable given that the USA's population is twice the size of Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada combined.

[JBI]

I never mentioned Americans didn't write great literature, that they "dominated" is another matter altogether. That doesn't just imply doing better than many other countries in terms of output, it implies a ridiculously disproportionate amount.

In music, I would agree.

In literature though, I remain more skeptical. The Nobel is not really a determinant either, as clearly anyone can see that most of the world is not represented.

There were many Chinese authors as worthy of the Nobel as many of the American, British, or Scandinavian ones - Lord of the Flies is a meh book and is not Prize worthy in the sense that it warrants international recognition of that sort. It won it regardless.

You cannot leave a panel of Swedes to decide what is the best in the world, clearly there will be bias, and I am saying there is. Where is Guo Moruo's Nobel? or Qian Zhongshu's? Mishima came close, but Soseki died too soon I guess. Arab authors? Well, I am waiting on Adunis. Darwish maybe could have one, and there are probably countless others as worthy as many of the American and French and Scandinavian and German and whatever else other novelists and poets and dramatists.

The world is very rich in literary culture, there are authors on every corner writing. Proportionally, in terms of literacy, Americans are neither the most well read, nor the biggest population - for instance, there are far more readers in China than in the US, and literary culture, that is, print culture, is far more prevalent. Movie culture is certainly bigger in the US, and I would argue that contributes to American film being lightyears ahead of Chinese cinema.

Genre and art are factored by more than just political power.

And Mortal, for your above post on the Roman Greece, how do you factor St. Augustine's early schoolboy days and his Greek hating into that scheme. Likewise, how do we place someone like Ovid accurately, when Hegemony probably is the root reason we lost his final works written in his native language. I think the idea of replacement is true, to an extent, except that the shadow and dominance hovers the same way Dante, and Milton would need to wrestle with both ends of the tradition later, which after all is clearly Greek in origin and form. I am sure that factored heavily into Latin culture up until the end, and I am wondering how different a Greek-lined culture, or even an Arabic-lined culture would translate into a history of classical literature.

After all, the use of Greek words even in our English makes one perhaps a little bit skeptical that the Romans ever actually succeeded in overstepping them. Plato seems the dominant philosophical mode even today, whereas no Roman thinker ever came close. Literary criticism pulls from Aristotle, not Cicero, Drama from Aeschylus. That the Romans ever vanquished or surpassed is to be skeptically taken, when the same arguments established by the Greeks are still being argued in our cultural world. The extent that can be claimed must be limited, by my understanding, from the fall of Western Rome until the Renaissance, when Greek culture was lost to Western Europe, and therefore Latin culture was the only possibility as a model, but even then, Greek culture was powerful enough to upset the middle ages and kick off a renaissance of literature - the Greek dominance in the arts never really ebbed.

[the facade]

I'm pinning my hopes on DeLillo - but I wouldn't stake my money on it.

[Drkshadow03]

I'm pinning my hopes on DeLillo - but I wouldn't stake my money on it.

What do you like about DeLillo?

[mortalterror]

I never mentioned Americans didn't write great literature, that they "dominated" is another matter altogether. That doesn't just imply doing better than many other countries in terms of output, it implies a ridiculously disproportionate amount.

In music, I would agree.

In literature though, I remain more skeptical. The Nobel is not really a determinant either, as clearly anyone can see that most of the world is not represented.

The list on the previous page isn't a list of Nobel Prize winners. It's my own personal assessment of the high points of 20th century literature. I make a lot of lists which can be found on my blog. For instance, you mention music. I have a brief chronicle of popular music (mostly American) where I attempted to do much the same thing. http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=11499


You cannot leave a panel of Swedes to decide what is the best in the world, clearly there will be bias, and I am saying there is. Where is Guo Moruo's Nobel? or Qian Zhongshu's? Mishima came close, but Soseki died too soon I guess. Arab authors? Well, I am waiting on Adunis. Darwish maybe could have one, and there are probably countless others as worthy as many of the American and French and Scandinavian and German and whatever else other novelists and poets and dramatists.

I included Qian Zhongshu, Mishima, Soseki, and Adunis in my list. Darwish is overrated and did not make the list. However, Muhammad Iqbal did along with Sadegh Hedayat and Khalil Gibran.


The world is very rich in literary culture, there are authors on every corner writing. Proportionally, in terms of literacy, Americans are neither the most well read, nor the biggest population - for instance, there are far more readers in China than in the US, and literary culture, that is, print culture, is far more prevalent. Movie culture is certainly bigger in the US, and I would argue that contributes to American film being lightyears ahead of Chinese cinema.

I don't know that I would go that far. We used to be, as you can see from my list on the best films of any given year. http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=12188 But right now Scorsese and Spielberg are probably the only two American directors capable of making top level films consistently and they are two old dudes. We aren't seeing a good crop of young talent rising up to fill their place like we used to. China has Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar Wai. South Korea has Jee Woon Kim, Chan-wook Park, and Joon-ho Bong. We aren't the only ones who can make things at the top level. Lars von Trier is somewhere off in Denmark and Guillermo del Toro only makes crappy action films when he comes to Hollywood. When he gets the urge to make an epic cinematic poem he flies off to Spain. I'm not happy at all with American movies of the last couple years.


Genre and art are factored by more than just political power.

And Mortal, for your above post on the Roman Greece, how do you factor St. Augustine's early schoolboy days and his Greek hating into that scheme.

I don't remember him hating Greek. Maybe I missed something. The stuff from his schoolboy days that sticks out in my mind is all him stealing some apples he didn't really want, and his closeness with his mother, him leaving his mistress, briefly joining a communist cult, becoming a teacher of rhetoric, messing around with Manichaeism, and then finally becoming a Christian. I believe you, I just don't remember the part you are referring to.


Likewise, how do we place someone like Ovid accurately, when Hegemony probably is the root reason we lost his final works written in his native language.

Latin was his native language and we have his final works written in that. Tristia, Fasti, Ex Ponto, and Ibis are well preserved. What is lost was the poem he wrote in Getic:

And you shouldn’t marvel if my art’s defective,
since I’ve almost turned into a Getic poet.
Ah! Shameful: I’ve even written a work in Getic,
where savage words are set to Italian metres.
Ex Ponto 4.13

and that is no doubt because nobody in Rome would have known Getic to preserve it there. Besides the tribes people of that time didn't have any book copiers to preserve a work of literature even if they had any people who could read it. Usually, the biggest factor in whether a work is preserved is the number of copies and how widely distributed they are. That means whoever has the most printing presses gets his stuff passed on. Publish or perish.

The reason that books in English are the most well known is partly because of money and power and partly because of commerce. We trade with everyone around the world. It's in their interest to speak our language. China didn't trade with anyone and wouldn't let it's citizens leave to mingle with outsiders for nearly a century. It's not that they don't have hegemony. It's because they don't control publishing houses in North America, Europe, South America, and Africa. Also, they did put a stranglehold on their artists for decades where they decided what could and could not be written, whereas the west had a somewhat freer press.


I think the idea of replacement is true, to an extent, except that the shadow and dominance hovers the same way Dante, and Milton would need to wrestle with both ends of the tradition later, which after all is clearly Greek in origin and form. I am sure that factored heavily into Latin culture up until the end, and I am wondering how different a Greek-lined culture, or even an Arabic-lined culture would translate into a history of classical literature.

All through the middle ages Latin clearly had dominance over Greek, as the works of Homer were lost and had to be re-introduced by guys like Boccaccio. Let's remember that though Dante puts him at the head of poets

Homer is he, the poets' sovran lord;
Next, Horace comes, the keen satirical;
Ovid the third; and Lucan afterward.

he hadn't actually read Homer's works. Virgil is his guide and we see Odysseus cast as a villain for his part of fraud with the Trojan horse mentioned in the Aeneid. Aeneas himself is back in limbo with the poets. Then we have the Latin poet Statius as another major guide to Dante in Purgatory. Dante was clearly far more influenced by Latin than Greek, since I'm almost certain he read one and not the other.

Milton, on the other hand seems to be struggling more with Hebrew than Greek in Paradise Lost, and his verses are often more Latin than English. It's sort of a holdover from his being the official Secretary of Foreign Tongues where he would carry out all foreign correspondence in Latin.

Latin seems to have been dominant in the West clear up through the Renaissance. You have Elizabethan theater modeled on Seneca instead of a Greek for instance. In part this is all because of the Trivium and in part this is because Latin was the language of the Catholic Church. You don't really see a preference for Greek over Latin until the Enlightenment.


After all, the use of Greek words even in our English makes one perhaps a little bit skeptical that the Romans ever actually succeeded in overstepping them.

We have far more words from Latin and French and German than Greek. I don't think you have to pretend that the Greeks never existed before you no longer have to feel intimidated by them.


Plato seems the dominant philosophical mode even today, whereas no Roman thinker ever came close. Literary criticism pulls from Aristotle, not Cicero, Drama from Aeschylus.

I think our current drama pulls more from Ibsen or Shakespeare at the moment.


That the Romans ever vanquished or surpassed is to be skeptically taken, when the same arguments established by the Greeks are still being argued in our cultural world. The extent that can be claimed must be limited, by my understanding, from the fall of Western Rome until the Renaissance, when Greek culture was lost to Western Europe, and therefore Latin culture was the only possibility as a model, but even then, Greek culture was powerful enough to upset the middle ages and kick off a renaissance of literature - the Greek dominance in the arts never really ebbed.

Are you absolutely certain that the Renaissance, the widespread increase in culture and knowledge across Europe, was actually caused by the re-introduction of Greek thought? I feel it was more like with the increased prosperity the Europeans already enjoyed they were finally able to dabble in Greek again along with their own new studies.

[Truthlover]

I think we are too close to the present to judge it from the future. For example, Charlotte Brontë did not think very highly of Jane Austen's books. From the 20th Century, I think The Lord of the Rings will last for hundreds of years. When it first came out, only hippies were reading it. And I remember in the case of the dogs that killed a lady in a San Francisco apartment, the owners of the dogs were considered weirdos because they had The Lord of the Rings in their personal library. The problem with judging books today is that we cannot read all of them. There appear to be almost more writers than readers. Hopefully the good books will get sifted up to the top. But it may also happen that a truly great book will be entirely lost in the verbosity of our times.

[JBI]

The list on the previous page isn't a list of Nobel Prize winners. It's my own personal assessment of the high points of 20th century literature. I make a lot of lists which can be found on my blog. For instance, you mention music. I have a brief chronicle of popular music (mostly American) where I attempted to do much the same thing. http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=11499



I included Qian Zhongshu, Mishima, Soseki, and Adunis in my list. Darwish is overrated and did not make the list. However, Muhammad Iqbal did along with Sadegh Hedayat and Khalil Gibran.



I don't know that I would go that far. We used to be, as you can see from my list on the best films of any given year. http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=12188 But right now Scorsese and Spielberg are probably the only two American directors capable of making top level films consistently and they are two old dudes. We aren't seeing a good crop of young talent rising up to fill their place like we used to. China has Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar Wai. South Korea has Jee Woon Kim, Chan-wook Park, and Joon-ho Bong. We aren't the only ones who can make things at the top level. Lars von Trier is somewhere off in Denmark and Guillermo del Toro only makes crappy action films when he comes to Hollywood. When he gets the urge to make an epic cinematic poem he flies off to Spain. I'm not happy at all with American movies of the last couple years.



I don't remember him hating Greek. Maybe I missed something. The stuff from his schoolboy days that sticks out in my mind is all him stealing some apples he didn't really want, and his closeness with his mother, him leaving his mistress, briefly joining a communist cult, becoming a teacher of rhetoric, messing around with Manichaeism, and then finally becoming a Christian. I believe you, I just don't remember the part you are referring to.



Latin was his native language and we have his final works written in that. Tristia, Fasti, Ex Ponto, and Ibis are well preserved. What is lost was the poem he wrote in Getic:

And you shouldn’t marvel if my art’s defective,
since I’ve almost turned into a Getic poet.
Ah! Shameful: I’ve even written a work in Getic,
where savage words are set to Italian metres.
Ex Ponto 4.13

and that is no doubt because nobody in Rome would have known Getic to preserve it there. Besides the tribes people of that time didn't have any book copiers to preserve a work of literature even if they had any people who could read it. Usually, the biggest factor in whether a work is preserved is the number of copies and how widely distributed they are. That means whoever has the most printing presses gets his stuff passed on. Publish or perish.

The reason that books in English are the most well known is partly because of money and power and partly because of commerce. We trade with everyone around the world. It's in their interest to speak our language. China didn't trade with anyone and wouldn't let it's citizens leave to mingle with outsiders for nearly a century. It's not that they don't have hegemony. It's because they don't control publishing houses in North America, Europe, South America, and Africa. Also, they did put a stranglehold on their artists for decades where they decided what could and could not be written, whereas the west had a somewhat freer press.



All through the middle ages Latin clearly had dominance over Greek, as the works of Homer were lost and had to be re-introduced by guys like Boccaccio. Let's remember that though Dante puts him at the head of poets

Homer is he, the poets' sovran lord;
Next, Horace comes, the keen satirical;
Ovid the third; and Lucan afterward.

he hadn't actually read Homer's works. Virgil is his guide and we see Odysseus cast as a villain for his part of fraud with the Trojan horse mentioned in the Aeneid. Aeneas himself is back in limbo with the poets. Then we have the Latin poet Statius as another major guide to Dante in Purgatory. Dante was clearly far more influenced by Latin than Greek, since I'm almost certain he read one and not the other.

Milton, on the other hand seems to be struggling more with Hebrew than Greek in Paradise Lost, and his verses are often more Latin than English. It's sort of a holdover from his being the official Secretary of Foreign Tongues where he would carry out all foreign correspondence in Latin.

Latin seems to have been dominant in the West clear up through the Renaissance. You have Elizabethan theater modeled on Seneca instead of a Greek for instance. In part this is all because of the Trivium and in part this is because Latin was the language of the Catholic Church. You don't really see a preference for Greek over Latin until the Enlightenment.



We have far more words from Latin and French and German than Greek. I don't think you have to pretend that the Greeks never existed before you no longer have to feel intimidated by them.



I think our current drama pulls more from Ibsen or Shakespeare at the moment.



Are you absolutely certain that the Renaissance, the widespread increase in culture and knowledge across Europe, was actually caused by the re-introduction of Greek thought? I feel it was more like with the increased prosperity the Europeans already enjoyed they were finally able to dabble in Greek again along with their own new studies.
I don't think the renaissance itself was rooted in Greek thought, I think the climate for literature was. Plato in particular - the religious upheavals start from the hit with Greek original texts - Erasmus puts out his works on the New Testament, Luther launches his pamphlet, and everywhere and anywhere Plato is discussed.

Take for instance the book of the courtier, the big speech of Pietro Bembo's is pure Neo-Platonism, to Spenser's Four Hymns - the presence of Greek culture upsets the Latin trajectory of Rome which hadn't changed too much since the middle ages.

As for Chinese cinema - most of the well known Chinese films that earn praise in the Western world are not written or filmed for a Chinese audience. The bulk of major cinema in China is lightyears behind the rest of the world, as something like a movie theatre is a new, bourgeois phenomenon (the equivalent of our going to the Opera, and out of the budget of the vast majority of Chinese citizens). The rest of film is delivered online, which restricts its viewers to those with internet service - most but not all people.

The actual development of cinema in China is quite pathetic comparatively. Besides which Zhang Yimou to me is totally overrated. Either way he is a weird pervert in so many ways (every time he brings out a new starlet for his movies, the press and internet fills up with new sex scandal, his last one being 17) that one kind of wishes he would just retire already. As for American cinema in decay, well, understand that however you want, in terms of cultural capital, Chinese cinema is relatively worthless in comparison.

There are creative film makers, but the bulk of the best ones are working behind the censor - only the big budget epic movies ever get the clearing, and they are usually filled with propaganda of some form or another. What is able to be depicted in Chinese cinema has not reached the level of the film Deliverance yet, even though that would be a better projection of some realism. But how do you legally film a highly censored country where the bulk of people do not have running water in their washrooms? You basically either set it back 500 years and bring in a Western team of CGI people, or you film cityscapes and create an illusion of China, and a film which ultimately is disengaged from real society. Usually these films end with a rather cheesy, often feel good moral, or with a sad, but uplifting moralizing ending

That is not saying I believe all art should be realism, but it begs questioning to what extent film can develop. In terms of literature, the censorship is far, far more lax, which allows much greater artistic freedom. Still some things are blocked, and entire words are blocked all together (things like, Pink, warm stream) from online presses.

The real challenge to publishing and literature now is dependent on how new medium are incorporated into the distribution and creation of works. The physical text is quickly disappearing. The power of review and publishing to control what people read is fading. The production costs of a text now are virtually zero - electronic data costs no money. How do we understand that in the future of literature? What goes online, what goes on the kindle, what gets removed, or unupdated, or unscanned?

Likewise, how does literature act in the presence of television and cinema, which are becoming, if not are already more dominant medium for narration. How does the market adapt to digital formats. Where does poetry fit in?

Likewise, how does literature work over borders? What does it mean to read an English text in China, or a Chinese text in Canada, or to be a Chinese person reading an English text in Canada, or to be a Canadian reading a Chinese text in China?

These are all big questions which are more pressing than the notion of "Where". Even American cinema has had trouble promoting a central tradition anyway - just look at how scholarship runs - you cannot even be an American lit specialist, you are always a subtitle - Contemporary African American literature, or Jewish American literature, or Asian North American literature (whatever that means).

[stlukesguild]

It is even more ridiculous to say that South America has dominated the world's literature since WW2.

You seem so quick to dismiss this possibility that I have to wonder if you have even looked at the wealth of writers from Latin America producing major contributions to literature since WWII:

Gabriel García Márquez
J.L. Borges
Octavio Paz
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Nicolás Guillén
Julio Cortázar
Mario Vargas Llosa
Carlos Fuentes
José Donoso
Augusto Monterroso
Laura Esquivel
Pablo Neruda
José Emilio Pacheco
Alejo Carpentier
Homero Aridjis
Miguel Ángel Asturias
Roberto Juarroz
Nicanor Parra
Tomás Eloy Martínez

Seriously, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a body of French or German or English or American or Russian writers who could clearly surpass the contributions of the above Latin-American authors... and I have little doubt that I am barely scraping the surface here.

[mortalterror]

As for Chinese cinema - most of the well known Chinese films that earn praise in the Western world are not written or filmed for a Chinese audience. The bulk of major cinema in China is lightyears behind the rest of the world, as something like a movie theatre is a new, bourgeois phenomenon (the equivalent of our going to the Opera, and out of the budget of the vast majority of Chinese citizens). The rest of film is delivered online, which restricts its viewers to those with internet service - most but not all people.

The actual development of cinema in China is quite pathetic comparatively. Besides which Zhang Yimou to me is totally overrated. Either way he is a weird pervert in so many ways (every time he brings out a new starlet for his movies, the press and internet fills up with new sex scandal, his last one being 17) that one kind of wishes he would just retire already. As for American cinema in decay, well, understand that however you want, in terms of cultural capital, Chinese cinema is relatively worthless in comparison.

Though I think the best cinema today is happening in South Korea, Zhang Yimou is totally not overrated. I'd place him with Kurosawa and Scorsese in terms of greatness. To Live, Raise the Red Lantern, and Shanghai Triad were all great films. Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower were pretty good films and beautiful. I'm currently watching Riding Alone For Thousands of Miles, which doesn't look like one of his best but I'm definitely looking forward to watching everything else from this guy. I've read nothing but excellent reviews of Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Story of Qui Ju, Not One Less, and The Road Home. I'm also looking forward to his new film that came out last month with Christian Bale The Flowers of War. 17 is a little young but it's hardly Roman Polanski territory and philandering seems par for the course when it comes to great directors. Just think of Woody Allen and Federico Fellini.

Besides Chinese cinema doesn't rest on Yimou's shoulders alone. I mentioned Wong Kar Wai. His films are beautiful and artsy as they come. In The Mood For Love, Chunking Expess, 2046, Ashes of Time. He's earned a place at the table.

Then there's John Woo and nobody does action like John Woo. A Better Tomorrow 2, The Killer, Hard Boiled. He's back in Hong Kong again and his Red Cliff was a pretty huge hit there. So what if his American movies suck? So do Jackie Chan's.

Kaige Chen made Farewell My Concubine, The Emperor and the Assassin, and a couple of other films I probably should have seen as well.

Then I hear about films like Yi Yi, Beijing Bicycle, or The King of Masks and it seems like there must be a vibrant film community in China. After all, it's the same country that gave us Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Infernal Affairs.


The real challenge to publishing and literature now is dependent on how new medium are incorporated into the distribution and creation of works. The physical text is quickly disappearing. The power of review and publishing to control what people read is fading. The production costs of a text now are virtually zero - electronic data costs no money. How do we understand that in the future of literature? What goes online, what goes on the kindle, what gets removed, or unupdated, or unscanned?

I worry about that too. The real culprit in the middle ages responsible for the loss of antiquity wasn't illiteracy. It was the codex. There wasn't a concerted effort to transfer everything important from scrolls to the new medium. That's why I like projects like Project Gutenberg or Archive.org. The problem with them, as I'm just finding out as I transfer files to my Nook, is that there is no good format yet for poetry on a small screen. I have to custom build a lot of my epubs to get them to look right. Then not a few of my pdfs look right either, and I don't have the necessary zoom functions. Although I guess if I rooted it and downloaded the right apps and software...

[JBI]

It is even more ridiculous to say that South America has dominated the world's literature since WW2.

You seem so quick to dismiss this possibility that I have to wonder if you have even looked at the wealth of writers from Latin America producing major contributions to literature since WWII:

Gabriel García Márquez
J.L. Borges
Octavio Paz
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Nicolás Guillén
Julio Cortázar
Mario Vargas Llosa
Carlos Fuentes
José Donoso
Augusto Monterroso
Laura Esquivel
Pablo Neruda
José Emilio Pacheco
Alejo Carpentier
Homero Aridjis
Miguel Ángel Asturias
Roberto Juarroz
Nicanor Parra
Tomás Eloy Martínez

Seriously, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a body of French or German or English or American or Russian writers who could clearly surpass the contributions of the above Latin-American authors... and I have little doubt that I am barely scraping the surface here.

The phrase dominated shouldn't be used so liberally. They have done well, and have had a very unique, developed, and aesthetically high output. Marquez in particular has had perhaps the best international success, yet the word dominate, well, lots of countries have had such great authors. I would also say that the proximity to the United States, and American military funding has also helped a great deal in making those Latin American authors really available to a larger audience - Spanish is a very important political language after all.

That is the biggest question to me, how much is actual "boom" and how much is just the emergence of attention, or translation. I am of the mind that almost every country in the world has a sizable literary output, but how much do we know about early 20th century Persian poets? As much as we do, lets say, Spanish poets from the same time period?

Domination is hard to count.

[JuniperWoolf]

The score?!! I'm not interested in a my country is better than yours contest.

Then don't engage in conversation with Mortal, that's kind of his schtick.

[carolinehelston]

Or looking closer to the present, Victorian literature. Why are our classics texts dominated by Victorian literature? Britain in the 19th century was a superpower: that's why people could begin to afford better things like novels. So writers could finally earn a better living. Actually I think it was easier for a Victorian writer to earn a living compared to now, because they didn't have TV or cinema then. But why Victorian??? Why not 18th century for instance? or even modernist books? The classics everyone knows of are Dickens and the 19th century authors. I think the classic is a novel that will show a universal, timeless thought or feeling, rather than the spirit of the age. Why does Great Expectations rank higher than David Copperfield, even though DC was what Dickens considered his best work? Because the misery and ambition is universal, and the golden sunshine in DC isn't.

I wonder whether anyone has noticed that when there are fewer restraints on writing, the novel is more likely to become a classic? In the 19th century the publishers wanted long books, so you could write a lot of stuff you wanted (except the controversial bits) and extend the stories to so many characters, so you got to cover a lot of things deeply. Now my lecturer says her publisher cuts down on her words (they do that for all literary fiction), which is why modern novels can be dissatisfactory. If the author wants to explain or analyse the chracter or situation he can't because it is deemed irrelevant. But as a result it's harder to empathise with the character, which is why I feel literary fiction won't rule this age.

Has anyone considered the possibility of fantasy taking over the literary world? I know they're more plot-driven than character-based, but epics seem to be timeless for some reason. Look at LOTR and the Greek epics. His Dark Materials may be a possible candidate. I know it's set in the past, but the idea of a tyrannous establishment seems to be an old plot device. And the wicked parents. In fantasy you get to exercise the creativity and wonder you don't get to do in fiction (stupid publishers) but if it has a fault the characters are not always realistic and can be too serious. If you think about it, Gothic tales and HP Lovecraft are making a comeback too, though they weren't considered serious fiction in their lifetime.

[Drkshadow03]

That's why I like projects like Project Gutenberg or Archive.org. The problem with them, as I'm just finding out as I transfer files to my Nook, is that there is no good format yet for poetry on a small screen. I have to custom build a lot of my epubs to get them to look right. Then not a few of my pdfs look right either, and I don't have the necessary zoom functions. Although I guess if I rooted it and downloaded the right apps and software...

Yeah, I'm having similar problems with poetry on my Kindle. The formatting of the poetry always looks like crap. I'm not sure how to fix it, though.

[mortalterror]

Then don't engage in conversation with Mortal, that's kind of his schtick.

Ouch, I'm stung.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRvVzaQ6i8A

[Alexander III]

Yeah, I'm having similar problems with poetry on my Kindle. The formatting of the poetry always looks like crap. I'm not sure how to fix it, though.

I too have the problem, It is damned annoying.

[stlukesguild]

Domination is hard to count.

I wouldn't go so far as to suggest artistic domination... unless its the realm of classical music in which the Germans and Austrians rule:biggrinjester: (and even there we have some very strong showing by the Italians, French, and Russians. The Italians probably dominated the Renaissance in Europe... but then at the same time the Persians were at their peak and China and Japan were no slackers.

Rather than "domination" I would suggest that the Latin-American contribution since mid-century cannot be ignored any more than that of the Americans for the 20th century as a whole.

Or looking closer to the present, Victorian literature. Why are our classics texts dominated by Victorian literature? Britain in the 19th century was a superpower: that's why people could begin to afford better things like novels. So writers could finally earn a better living. Actually I think it was easier for a Victorian writer to earn a living compared to now, because they didn't have TV or cinema then. But why Victorian??? Why not 18th century for instance?

Since when are "our" classics dominated by Victorian literature? The Three Musketeers, Les Miserables, Moby Dick, The Black and the Red, Nana, Don Quixote, Robinson Caruso, Tristram Shandy, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, The Steppenwolf, The Magic Mountain, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Gulliver's Travels, Madame Bovary, In Search of Lost Time, Mlle de Maupin, Our Lady of the Flowers, Ulysses, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Trial, etc... are all equally recognized as classics.

I wonder whether anyone has noticed that when there are fewer restraints on writing, the novel is more likely to become a classic?

Actually, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an essay in which he claimed the opposite was true. The British writers, he argued, labored under a censorship of all sexuality. Stevenson compared the British writers of the 19th century to "muzzled dogs" and exclaimed, "What books Dickens could have written had he been permitted! Think of Thackery as unfettered as Flaubert or Balzac!... They give us a little box of toys and say to us, 'You musn't play with anything but these!' " Artists have almost always labored under censorship of one form or another. The strongest artists always find a way around the censors and still achieve something of genius.

Has anyone considered the possibility of fantasy taking over the literary world? I know they're more plot-driven than character-based, but epics seem to be timeless for some reason. Look at LOTR and the Greek epics. His Dark Materials may be a possible candidate. I know it's set in the past, but the idea of a tyrannous establishment seems to be an old plot device. And the wicked parents. In fantasy you get to exercise the creativity and wonder you don't get to do in fiction (stupid publishers) but if it has a fault the characters are not always realistic and can be too serious. If you think about it, Gothic tales and HP Lovecraft are making a comeback too, though they weren't considered serious fiction in their lifetime.

I think that there is a constant cycle of artists struggling against an establishment that has become fossilized and these same artists eventually becoming the establishment themselves. Undoubtedly, there are any number of artists... in literature, music, and the visual arts... who are achieving something of real merit by avoiding even attempting to work within the current system.

[JCamilo]

The phrase dominated shouldn't be used so liberally. They have done well, and have had a very unique, developed, and aesthetically high output. Marquez in particular has had perhaps the best international success, yet the word dominate, well, lots of countries have had such great authors. I would also say that the proximity to the United States, and American military funding has also helped a great deal in making those Latin American authors really available to a larger audience - Spanish is a very important political language after all.

That is the biggest question to me, how much is actual "boom" and how much is just the emergence of attention, or translation. I am of the mind that almost every country in the world has a sizable literary output, but how much do we know about early 20th century Persian poets? As much as we do, lets say, Spanish poets from the same time period?

Domination is hard to count.


It goes more to Europe. The discovery of latin-american poets starts with Ruben Dario, goes to Neruda and Borges and they were "discovered" by europeans, not americans (which are more influential on building). It was kind off politics: the latin-america was an alternative. Some form of counter-culture. Even the brazilians writers were europeans "discoveries" (the musicians no).

Now, I must point that saying South Americans makes as much sense as Saying europe. Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil are not the same place, same culture, same tradition, etc. Argentina has to deal with Borges, Brazil to deal with portuguese lack of translation (Portuguese hasnt been discovered yet), etc.

There is a Brazilian alive that has good chance to last, Ariano Suassuna, but likes Marquez, he is already an old name, so he kind of fighting against time already.

[carolinehelston]

Or looking closer to the present, Victorian literature. Why are our classics texts dominated by Victorian literature? Britain in the 19th century was a superpower: that's why people could begin to afford better things like novels. So writers could finally earn a better living. Actually I think it was easier for a Victorian writer to earn a living compared to now, because they didn't have TV or cinema then. But why Victorian??? Why not 18th century for instance?

Since when are "our" classics dominated by Victorian literature? The Three Musketeers, Les Miserables, Moby Dick, The Black and the Red, Nana, Don Quixote, Robinson Caruso, Tristram Shandy, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, The Steppenwolf, The Magic Mountain, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Gulliver's Travels, Madame Bovary, In Search of Lost Time, Mlle de Maupin, Our Lady of the Flowers, Ulysses, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Trial, etc... are all equally recognized as classics.


Perhaps I didn't explain very clearly. All those you mentioned are of course classics, but I meant the most famous classics everyone knows of, including 10-year-old children and those who don't in general like or know much about classics. For some reason the most famous ones seem to be Victorian ...

Your take on censorship breeding creativity is interesting. Actually come to think of it, the present emphasis on sexuality seems to be causing things like the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Which can be rather boring. On the other hand, it's hard not to wonder whether the current emphasis on realism and minimalism may be breaking a lot of fiction writers. You can't write in too many fantasic Dickension characters, or even weird coincidental plots or raging Heathcliffs (for example). But a lot of plot liberties can be taken in fantasy. Do you think that's why fantasy seems to be very popular?

Just read something about Fantasy on Manners. Apparently it's a fantasy take with elements of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope. Maybe it might even become the new literature...

[JCamilo]

If you really consider Victorean period, you have great fantasy writers in the end of her domain. Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, H.G.Wells, Kipling, Tennyson, Browning, Oscar Wilde... The anti-realism take seems more a matter on Russian/french fiction than english, they quickly solved it, I would say, humor solved the matter there.

You must recall, Jane Austen was a reader of gothic novels, she kind of use elements of it there. I do not know what you mean by fantasy being popular or not, but i would say it is because realism is trully impossible, and fantasy is necessary as resource in literature. However, the emphasis in realism is an american take in, most due to conventional book market and fantasy goes as classified as children... again, market.

[JBI]

If you really consider Victorean period, you have great fantasy writers in the end of her domain. Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, H.G.Wells, Kipling, Tennyson, Browning, Oscar Wilde... The anti-realism take seems more a matter on Russian/french fiction than english, they quickly solved it, I would say, humor solved the matter there.

You must recall, Jane Austen was a reader of gothic novels, she kind of use elements of it there. I do not know what you mean by fantasy being popular or not, but i would say it is because realism is trully impossible, and fantasy is necessary as resource in literature. However, the emphasis in realism is an american take in, most due to conventional book market and fantasy goes as classified as children... again, market.

Well, naturalism, or realism if you will has never faded as a tradition - look at something like Cormac McCarthy's works, for instance, as a prime example. Fantasy as you define it, is dependent on a great deal of sincerity, it's hard to shake the realism, as the term Magical Realism would dictate, it pretty much brings fantastical elements and reconstructs them as metaphors since realism cannot be compromised, the difference of its bastard cousin fantasy is that the vision itself takes itself sincerely as a vision not reflecting reality.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'm gone for a couple days and look at what I miss? A gold ol' StLukes vs. JBI battle. Will catch up on it tomorrow.



I'm pretty sure Mutatis was being sarcastic, we're talking about novels right now.

Yep. Though I think StLukes was probably just playing devil's advocate to me devil's advocate. Or alcohol was clouding his sarcasm detector.

[Darcy88]

I'm gone for a couple days and look at what I miss? A gold ol' StLukes vs. JBI battle. Will catch up on it tomorrow.


Watching them debating each other and bringing up things of which I haven't a clue makes me feel like the runt with two left feet who gets relegated to the side-lines while the tall talented kids dribble about and dunk.

[stlukesguild]

Perhaps I didn't explain very clearly. All those you mentioned are of course classics, but I meant the most famous classics everyone knows of, including 10-year-old children and those who don't in general like or know much about classics. For some reason the most famous ones seem to be Victorian ...

Well Dickens seems to be embraced as THE English novelist... and there are other great Victorian-era authors such as the Brontë sisters, William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Lewis Carroll, William Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and Edward Lear... but then again I think Jane Austen is nearly as popular in many circles as Dickens... and she is pre-Victorian. The same is true of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. And you might also recognize that the obsession with 19th century English novels may not carry over outside of England to the same extent. Indeed, even within Britain, when you turn to poetry it is the Romantics, not the Victorians, who are the more dominant voice.

Your take on censorship breeding creativity is interesting. Actually come to think of it, the present emphasis on sexuality seems to be causing things like the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Which can be rather boring.

The old blues and jazz and early rock n roll singers were quite often far more creative in terms of symbolic language, double entendre, etc... because they couldn't come out and use every profane word or pornographic image. The eroticism of Paul Verlaine's early poetry is exquisite in its use of delicate turns of phrase and the slightest suggestiveness. His later poems in which he no longer censors himself are vulgar, crude, and bland.

On the other hand, it's hard not to wonder whether the current emphasis on realism and minimalism may be breaking a lot of fiction writers. You can't write in too many fantasic Dickension characters, or even weird coincidental plots or raging Heathcliffs (for example). But a lot of plot liberties can be taken in fantasy. Do you think that's why fantasy seems to be very popular?

Again, I think that as usual the great innovations in the arts eventually become institutionalized and fossilized. The next generation of artists can fight against their preconceptions head on... or obliquely. If you look at the Victorian era, some of the most innovative writing is to be found in genre that many in academia and the institutions would not have taken seriously: ghost stories and horror (Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Henry James, Poe, Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Gautier etc...) "children's literature" and fantasy (Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Poe, Hans Christian Anderson, E.T. A. Hoffmann, etc...) and science fiction (H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, etc...).

In the 1950s, science fiction films became the genre through which many film-makers and writers were best able to make a social commentary about the state of political affairs at the height of McCarthyism.

It is quite possible that these "minor genre" may become or continue to be a major venue through which writers will push against the limitations presented in the more mainstream approach to "serious literature". J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, a good deal of the "Magic Realists" of Latin-America have already absorbed ideas from the more fantastic traditions of fiction. Of course mainstream fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc... have their own limitations as well.

I see an analogous situation occurring within the visual arts. After a half-century of longer dominance of the traditions of painting and sculpture by academia, a few major universities, and a slew of pretentious critics, many artists are turning their back on this "art world" and returning to what they loved as children... painting and drawing things... from "low" or "high culture"... as a result one of the most influential movements right now is the self-named "lowbrow art" movement:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7160/6786826389_4c86c41ec2_b.jpg

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http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7152/6786828265_c726f59e5e_b.jpg

Many... myself included... suspect that there is far more innovation... sheer invention... and audacity to be found in the work of these artists who have spent their lives embracing the whole of the visual world around them... the works of the "old masters"... as well as the the works of popular culture: TV, film, photography, rock n roll, jazz, pin-ups, advertising, pornography, etc... than many of the young twits clutching Yale degrees and capable of quoting Derrida and Foucault... but lacking so much as the ability to tell which end of the brush is up. As the English art critic, Matthew Collings pointed out, there is far more sheer visual splendor to be found in architecture and even advertising than there is is a lot of what passes as the "art of our time."

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Awwwww damn, StLuke's breaking out the pics. Things just got real.
Watching them debating each other and bringing up things of which I haven't a clue makes me feel like the runt with two left feet who gets relegated to the side-lines while the tall talented kids dribble about and dunk.
I've always felt that way.

[Mr.lucifer]

I don't get the arguement than genre limits artistic expression. Why is this?

[JBI]

Just so you know, Derrida and Foucault are already a thing of the past. Theory has been dead or on its last breath for at least 5 years in the top American universities at least. The return to Aesthetics has already begun, and close reading will be making a comeback in the process.

Really the people who quote theory widely are just the least self-assure of the bunch.

[stlukesguild]

Just so you know, Derrida and Foucault are already a thing of the past. Theory has been dead or on its last breath for at least 5 years in the top American universities at least. The return to Aesthetics has already begun, and close reading will be making a comeback in the process.

Really the people who quote theory widely are just the least self-assure of the bunch.

You are speaking from the POV of literary criticism. I have no idea of the approach taken in creative writing courses. In the visual arts theory and criticism have supplanted aesthetics for quite some time... probably since Clement Greenberg... who ironically was a sworn formalist... focused upon aesthetics. The shift in the visual arts owes much to the fact that academia is biased toward the word. It is far easier to ramble on for pages about theory, narrative, political and social ramifications, etc... You don't even need an eye for what looks good. There has been a shift away from the dominant theory-based criticism of the New York/Yale "Art World" as well for probably 10 years or so as well. Some of this involves a reactionary shift toward the old master traditions involving a return to the ateliers etc... frequently termed New Old Masterism. At the other end of the spectrum is Pop Surrealism or "Lowbrow Art" which embraces the visual stimuli drawn from popular sources. Some of the strongest artists draw from both end of this spectrum.

[JCamilo]

Well, naturalism, or realism if you will has never faded as a tradition - look at something like Cormac McCarthy's works, for instance, as a prime example. Fantasy as you define it, is dependent on a great deal of sincerity, it's hard to shake the realism, as the term Magical Realism would dictate, it pretty much brings fantastical elements and reconstructs them as metaphors since realism cannot be compromised, the difference of its bastard cousin fantasy is that the vision itself takes itself sincerely as a vision not reflecting reality.

Well, I would say realism can be used as two different approaches on literature, even if very similar. One is the aesthetical movement lead by guys like Flaubert and Tchekhov, which had a bit of social critic on them. Like all aesthetical movement it was never true enough to end or have a real begining, as Ortega y Gasset would point the extreme realism of Dom Quixote.

Then you have realism, as you say, style. And I think for example, this is not genre. Science Fiction norms is usually very realistic, Tolkien, J.K.Rowling, Stephen King or Robert Howard are fantasy writers that were very realistic approach.

On the first realism, you have the influence of journalism, which demands the audience to read in conformity with their daily work. The author would not bound the rules to change anything and this is the realism most usual on editoral market, it is a basic rulle of average. The audience does not want to be surprised by cowboy who crosses the mexican-texan border and sundenly goes flying. It is ok if he thinks he can comunicated with a wolf, because it is normal, people dailly think they can comunicated with animals. This is very american, as american novels were born like this (Hawthorne, Melville, Twain) and it favour "historical fiction", "biographies', etc.

Fantasy in other hand has suffered a lot with this realism, where mundane, normal occurences were norms and fantasy styles were developed to respect te scientifism of XIX century. The "genres" are but this. Science Fiction, Horror, Political, etc. borrowed the genre to produce a realistic acceptable "fantasy'. And the traditional fantasy entered in the faery tale label, with pedagogical use and move to children field. No wonder it is almost a minor genre such as short story where Borges had to break the magical realism, he would hardly have this freedom on novels, that when they are fantastic, are major experimental works like Finnegans Wake or "south-sea adventures" like Conrad, Stevenson... Language itself have to became fantasy, the supernatural is doubtful like in Thomas Mann Doktor Faust or Guimaraes Rosa The Devil to pay in the backlands which are basically the old devil buy your soul stories, disguised by an unrealiable narrator or gimmicks of language to mimicry orality.

But truthlly fantasy was never at risk, the idea of showing only the daily life of novels lost its strength, no more Balzacs to carry it on, it is mostly a editorial genre now. Guys like MacCarty will use the narrative, even if realistic, to scape from journalism and we never had a literature period when the fantasy was not countering it, even Dickens, Flaubert, James, Tolstoy, etc have fantastic stories.

As Literary Criticism i would say it is dead simple because as literary genre they were minor, not inotivative and limited. As pretencious scientifism they failled to add anything beyond the what the writers already showed in their essays. It is a minor genre, perhaps even minor than pulp-fiction.

[Drkshadow03]

Just so you know, Derrida and Foucault are already a thing of the past. Theory has been dead or on its last breath for at least 5 years in the top American universities at least. The return to Aesthetics has already begun, and close reading will be making a comeback in the process.

Really the people who quote theory widely are just the least self-assure of the bunch.

What evidence do you have for that?

As far as I know there are plenty of new books being published about Foucault and Derrida. I just checked the courses being offered at three Ivy Leagues (Harvard, Yale, and Stanford). Only Harvard lacked any identifiable theory course. Meanwhile, both Yale and Stanford had a handful of theory courses they were offering.

[JBI]

What evidence do you have for that?

As far as I know there are plenty of new books being published about Foucault and Derrida. I just checked the courses being offered at three Ivy Leagues (Harvard, Yale, and Stanford). Only Harvard lacked any identifiable theory course. Meanwhile, both Yale and Stanford had a handful of theory courses they were offering.

Just a general trend I had been noticing. That these authors are still studied does not prove anything - as of now, they are moving toward Museumification. We still study Dickens, but his genre of novel has since expired.

The theoretical textual tradition seems to have dried up. Even that annoying brat Terry Eagleton has admitted as much, and published on it. The gimmick may still be discussed, but the glory days are long past, in current academic thought other traditions seem to be taking over.

Namely, the environment is beginning to be a topic of discussion, likewise, things like Darwinism, new aesthetics, and various other subshoots. The whole Post-Modernity thing, and with it the theoretical tradition seems to be out of the cutting line, despite having resonance. Ph. D.s looking for tenure track positions will be reliant on new skills for a new environment.

My friends who study politics have interestingly reported an upsurge of what they call Modernist theory and scholarship that has come in to replace much of the traditional post-modern theoretical crap they were forced to read.

I do not mean that theory is ever going to fade - Deconstruction is one of the better forms of close reading that can be done - I merely meant the heavy theoretical stuff, all that French post-structuralist mumbo jumbo is now being pushed into a background and hushed up. Paul de Mann is no longer the God he once was in the academy, regardless of his Nazi bit. Even Derrida, though still resonant, is probably not going to be read much at all. The French heavy theorists? Perhaps a little, but we seem to have moved beyond them to new ways of reading texts, besides all that weird language of cyborg transvestites with leaking bodies.

[JCamilo]

Tbh, Derrida and Foucault were never dominant, and this for guys who try to approach with a scientific theory of shorts, will lead to museumfication. You can imagine somehow the return of lefty- marxism in politics may give them some new readings. They kind off did their effect and of course, in social sciences, mummies are like hollywood movies... they have several retuns.

[AjaxAscendant]

Pardon me for saying this, but I think the Harry Potter series has definite makings of a classic. Other than that, we have The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Memory-Keeper's Daughter, and The Time-Traveler's Wife.

Oh, and pretty much every work of scifi.

[jake21221]

Pardon me for saying this, but I think the Harry Potter series has definite makings of a classic. Other than that, we have The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Memory-Keeper's Daughter, and The Time-Traveler's Wife.

Oh, and pretty much every work of scifi.

Sorry but can you please explain to me what is so great about that book? I read it and thought it was OK but I would never say it would be a classic in years to come. I'm not saying you're wrong or anything just wondering why you think that.

[mortalterror]

What I am waiting for is the emergence of a Norton Arabic Poetry, but I think I will be waiting for a while.

Have you seen the book Tablet and Pen? http://www.amazon.com/Tablet-Pen-Literary-Landscapes-Without/dp/0393065855 Or did you have something different in mind?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Just so you know, Derrida and Foucault are already a thing of the past. Theory has been dead or on its last breath for at least 5 years in the top American universities at least. The return to Aesthetics has already begun, and close reading will be making a comeback in the process.

Really the people who quote theory widely are just the least self-assure of the bunch.

Can you call my university and tell them and all my professors about this, because they seem to be under the impression that theory and authors from almost all theoretical periods deserve to be read and discussed. I'm sure once they hear you called, their re-work the whole curriculum. We are, after all, just a bunch of backward, theory quoting philistines.


Just a general trend I had been noticing. That these authors are still studied does not prove anything -
Why does this not prove anything? I can't really think of anything that shows the contrary to your assertions than that they're still being studied.*


The theoretical textual tradition seems to have dried up.
Despite it still being widely studied, right?

[Emil Miller]

Pardon me for saying this, but I think the Harry Potter series has definite makings of a classic. .

There are some things beyond pardon.

[Gregory Samsa]

2666 it's a masterpiece I think students will study in universities in the future.

[JuniperWoolf]

Watching them debating each other and bringing up things of which I haven't a clue makes me feel like the runt with two left feet who gets relegated to the side-lines while the tall talented kids dribble about and dunk.

Haha, then you'll feel even worse once I tell you that JBI is only twenty years old.

[KCurtis]

Can you call my university and tell them and all my professors about this, because they seem to be under the impression that theory and authors from almost all theoretical periods deserve to be read and discussed. I'm sure once they hear you called, their re-work the whole curriculum. We are, after all, just a bunch of backward, theory quoting philistines.


Why does this not prove anything? I can't really think of anything that shows the contrary to your assertions than that they're still being studied.*


Despite it still being widely studied, right?

And after he's called your University, he can call the U.S. government leaders, European government leaders, Asian government leaders, etc., and oh-let's not forget Cuba, and tell them that in fact China is no longer a communist country.

[Drkshadow03]

Can you call my university and tell them and all my professors about this, because they seem to be under the impression that theory and authors from almost all theoretical periods deserve to be read and discussed. I'm sure once they hear you called, their re-work the whole curriculum. We are, after all, just a bunch of backward, theory quoting philistines.


Why does this not prove anything? I can't really think of anything that shows the contrary to your assertions than that they're still being studied.*


Despite it still being widely studied, right?

Plus I have a facebook pal who graduated with her Ph. D. that actually wrote her dissertation on cyborg transvestites with leaking bodies last year and now has a tenured position teaching literature. Granted it is a community college and not an Ivy League, but still . . .

[Alexander III]

Haha, then you'll feel even worse once I tell you that JBI is only twenty years old.

Really, JBI you are but one year older than me ? Wow, I am impressed with the range of your literary reading is such a case.

[JBI]

Have you seen the book Tablet and Pen? http://www.amazon.com/Tablet-Pen-Literary-Landscapes-Without/dp/0393065855 Or did you have something different in mind?
I didn't see it, and it didn't pop up. Now that I have seen it, I am very pleased, and will no doubt look for it in my library tomorrow. This is pleasing, oh so pleasing, though what is included?

As for ancient works though? what substantial editions should I turn to, particularly for poetry, with good commentary mind you. The books I found on the shelves are hit and miss, and though the collection seems large, the university's departments seem lacking in research and information as to what to read.

Could you perhaps point me in a direction in private message or on here if you do not mind?

[JBI]

Haha, then you'll feel even worse once I tell you that JBI is only twenty years old.

Nearly 22 actually but that is inconsequential. It's the size of the ego not the age of the ego that counts.

[JBI]

Can you call my university and tell them and all my professors about this, because they seem to be under the impression that theory and authors from almost all theoretical periods deserve to be read and discussed. I'm sure once they hear you called, their re-work the whole curriculum. We are, after all, just a bunch of backward, theory quoting philistines.


Why does this not prove anything? I can't really think of anything that shows the contrary to your assertions than that they're still being studied.*


Despite it still being widely studied, right?

That wasn't my point. My point was not that these texts were being read still, the same way Northrop Frye is still read, it is just that the tradition has moved into museum, and the age of theory is dead.

The debates and issues of theory are no longer the foreground on the field, other issues beyond the post-structuralist deconstructionist issues of hermeneutics and implications are foreground. That isn't to say that they have died, but merely look at the publication date of most of the major works of theoretical writing. How many are new, current, innovative and original? I bet most of the textual tradition is from 20-30 years ago, and perhaps influenced by works older than them. Even the theory writers to an extent have changed in style.


I mean Eagleton himself published After Theory in 2003, we are going on 9 years and what has changed since then? I think the fact that theory is taught the way it is a great sign of its current death and movement into a genre for study. The use of it is still present, if a little bit flamboyant in delivery (it is hard to be taken seriously while taking intensely theoretical stuff too seriously and trying to apply it after all) but the tradition of theory itself seems to have evaporated in favor of other concerns.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Nearly 22 actually but that is inconsequential. It's the size of the ego not the age of the ego that counts.

:lol: Well said.

Honestly, I take solace in the age of JBI. Sometimes I forget he's younger than me when starts on about something, and then I feel silly for making smartass comments to a youngin.

[Alexander III]

Nearly 22 actually but that is inconsequential. It's the size of the ego not the age of the ego that counts.

In such a case this is essentialy a forum for pensioners.

[Emil Miller]

In such a case this is essentialy a forum for pensioners.

I didn't know you were a pensioner.

[Artorius]

2666 it's a masterpiece I think students will study in universities in the future.
I agree. His short story collection Last Evenings on Earth left me in awe as well.

[Alexander III]

I didn't know you were a pensioner.

You kill comedy by explaining it, but I must it appears

JBI said, it is not the age which counts but the size of the ego, sarcasticaly

Therefore if the size of the ego detrmines the age, we all have big egos and thus the wisdom of pensioners I said sarcasticaly

[tonywalt]

Haruki Murakami with novels like Norwegian Wood and After Dark. They are very cosmopolitan in content, and have a creeping but sure cultish following.

I do not read alot of fiction, but he stands out.

[carolinehelston]

Diana Wynne Jones. her books may be rare, but they had a steady following throughout her life. And unlike a lot of fantasy, character was very important, and all the magic helped to develop character. The best fantasy doesn't make the hero gape at the magic he is newly-introduced to, but takes everything in a matter-of-fact way. Magic is an ordinary way of life, and if it is a novelty, it is still something that everyone knows about. A whole set of norms and culture is already there. And it has to have a certain sort of logic and intuition to it, like the way the characters in Wynne Jones can feel magic. Very convincing - I was nearly convinced of the reality of magic years ago when I read it.

JK Rowling may be better at constructing worlds and suspense, but in terms of character development and novel ideas Wynne Jones wins hands down.

[the facade]

What do you like about DeLillo?

I have, personally, never encountered an author of our age that appears to be as aware of the institutional framework, social context, artistic movement in which he produces his art (admittedly, my scope is limited). I think that it is this deplorable awareness, so characteristic of "our age", which I hope people in future generations will find interesting. Also, he captures it damn well with a perceptiveness that is uncanny, carried forth by a distinct style that deviates from the norm (how he gets published is baffling, although this can be considered refutable to what I just mentioned about institutional awareness). Even when he seemingly strays from embellished fictional form and takes a turn for a style more akin to academic writing, I find his wording of concepts infinitely satisfying.

Or something along those lines.

[JBI]

I have, personally, never encountered an author of our age that appears to be as aware of the institutional framework, social context, artistic movement in which he produces his art (admittedly, my scope is limited). I think that it is this deplorable awareness, so characteristic of "our age", which I hope people in future generations will find interesting. Also, he captures it damn well with a perceptiveness that is uncanny, carried forth by a distinct style that deviates from the norm (how he gets published is baffling, although this can be considered refutable to what I just mentioned about institutional awareness). Even when he seemingly strays from embellished fictional form and takes a turn for a style more akin to academic writing, I find his wording of concepts infinitely satisfying.

Or something along those lines.
I agree with some points, but I just happen to feel the American landscapes he creates are limited in reflecting more a time of composition than an enduring condition.

What I mean is, we have a floating landscape that is shifting constantly, especially as an interior within fiction. The major cities of the United States are incredibly diverse, and incredibly interesting in their mix and crosses and fusions.

It is in that sense that I think John Updike killed himself, in that his white trash America has ceased to be as interesting as people originally thought. Likewise the cold war interiors and irony of something like underworld seems to reflect something that, though shadowed still today, as become meshed within a more complex and rich fabric of fictional diegesis.

He seems very Barthes, which worked for a while, but even that seemed to have become conflated with a wider tradition of American letters.

It's interesting, I look into the interior both being born after the cold war, and born outside of the US, and it seems so foreign to me, and the prose almost insulting to the reader.

I find that similar in much of post-modern fiction, that it alienates the reader while professing this grand condition of human alienation in the post modern world (Lyotard mixed with Baudrillard on ice), but the condition seems to have more resonance in the scholarly framework that besets the informed conditions of the authors than in any sense of reality I have found from within the real world. It is as if they are commenting on a condition highlighted but not ever defined, existent only in the imaginations of people who are trying to find what is peculiar about a time period that is working to divorce itself of notions that this is the great moment of change or some other such nonsense.

It is a difficult literature, that deliberately tries to alienate the reader, and I am not quite sure what I make of it. IT is unsettling, sure, but also unsettled. I do not know whether to call this post-modern stuff genius or gimmick, dark truth or constructed bull****. Likewise I do not know if this is some sort of American thing or not, that is, whether this anxiety actually does reflect a cold-war American persona, or whether it is just a manufactured landscape out of the academy. Our novels here seem to have what people have called "post-modern", but for the most part lack the grimmness and absurdity that marks much of American post-modernism. I am not sure what exactly to make of it.