Quote:
Originally Posted by
JBI
It's the same way the mystery genre, thriller genre, and romance genres aren't highly regarded as literary works. Romance is one of the (I think it is the) best selling genre there is. Yet how many of those paperback novels are really worth reading?
A Farewell to Arms is commonly regarded as a "romance novel," and I'd say that people usually consider Hemingway a pretty good read.
Quote:
A lot of people are actually embarrassed to admit they read those books. That doesn't mean those books don't have the "best in the genre". They do, as does every genre. The point is though, the "literary" classification is beyond genre, and takes books based on merit as works outside of genre.
Isn't that what I've been saying this entire time? That every work should be judged on its own achievements rather than the genre one assigns to it? I believe that was one of my first points.
Quote:
We shouldn't make exceptions for single genres. Nora Roberts, or whatever name she writes under now, is a highly best-selling author. Do you rank her amongst Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, or better yet, more contemporary greats, Atwood, Pynchon, Rushdie, Byatt, Saramago, Morrison, etc.? God no, you can't.
You certainly could, if that's what tickles your fancy. I don't, and I also don't understand what point you are trying to make.
Quote:
The same with fantasy. Fantasy fans are many, and have influence. But they aren't everything. Besides which, an internet poll on an online website is not the greatest statistic. A) there is a major sample bias, since only people with internet access, and amazon frequency will vote, and b) because many people would not vote, or have votes scattered. With a great deal of fantasy readers, Tolkien is seen as the ultimate choice, whereas the votes of others, particularly in the literary field, where there are 3000 years of volume to contemplate, the key figure is way more difficult. Some people would think Shakespeare the obvious choice, but that isn't a narrowed margin. People need to think of which play to choose, etc. There is also the language bias which narrows the overwhelming votes of English speakers against the world, who offer a tradition as old, or older, of equally as excellent works.
Oh, we're back to the whole "popularity of the trilogy thing," eh? Okay, fine. Because a poll doesn't encompass the broad spectrum of human existence, its results mean absolutely nothing, and we'll just have to go with your unsupported assertion that The Lord of the Rings was only popular with fantasy fans.
Quote:
There is also the point to consider about how much one has read, versus another. The same archetype, if you have not come across it before could hamper your judgment. A plagiarist who to the reader seems original is held as high in esteem as the original. Tolkien is believed, by some ridiculous propagated fallacy, to have invented the modern fantasy genre. How many people have read his primary sources of inspiration? I bet many kids would think Wagner ripped off Tolkien.
Thank you for the lesson professor, like this thought never occured to me. How does this relate to my previous questions?
Quote:
I didn't say it wasn't your more than average fantasy book, but I did say it was your mediocre book. If you want to examine literature, you need to break genre biases, and look at works for literary merit above genre, in order to classify them as good "Literature".
Will you stop pretending to lecture me by reiterating things that I already said? Genres are restrictive...Every work should be judged on its own merits...I believe I wrote that three or four posts ago.
Quote:
Herbert, now on this subject, can be seen as a great of science fiction, but a bad writer.
Or a great writer of science fiction and a great writer.
Quote:
He redefined mainstream sci-fi, but did little else for literature as whole, or for language.
Are you now insinuating that literature must be judged in relation to its influence on other works (or at least other works outside a given genre)?
Quote:
That being said, to lure us back on topic,
Finally.
Quote:
literary merit needs to be beyond genre. If only a fantasy lover CAN enjoy a book, then what sort of quality does it have for humanity?
I generally greatly dislike the vast majority of books commonly defined as "fantasy," so not only a fantasy lover CAN enjoy The Lord of the Rings.
Quote:
And anyway, I would think the best book of the millennium, by the influence the works carried alone, would come down to 4 names, 1 of which being lesser than the rest in everything but influence;
Moliere's Tartuffe
Dante's Comedia
Cervantes's Don Quixote de la Mancha
Shakespeare's Hamlet
for non-fiction probably (though I am no authority at all on this, and confess to trying to broaden the scope of this list as much as possible).
Montaigne
Descartes
Thomas Aquinas
Galileo
Nietzsche
Freud
Marx
Darwin
And yet, no matter what any expert or literary critic thinks, there is no such thing as an objective opinion, and even the ideas about what consitutes great literature are subjective to each individual. I think you are displaying a remarkable narrow-mindedness, as well as elitism in your insistance that the "best book of the milennium" could only come down to books which you personally regard as the best in literature.
